Research

About

We collaborate with academic researchers and decision-makers across public, government, and private sectors to help make systems more effective, inclusive, and just. Our approach draws from both experience and evidence, evolving as we learn from our partners and practice.

We've moved our entire research presence to GitHub to become even more transparent. Here, you can see how things have changed over time, propose improvements, or even take our ideas and make them your own.

Our Team

Tony Ramos, Oscar Wahltinez, Anjal Parikh, Sarah Cherian, Scott Glasgow, and Soham Patel.

Our team brings experience from Google, Microsoft, Bloomberg News, and Wall Street.

Academic Partners

Eren Çifi, PhD

Austin Peay State University

Madhavi Venkatesan, PhD

Northeastern University

Chen Zhang, PhD

Iowa State University

John Longo, PhD

Rutgers University

Christos Makridis, PhD

Arizona State / Stanford

Published Papers

The Mango Model: Best Practices in the Creation of a COVID-19 Open Data Project Through a Partnership with Google Health and the Non-Profit FinMango

Oscar Wahltinez, Scott Glasgow, Aurora Cheung, James F. Glasgow, Martin Noguera, James W. Glasgow & Pamela Neidert Hoalt

American Journal of Health Education

COVID-19 Open-Data: A global-scale spatially granular meta-dataset for coronavirus disease

Oscar Wahltinez, Aurora Cheung, Ruth Alcantara, Donny Cheung, Mayank Daswani, Anthony Erlinger, Matt Lee, Pranali Yawalkar, Paula Lê, Ofir Picazo Navarro, Michael P. Brenner & Kevin Murphy

Nature (Scientific Data)

Working Papers

Predictive Signals: Do Mental Health-Related Google Searches Reflect Eviction Trends in Real Estate?

with Eren Çifi, PhD - Austin Peay State University

AI Adoption in Banking: Efficiency Gains and Employment Trade-offs

with Eren Çifi, PhD

Tornadoes and Financial Resilience: Assessing the Effects of Natural Disasters on Community Banks

with Eren Çifi, PhD

Sustainable Investment Search Behavior as a Predictor of Market Activity

with Madhavi Venkatesan, PhD - Northeastern University

Comparative Analysis of Financial Literacy Search Patterns

with John Longo, PhD - Rutgers University and Danny Jang - Financial Futures

Research Areas

Disaster Relief

Leveraging real-time data and predictive analytics to develop solutions helping communities prepare for, survive, and recover from disasters.

Mental Health

Investigating how psychological factors influence economic decision-making and how financial circumstances impact mental health outcomes.

Housing

Addressing the housing affordability crisis where home prices have far outpaced income growth.

Sustainability

Developing solutions benefiting both economic resilience and ecological health.

Artificial Intelligence

Leveraging data-driven insights to develop more equitable financial systems.

Google Collaborations

Google Health Trends API Active

We employ the Google Health Trends API to access actual conditional probability values, providing greater mathematical rigor and cross-term comparability not possible with traditional 0-100 RSV scales.

COVID-19 Open Data Project Archived

A comprehensive meta-dataset containing epidemiological information from 22,579 unique locations within 232 countries and territories.

Our Data

Most studies using Google Trends rely on normalized Relative Search Volume (RSV) indices. Our unique approach employs the Google Health Trends API to access actual conditional probability values.

This approach yields:

Greater mathematical rigor, avoiding distortions introduced by normalization
More robust statistical analysis due to interpretable, probabilistically grounded metrics
Cross-term and cross-time comparability
Deeper insights into search behavior and more precise linkages

Collaborating with academic researchers and decision-makers to help solve society's biggest financial health challenges and improve lives.