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The Do One Better! Podcast – Philanthropy, Sustainability and Social Entrepreneurship
In this compelling episode, Vishal Sunil, Co-Founder and CTO of Rocket Learning, offers a nuanced and forward-looking perspective on the intersection of artificial intelligence and early childhood education in India. Rocket Learning, a social impact organization working with over 3.2 million students across 10 Indian states, is radically transforming how foundational learning is delivered to underserved communities. The organization's vision is to ensure that every child, particularly those aged 0 to 6, reaches their full potential by empowering both caregivers and early childhood educators through scalable, tech-enabled interventions. Central to Rocket Learning's success is its deep integration with India's vast public daycare infrastructure, the anganwadi system. These centers, which serve a majority of the country's early learners, were historically under-resourced and underutilized for educational purposes. Rocket Learning is spearheading efforts to convert anganwadi workers into effective early childhood educators, a mission now backed at the national level through initiatives such as “Poshan Bhi Padhai Bhi” — a government campaign that integrates nutrition with learning and is supported by a significant financial commitment. What sets Rocket Learning apart is its product philosophy: pragmatic, accessible, and deeply embedded in community. Rather than building flashy new platforms, the organization leverages ubiquitous tools like WhatsApp to facilitate parent-child and teacher-child engagement. Their pedagogy prioritizes social reinforcement by fostering community-based learning environments, where shared participation amplifies motivation and adoption. By rejecting highly individualized and gamified approaches in favor of communal learning, they offer an alternative paradigm rooted in behavioral science and cultural context. The discussion takes a particularly insightful turn as Sunil introduces Appu, Rocket Learning's new voice-based, AI-powered tutor developed in collaboration with Google.org. Appu is not merely a chatbot, but a human-centric educational interface designed to engage children in two-minute voice conversations tailored to their learning level, interests, and local context. The system is engineered with a guardrail framework — ensuring safety, consistency, and pedagogical alignment — while still offering dynamic, personalized experiences. This form of “guided discovery” allows children to learn through everyday interactions, and it encourages parents to participate actively in the process, thereby reinforcing learning through familial bonding. Multilingualism, minimal screen time, and culturally responsive design are at the core of Appu's development. The tool is already operational in several Indian languages and can be quickly adapted to new linguistic and regional contexts, with the ambition of one day serving learners globally. Importantly, Rocket Learning is not just interested in innovation for its own sake. As Sunil notes, the organization is committed to rigorous evidence-building. Their forthcoming randomized controlled trial, conducted in partnership with J-PAL, will offer critical insights into the impact of AI tutors on early childhood learning outcomes — potentially shaping global policy and philanthropy in this domain. Sunil's personal journey, from a data scientist in the United States to a purpose-driven social entrepreneur in India, is emblematic of a new generation of technologists who view scale not just as a metric, but as a moral imperative. His reflections are deeply grounded in the lived experiences of Rocket Learning's users — parents who sacrifice convenience for their child's future, and educators who evolve from caretakers to catalysts of cognitive development. Thank you for downloading this episode of the Do One Better Podcast. Visit our Knowledge Hub at Lidji.org for information on 300 case studies and interviews with remarkable leaders in philanthropy, sustainability and social entrepreneurship.
Millions of people around the world have no access to sanitation. They defecate in the open, or in facilities where it's hard to avoid human contact, unavoidably spreading disease. One of the Sustainable Development Goals that you don't hear about so much is the call to end open defecation by 2030. What progress are we making, and what health improvements are we seeing so far? In the latest of our episodes based on J-PAL's policy insights, Karen Macours of the Paris School of Economics, also co-chair of J-PAL's Health Sector, tells Tim Phillips about how we can achieve this development goal, why it's not a quick fix, and the surprising results of research into the health benefits of improving sanitation. Read the full show notes on VoxDev: https://voxdev.org/topic/health/improving-sanitation-what-works-and-what-doesnt Read the Policy Insight on J-PAL: https://www.povertyactionlab.org/policy-insight/improving-sanitation-access-subsidies-loans-and-community-led-programs
We often talk about providing not just jobs, but decent jobs, in developing countries. But in many parts of the world, workers still have incredibly harsh working conditions. There have been interventions at the firm level to create safer workplaces, better health, higher job satisfaction. But have they succeeded? And, if these policies succeed in raising worker well-being, is there a cost or a benefit for the employer? In the latest in our collaborations with J-PAL to discuss their policy insights, Achyuta Adhvaryu, UC San Diego about their review of the research into worker well-being, the policies that encourage firms to improve it, and the outcomes for employees and employers alike. You can find the review here https://www.povertyactionlab.org/
The Capitalism and Freedom in the Twenty-First Century Podcast
