Matthew Bonds, PhD

Research Associate

Matthew Bonds has a Ph.D. in economics and a Ph.D. in ecology from the University of Georgia. He joined the HSPH and HMS faculty after a postdoctoral fellowship in sustainable development under the mentorship of Jeffrey Sachs at the Earth Institute at Columbia University. His research explores relationships between ecology, infectious diseases, and economic development, with an applied focus on the role of healthcare in promoting economic growth in areas of extreme poverty. While developing formal theoretical frameworks, Dr. Bonds works with Partners In Health along with government bodies in Rwanda to measure the socioeconomic and health impacts of their health system. These efforts rely on a broad range of data and methods, including population and business survey data, geographic information systems, and mathematical and statistical modeling. This work is largely funded by: a Fogarty International Research Scientist Career Development Award (NIH); and a Population Health Implementation and Training grant to Partners In Health from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

Publications

  • Bonds, M.H., D.C. Keenan, P. Rohani, and J. D. Sachs. 2010. “Poverty trap formed by the ecology of infectious diseases,” Proceedings of the Royal Society, Series B, 277: 1185-1192.
  • Bonds, M.H., and P. Rohani. 2010. “Herd immunity acquired indirectly from interactions between the ecology of infectious diseases, demography, and economics,” Journal of the Royal Society Interface,7:541-547.
  • Bonds, M.H. and J.J. Pompe. 2008. “Public land management and institutional reform: evidence from Mississippi’s School Trust Land history.” Southern Business and Economics Journal, 31:1-18.
  • Bonds, M.H. 2008. “Breaking the disease-driven poverty trap; notes from the Millennium Villages Project, Rwanda. Consilience: The Journal of Sustainable Development 1: 98-111.
  • Bonds, M.H. and D.R. Hughes. 2007."On the productivity of public forests: a stochastic frontier analysis of school trust timber production," Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics 55: 171-183.
  • Bonds, M.H. 2006. "Host life-history strategy explains pathogen-induced sterility," The American Naturalist 168: 433-444.
  • Bonds, M.H., D.C. Keenan, A. Leidner, and P. Rohani. 2005. "Higher disease prevalence can induce greater sociality; a game theoretic coevolutionary model," Evolution 59(9): 1859-1866.
  • Bonds, M.H. and J. Pompe. 2005. “Improving institutional incentives for public land management; an econometric analysis of school trust land leases,” Journal of Institutional Economics 1(2): 193-215.
  • Bonds, M.H. and M.A. Nachbahr. 2005. Review of End of Poverty; Economics Possibilities of Our Time, by Jeffrey Sachs, Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) 294: 1558.
  • Bonds, M.H. and J. Pompe. 2003. "Calculating wetland mitigation banking credits; adjusting for function and location," Natural Resources Journal 43(4): 961-977.