Faraz Usmani

Faraz Usmani is an applied microeconomist with research interests at the intersection of environmental, energy, and development economics. He uses experimental and quasi-experimental methods to understand how individuals, households, and firms in low- and middle-income countries respond to new technologies, policies, and infrastructure.

At Mathematica, Usmani has served as the technical lead for the Green Climate Fund’s evidence review on results-based payments. He also supports the design, implementation, and analysis of independent evaluations of Millennium Challenge Corporation projects focusing on secondary education and industrial land reform in Côte d'Ivoire and Morocco, respectively. As part of a Mathematica-led consortium supported by the United States Agency for International Development, Usmani also contributes to the development of a sustainable agriculture decision support tool to inform adoption of agricultural technologies that jointly deliver environmental and financial benefits.

Usmani’s research has been published in the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, Ecological Economics, Environmental and Resource Economics, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Before joining Mathematica in 2020, he was an Atkinson Postdoctoral Fellow at the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University. Usmani holds a Ph.D. in environmental economics from Duke University and a Master’s in International and development economics from Yale University.