Jon Hartley and Neale Mahoney (Stanford Economics Professor) discuss Neale's career, Neale's research on consumer sentiment, junk fees, and medical debt, as well as Neale's time in the Biden Administration National Economic Council and the future of economic policy. Recorded on January 8, 2025. ABOUT THE SPEAKERS: Neale Mahoney is the Trione Director of Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), a Professor of Economics at Stanford University, the George P. Shultz Fellow at SIEPR, a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and an Affiliated Professor at J-PAL. In 2022-2023, he was a Special Policy Advisor for Economic Policy in the White House National Economic Council. Mahoney is an applied micro-economist with an interest in healthcare and consumer financial markets. He is a member of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Academic Research Council. He received the ASHEcon Medal in 2021 (given to an economist age 40 or under who has made the most significant contributions to the field of health economics) and a Sloan Research Fellowship in 2016. Before joining Stanford, Mahoney was a professor of Economics and David G. Booth Faculty Fellow at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He was also a Robert Wood Johnson Fellow in health policy research at Harvard University and worked for the Obama Administration on healthcare reform. Mahoney received a PhD and MA in economics from Stanford University and an ScB in applied mathematics-economics from Brown University. Follow Neale Mahoney on X: @nealemahoney Jon Hartley is a policy fellow, the host of the Capitalism and Freedom in the 21st Century Podcast at the Hoover Institution and an economics PhD Candidate at Stanford University, where he specializes in finance, labor economics, and macroeconomics. He is also currently an Affiliated Scholar at the Mercatus Center, a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity (FREOPP), and a Senior Fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. Jon is also a member of the Canadian Group of Economists, and serves as chair of the Economic Club of Miami. Jon has previously worked at Goldman Sachs Asset Management as well as in various policy roles at the World Bank, IMF, Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, US Congress Joint Economic Committee, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and the Bank of Canada. Jon has also been a regular economics contributor for National Review Online, Forbes, and The Huffington Post and has contributed to The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, Globe and Mail, National Post, and Toronto Star among other outlets. Jon has also appeared on CNBC, Fox Business, Fox News, Bloomberg, and NBC, and was named to the 2017 Forbes 30 Under 30 Law & Policy list, the 2017 Wharton 40 Under 40 list, and was previously a World Economic Forum Global Shaper. ABOUT THE SERIES: Each episode of Capitalism and Freedom in the 21st Century, a video podcast series and the official podcast of the Hoover Economic Policy Working Group, focuses on getting into the weeds of economics, finance, and public policy on important current topics through one-on-one interviews. Host Jon Hartley asks guests about their main ideas and contributions to academic research and policy. The podcast is titled after Milton Friedman‘s famous 1962 bestselling book Capitalism and Freedom, which after 60 years, remains prescient from its focus on various topics which are now at the forefront of economic debates, such as monetary policy and inflation, fiscal policy, occupational licensing, education vouchers, income share agreements, the distribution of income, and negative income taxes, among many other topics. For more information, visit: capitalismandfreedom.substack.com/
During this episode of The Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender are in conversation with Anant Nyshadham who's work includes studying the effectiveness of firms in developing countries with the intention of accelerating economic development. Anant is an associate Professor in the Business Economics and Public Policy area of the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is also an affiliate of BREAD, which is a nonprofit dedicated to research and scholarship in development economics. And he is a research affiliate of the IGC, a J-PAL affiliated professor and an affiliate of the Montreal Partnership for Human Resource Management. Anant is also co-founder and chief strategy officer of the Good Business Lab, a nonprofit seeking to promote investment in worker welfare as a business imperative. His work focuses on enterprise, firm and worker characteristics and decision-making like labour contracting and worker training and managerial quality and the resulting performance dynamics, particularly in developing countries. Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender: Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023) The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023) Social:Instagram @evolvingleaderLinkedIn The Evolving Leader PodcastBluesky @evolvingleader.bsky.socialYouTube @evolvingleaderThe Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.Send a message to The Evolving Leader team
CritRPG - A Podcast about LitRPG, Progression Fantasy, and their authors
This week on the CritRPG Podcast I sit down with J Pal to talk about what motivates him to write, and the community of litRPG authors that we're both privileged to be a part of!-------------------------------------------We have our own website now! It has all the info you need, a merch store, and more!https://critrpgpodcast.com/If you want to listen to the entire podcast without ads, PLUS at least ONE HOUR of additional content for EVERY EPISODE, consider subscribing to our Patreon!https://www.patreon.com/critrpgpodcastFind my own books and other links here:https://linktr.ee/madix3I am active in these Discords and Groups! Check them out if you want to discuss LitRPG and progression Fantasy novels! https://linktr.ee/critrpglinksFor business inquiries: critrpgpodcast.social@gmail.com-------------------------------------------Books mentionedJ's BooksApocalypse ArenaDepartment of Dungeon StudiesHoundsmanBooks MentionedCradleEnder's GameHedge WizardNever Die Twice-------------------------------------------Why and how this book? 12:58Best Advice you ever got as a writer? 19:30One thing you would do differently in a new story? 43:48One book that you love, and why is it awesome? 55:25Shoutouts 59:16Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/critrpg-a-podcast-about-litrpg-progression-fantasy-and-their/donations
