David Reinstein

David Reinstein

Economist · Founder and Co-Director of The Unjournal

I work on how research gets evaluated and used (mostly through The Unjournal), on charitable giving and effective altruism, and on research methods.

The Unjournal

I founded The Unjournal in 2022 and co-direct it. We commission experts to publicly evaluate and rate research in economics and quantitative social science that seems relevant to global priorities, often working papers that haven’t been through a journal. Evaluators are paid, and their evaluations and ratings are published openly, along with the authors' responses.

The aim is to make useful research more rigorous and easier for decision-makers to rely on, and to give researchers credible feedback and credit without the slow “publish or reject” cycle of traditional journals.

Through our Pivotal Questions work, we start from specific questions that matter to funders and policymakers, and focus evaluation on the research that bears most directly on them.

Research

My research is on charitable giving and other-regarding behavior (especially whether information about effectiveness changes what people give), applied microeconomics and field experiments, and, more recently, research evaluation itself, including how well AI models can evaluate research. Research and publications

Impact projects

Writing, talks and podcasts

Most of my recent writing is on the EA Forum, often about The Unjournal and its Pivotal Questions.

Tools and side projects

Web apps, games and music tools I’ve built, many with AI coding agents: Word Bocce, Blues Flow, the Impact Products Directory and more. All tools and apps

CV

Positions, publications, grants, teaching and outreach. Also as a PDF. Read the CV