Vivalt specializes in investigating stumbling blocks to generate evidence-based policy decisions, including both methodological issues as well as how evidence is interpreted and used.

Vivalt has published in Science, the Journal of the European Economics Association and the Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, among other outlets. She is a co-founder of the Social Science Prediction Platform — which coordinates the collection of forecasts of research results in the social sciences, and founder of AidGrade, a research institute that generates and synthesizes evidence in international development. Vivalt is also a principal investigator on Y Combinator Research’s basic income renewed computer technology RCT and has other interests in labor economics, development and global priorities research.

Vivalt holds a PhD in economics and a master of arts degree in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley and previously worked with the Development Economics Research Group at the World Bank. Prior to her PhD, Vivalt completed a master of philosophy in Development Studies at Oxford University on a Commonwealth Scholarship. Vivalt has visited the Department of Economics at Yale University and Stanford University, as well as the Global Priorities Institute at Oxford University, and was previously a Senior Lecturer (Australian for Assistant Professor) at the Australian National University.