Nicolas Büttner is a researcher within the Department of Development Economics at ETH Zürich. He is affiliated with the university's economics division and can be contacted at nicolas.buettner@nadel.ethz.ch . His work primarily focuses on the intersection of economic theory and applied machine learning, with a particular emphasis on global development challenges. Research Interests Development Economics: Analyzing structural change, inequality, and economic growth in low- and middle-income countries. Urban Studies: Using self-supervised learning to quantify urban change and housing dynamics through street-level imagery. Political Economy: Investigating how political instability and information dissemination shape households' decision-making processes. Global Cooperation: Examining attitudes toward international development initiatives using longitudinal Swiss Panel data. His publications from 2021–2025 reflect a trend towards interdisciplinary research, combining quantitative methods with qualitative socioeconomic analysis. Key themes include leveraging AI for urban development insights, understanding fertility transitions in Sub-Saharan Africa through structural economic shifts, and exploring information effects on global policy support. Recent work has emphasized South Africa and Burkina Faso as case studies for inequality and instability impacts. No scientific awards mentioned. In advising and grants: No listed doctoral/master students. Grant information is not explicitly provided in the text. His research appears to be institutionally supported through ETH Zürich's academic framework. Laboratory or team affiliations: No specific labs or collaborative teams are referenced in the available information.










