collaborators

7 papers

cs.CY2026

Capability-Based Planning for AI Crisis Preparedness

Isaak Mengesha, Charlie Collins, Juan Felipe Cerón Uribe +2

Capability-based planning drives preparedness in defense and homeland security, but has yet to be applied seriously to AI. Government AI preparations follow a predict-then-act para…

econ.GN2026

Measuring growth and convergence at the mesoscale

Isaak Mengesha, Debraj Roy

Global inequality has shifted inward, with rising dispersion increasingly occurring within countries rather than between them. Using 8,790 newly harmonised Functional Urban Areas (…

econ.GN2026

Cities cluster into growth regimes that propagate shocks

Isaak Mengesha, Hourican Cillian, Debraj Roy

Economic growth is conventionally analyzed at the national level, yet cities generate the bulk of global output. Here we construct GDP trajectories for 8,808 functional urban areas…

cs.CY2026

A pragmatic classification framework for AI incident monitoring

Isaak Mengesha, Branwen Owen, Charlie Collins +4

Incident monitoring can drive safety improvements in high-reliability industries and population-scale technologies, but remains underdeveloped in AI governance. Public databases ca…

cs.CY2026

The coordination gap in frontier AI safety policies

Isaak Mengesha

Frontier AI Safety Policies concentrate on prevention: capability evaluations, deployment gates, and usage constraints, while neglecting the capacity to coordinate responses when p…

econ.GN2026

Poverty traps are rare, but trappedness isn't

Isaak Mengesha, Debraj Roy

The persistence of poverty is not well explained by who is poor. We argue the relevant object of measurement is trappedness--expected escape time from deprivation--which varies sys…