Archive for January 27, 2020
Full Article: “Women as Policy Makers: Evidence from a Randomized Policy Experiment in India”
In this study, Esther Duflo and Raghabendra Chattopadhyay compare how women spend and how men spend when they’re in positions of leadership in India.
Read MoreFull Article: “Nudging Farmers to Use Fertilizer: Theory and Experimental Evidence from Kenya”
In this experiment, Esther Duflo, Michael Kremer, and Jonathan Robinson investigate why it is that farmers in Kenya don’t use as much fertilizer as they could. They find that small inconveniences might be making a large difference.
Read MoreRequired Reading: “The Miracle of Microfinance? Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation”
This article from Banerjee, Duflo, Glennerster and Kinnan adds to the evidence of the sometimes underwhelming effects of microcredit as a way to get people out of poverty. It has been assigned as required reading in the Program Evaluation course, one of the spring CDE electives.
Read MoreFull Article: “Putting a Band-Aid on a Corpse: Incentives for Nurses in the Indian Public Health Care System”
In this randomized controlled trial, Banerjee, Duflo, and Glennerster attempted to improve attendance in the health care industry by introducing financial incentives. The results started out positive, but the system was eventually thwarted on the ground.
Read MoreFull Article: “Incentives Work: Getting Teachers to Come to School”
Esther Duflo, Hanna Rema and Ryan Stephen tried to incentivize teachers to go to class by making the children take a picture with the teacher at the beginning and the end of the day, and found that the intervention had made a difference.
Read MoreFull Article: “Missing in Action: Teacher and Health Worker Absence in Developing Countries”
This article investigates absenteeism among teachers and healthcare workers in many developing countries, and finds it to be a considerable problem.
Read MoreFull Article: “The O-Ring Theory of Economic Development.”
This article by Michael Kremer from 1993 draws a parallel from the spaceship Challenger, which exploded due to the malfunctioning of a single piece, to economic development.
Read MoreFull Article: “Population Growth and Technological Change: One Million B.C. to 1990”
An earlier paper from Michael Kremer, this paper considers the two main arguments on the nature of population: that more people means more stomachs and thus more pressure, or that more people means more brains and thus more innovation.
Read MoreFull Article: “Patent Buyouts: A Mechanism for Encouraging Innovation”
In this article, 2019 Nobel laureate Michael Kremer looks back to history for an example of a patent buyout: a situation in which the government buys the patent for a technology which would be beneficial to the public, and then places it in the public domain.
Read MoreFull Article: “Worms at Work: Long-Run Impacts of a Child Health investment”
In this study, Michael Kremer and crew assess the impacts of childhood de-worming interventions in Kenya on how those same children perform in the labor market once they’ve grown up, and find some surprisingly persistent effects on their welfare.
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