Andrew Bell
Schleifer Family Associate Professor of Sustainability, Department of Global Development

About
Andrew Reid Bell is the inaugural Schleifer Family Professor of Sustainability in the Department of Global Development at Cornell University. His work draws on agent-based modeling tools, informed by field and behavioral experiments. In particular, he developed the MIDAS (Migration, Intensification, and Diversification as Adaptive Strategies) modeling framework (based on push-pull-mooring or PPM theory) in order to model migration as an emergent outcome among other livelihood adaptations, and has applied it to examine US-Mexico cross-border flows as well as the impact of sea-level rise on coastal migration in Bangladesh.
Currently, he is incorporating the theory of capabilities and aspirations into MIDAS, in order to better model the function that rural investments may have in both building rural capacity, as well as changing long-term aspirations for rural youth, with a current application to rural Senegal. He is also working on an application of MIDAS in Madagascar, where he is joined by an international team funded by the Belmont Forum to disentangle environmental and social drivers of mobility in an environmental hazard-prone environment.
Bell’s lab at Cornell focuses on rural livelihoods decision-making, and the pro-poor development challenge of broadening opportunities and enabling families to take advantage of them. Key methods for the group are coupled natural-human systems modeling (especially agent-based modeling), and behavioral experiments to inform them. Work by current lab members spans migration, irrigation, human-wildlife conflict, and agricultural technology adoption.
Prior to joining Cornell, Bell was an Associate Professor of Earth & Environment at Boston University with a research program focused on identifying responses to human-environment dilemmas that provide support for the most disadvantaged while also ensuring sustainability. He earned a PhD in Natural Resource Management from the University of Michigan in 2010, followed by a post-doctoral fellowship at the Earth Institute at Columbia University, and positions at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and New York University.
Interests
Agent-based modeling
Behavioral experiments
Rural livelihoods decision-making
Contact Information
266 Warren Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853
arb397 [at] cornell.edu
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