Content Type
Executive Summary: “Nudging Farmers to Use Fertilizer: Experimental Evidence from Kenya”
This executive summary on JPAL describes an experiment in which farmers in Kenya were provided with “nudges” to make purchases of fertilizer rather than putting it off suggests that small policy changes to the incentives people face can have outsized impacts.
Read MoreExecutive Summary: “Measuring the Impact of Microfinance in Hyderabad, India”
This executive summary from JPAL provides a synopsis of the microcredit intervention that finds mediocre effects of microcredit, perhaps because loosening credit constraints doesn’t help much if not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur.
Read MoreBlog: “The Nobel Prize in Economic Science Goes to Banerjee, Duflo, and Kremer”
Shortly after the announcement of the 2019 Nobel Prizewinners, Alex Tabarrok took to his blog to present a list of his favorite findings and methods by the winners, Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer.
Read MoreBlog: “Kremer’s O-ring theory of economic development”
Economist Jason Collins provides a short analysis of Michael Kremer’s 1993 paper on the “O-ring theory of development,” a suggestion for why development might break down when just one component fails.
Read MoreBlog: “Two Bright Ideas to Reduce Drug Prices”
In this commentary, Alex Tabarrok of George Mason responds to an idea to introduce innovation and reduce the cost of drugs: patent buyouts.
Read MoreNews Article: “Worming our Way to the Truth”
A column by Tim Hartford summarizes and responds to the controversy of the “Worm Wars,” a dispute about the relevance and methodology of a 2004 study on deworming children.
Read MoreFull Article: “Powerful Women: Does Exposure Reduce Bias?”
In this study, a group of female researchers explores what happens to norms around women when women take on leadership positions in their communities.
Read MoreFull 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.
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