Issac Yurui Hu
Portrait of Issac Yurui Hu

WORLD BANK GROUP · DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS (DEC)

Issac Yurui Hu

胡雨瑞 · Curriculum vitae · LinkedIn

Junior Professional Associate · Economic Analyst · Data Scientist
Asia Pacific Chief Economist Office, World Bank Group

I use large-scale data and empirical methods to study how artificial intelligence (AI), trade, climate risks, and other economic shocks affect firms and households in emerging market and developing economies.

Research interests

AI · Labor market dynamic · International trade · Climate resilience · Firm behavior

About

I am a Junior Professional Associate in the World Bank Group’s Chief Economist Office for Asia Pacific, where my work spans applied economics, research data science, and geospatial analysis, with a particular focus on artificial intelligence, labor markets, trade, and firm behavior.

I have contributed to World Bank research and flagship publications on artificial intelligence, labor markets, trade, climate resilience, and firms in developing economies.

Education

Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS)

Master of Arts in International Relations · 2023

Focus in International Economics and Finance · Development, Climate, and Sustainability

Dickinson College

Bachelor of Arts in International Relations · 2023

Minor in Theoretical Mathematics · Magna Cum Laude

RESEARCH

Selected research

JOURNAL ARTICLE · 2026

Climate Shocks and the Poor: A Review of the Literature

Coauthor · data curation and formal analysis

A review of evidence on whether poorer households are more exposed to, and more adversely affected by, climate shocks. As a coauthor, I contributed from the early stages by helping build the literature database underlying the review, and later worked on data curation and formal analysis, organizing evidence across studies and examining how climate exposure and impacts vary across income groups.

WIREs Climate Change · DOI ↗
WORLD BANK POLICY RESEARCH WORKING PAPER 11284 · 2026

Heat, Informality, and Misallocation: Firm Adaptation in the Short and Long Run

I integrated four rounds of India’s Economic Census, comprising more than 100 million firm-level observations, with roughly 40 years of daily historical weather data to construct a large-scale firm–climate panel. I contributed to the empirical strategy by estimating and comparing OLS, quantile, and Poisson-based models to study heterogeneous firm responses to climate anomalies and test the robustness of the findings.

Paper ↗
WORLD BANK POLICY RESEARCH WORKING PAPER 11135 · 2025

From Patriarchy to Policy: Norms, Votes, and Gender Equal Laws

I constructed the analysis-ready dataset by merging multiple source datasets, harmonizing geographic and temporal identifiers, and reconciling variable definitions across sources. This work created a consistent empirical base for the paper’s analysis of social norms, voting behavior, and gender-equal legislation.

Paper ↗
WORLD BANK POLICY RESEARCH WORKING PAPER 10947 · 2024

Household and Firm Exposure to Heat and Floods in South Asia

I contributed to the empirical and geospatial analysis by producing maps of household and firm exposure to heat and floods across South Asia, replicating and extending existing regression workflows, and developing code to extract urban-level data for the analysis. I also helped maintain continuity of the empirical work following a transition in the research team..

Paper ↗
WORLD BANK POLICY RESEARCH WORKING PAPER 10946 · 2024

Education, Social Norms, and the Marriage Penalty: Evidence from South Asia

I supported the analytical production for the paper by developing figures for the annex tables and helping translate tabular results into clear visual outputs.

Paper ↗
WORLD BANK POLICY RESEARCH WORKING PAPER 10729 · 2024

Climate Change Adaptation: What Does the Evidence Say?

I conducted a large-scale literature review covering 200+ papers on climate adaptation, manually extracting reported coefficients, standard errors, and study characteristics to construct a structured meta-analysis database. I then standardized the extracted estimates into a regression-ready format for cross-study empirical analysis..

Paper ↗

FLAGSHIP REPORTS

Selected World Bank reports