---
title: "David Roodman"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "person"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "David Roodman"
aliases: []
first_seen: "2026-08-20T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
connects_to: ["Mariel Boatlift","George Borjas","Michael Clemens","Current Population Survey"]
seek_code_commit: "17d9798"
---


Independent methodologist (formerly Center for Global Development, now Open Philanthropy) who publishes his own statistical re-checks of contested empirical disputes rather than taking a side by assertion. On the Mariel Boatlift wage-effect dispute, his own formal test of Borjas's adjusted wage series found no statistically distinguishable 1980 trend break (p = 0.82 and 0.37 against a constant-decline-rate null) and judged the Clemens & Hunt census-composition argument plausible — but his review predates Clemens's later race-interaction model and does not adjudicate that specific modeling choice. He discloses his own conflict: a former CGD colleague of Clemens, now at an organization that funds CGD and Clemens's migration work specifically. Matters to this vault as the closest thing yet found to a named, credentialed third-party referee in the Mariel dispute, with the limits of that role stated plainly rather than borrowed.

## References
- [[claim-roodman-independent-assessment-finds-census-artifact-plausible-predates-race-interaction-model]]
- Captures: 2026-08-19-which-race-adjustment-model-is-the-econometrically-correct