Dr Sam Vosper

Sam is an affiliated Lecturer in the Department of Land Economy where he primarily supervises the MPhil in Environmental Policy programme and Paper 5 of the undergraduate Tripos. He is an applied environmental/development economist by training and completed his PhD at the Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge. His PhD thesis titled: Microfinance and Mobile phones: an economic analysis of the perceptions, management and measurement of environmental risk in rural Kenya, was supervised by C-EENRG Fellows Shaun Larcom and Andreas Kontoleon. He was a recent recipient of the McKinsey Risk Prize (2020) and a finalist for the Cambridge Society for Applied Research (CSAR) Award (2022). Previously, Sam has worked as an economic advisor on climate change issues in Southern Africa.

Sam’s recent research is focused on the adoption of climate related micro-finance products designed to relieve pressures on rural food security and poverty in Kenya. He is specifically focussed on exploring the environmental drivers of risk preferences and their consequent impacts on financial decision making and economic development. His research relies on both quantitative econometric modelling approaches as well as experimental economic approaches. The projects also incorporate spatial data analysis through the use of GIS tools. Broadly, he is interested in how individuals mitigate and adapt to climate change at the micro level and how financial products and policies can better facilitate economic development in this area.