Molly Lipscomb is an associate professor of public policy and economics and the director of the Center for Social Innovation at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia. Lipscomb’s research focuses primarily on environmental issues in developing countries and adaptation to lack of centralized health and sanitation services.  She has analyzed the incentives to pollute near downstream borders, the impact of access to electricity on human development and poverty indicators, the impact of increased agricultural productivity on deforestation, the effectiveness of auctions in reducing prices for sanitation services, and methods of targeting subsidies to households to increase take-up of improved sanitation services.

Lipscomb is a principal investigator on several large randomized controlled trials including a project measuring the impact of different social network and savings interventions in increasing willingness to pay for improved sanitation services in Senegal, a project measuring the importance of access to information in negotiations with service providers in Ghana, a project testing a targeting strategy for subsidies for sanitation services in Burkina Faso, a project testing the relative effectiveness of different types of leaders in increasing the willingness to pay for water treatment tablets in Uganda, and  a project decomposing the components of personal savings through alternative loan types in Uganda. 

Lipscomb received her Ph.D. from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2009 and has served as a consultant at the World Bank and a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania.