Dan seeks to bring advances in the use of seasonal climate information and financial mechanisms to improve livelihoods in developing countries.

His Ph.D. in Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California at Berkeley addressed the use of weather information in irrigated agriculture. He has been involved in the contract design and evaluation process for index insurance pilots in countries including Malawi, Kenya, Tanzania, Nicaragua, and Honduras.

Research contributions include work on the use of probabilistic information in decisionmaking, the valuation of environmental features, the use of remote sensing proxies in quantifying environmental amenities and environmental risk, the value of information in negotiation and markets, how uncertainty, risk, and information impacts negotiations between players, and work specific to index insurance climate information and economic development

IRI-CRMG-Kenya-Tanzania-Malawi-Insurance-Report-6-2007.pdf

IRI 2007 report on Index Insurance in Kenya, Tanzania, and Malawi to the World Bank CRMG