If you're applying for a job, you want to know what you're good at, and be able to prove it to the recruiter. If doing the recruiting, you want some evidence about who the best candidates would be. In low- or middle-income countries, this information is often in short supply. How does this affect who gets a job, and the hiring process? In the latest in our collaborations with J-Pal to discuss their policy insights, Marianne Bertrand of Chicago Booth School, also Co-Chair, Labor Markets at J-Pal, and Stefano Caria of the University of Warwick, tell Tim Phillips about the impact of skills signals on employment. Read the full show notes on VoxDev: https://voxdev.org/topic/labour-markets/helping-jobseekers-signal-their-skills-cost-effective-strategy-benefitting
Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent, and so it has never been more important to increase the resilience of small-scale farmers. What does research tell us are the most effective interventions and policies to do this? In the latest of our special episodes to discuss J-PAL policy insights, Tavneet Suri talks to Tim Phillips about how we can strengthen the resilience of farmers to climate change. Read the full show notes on VoxDev: https://voxdev.org/topic/energy-environment/financing-climate-adaptation-what-works-what-doesnt-and-can-carbon-credits
Small businesses in LMICs provide most of the employment. But they could provide many more jobs if the best of them could unlock their potential to grow. In the latest of our series of VoxDev Talks based on J-PAL special reports, Tim Phillips talks to David Atkin about how we can do a better job of connecting firms and entrepreneurs to markets. Read the full show notes here: https://voxdev.org/topic/firms/how-connecting-firms-markets-can-promote-economic-development
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Dismantling restrictive gender norms in low-income countries as an EA opportunity, published by Seema Jayachandran on July 2, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Introduction I spoke at EA Global: Boston 2023 about ending restrictive gender norms as an EA opportunity. I discussed my research in India, in which we designed and evaluated class discussions about gender equality embedded into the school curriculum. Our randomized control trial (RCT) found that the intervention succeeded in eroding students' support for restrictive norms and the curriculum is now being scaled. Here's an edited transcript of the talk. Key points include: A discussion on economic development vs. gender inequality: despite significant economic growth in India, as indicated by rising GDP per capita and improvements in general well-being, gender inequality measures, particularly the skewed sex ratio, have worsened. Overview of the implementation of an RCT in Haryana aimed at shifting gender norms and attitudes through educational interventions targeting school children. An evaluation of the efforts to change gender norms in low and middle-income countries, assessing their tractability, neglectedness, and significance within broader economic and social frameworks. EA Global Boston: 2023 talk Speaker background: Seema Jayachandran Seema Jayachandran is a Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University. Her research focuses on gender inequality, environmental conservation, and other topics in developing countries. She serves on the board of directors of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) and leads J-PAL's gender sector. She's also a co-director of the National Bureau of Economic Research's programme in developing economics. Overview of gender norms in India I'm going to talk about gender norms with a focus on low and middle income countries. I'm going to mostly talk about India, because that's where my research on this topic is based. I'm going to start with this picture, which shows one of the motivations for why I decided to work on this topic (see slide below). It is a picture of progress and regress in India over the last 60 years. The blue line shows GDP per capita. Over the last few decades, India's economy has grown and that has improved the well-being of people from rural villages to the fancy software campuses in Bangalore. There have been incredible improvements in health and well-being. The red line is the negative progress. It shows the regress that has happened over that same period on one measure of gender equality, namely the 'skewed sex ratio'. So what I'm depicting here is, "for every 100 boys, how many girls are there in society?" It was not parity at the beginning of this period, but it's just gotten worse in subsequent decades. So this is from census data, and it stops in the most recent census in 2011. Right now, there are 92 girls alive for every 100 boys. Impact of technology on existing cultural norms Why has this measure of gender equality deteriorated? At the heart of sex selection, or the preference for sons over daughters, is a cultural norm and need. Values in India emphasize the importance of having a son because, in the joint family system, elderly parents or older adults typically live with their son, who then takes care of them, inherits their property, and fulfills certain religious obligations. Consequently, the practice of favoring sons has evolved into a status symbol and there is stigma associated with not having any sons. I actually believe that this norm has not worsened over recent decades. However, it has conflicted with changes in the economic environment that are usually seen as progress. As depicted in slide 2 below, the use of ultrasounds has become significant. Historically, people always preferred sons, but it was ...
We have officially passed 100 episodes with today's guest, and it's wonderful to get to do it with my good friend, Manisha Shah. Manisha is the Chancelor's Professor of Public Policy at University of California Berkeley. Manisha is an applied microeconomist who has historically specialized in topics related to health, education, gender and labor, with a particular focus on low and middle income countries. She has research appointments at NBER, BREAD, J-PAL, IZA and is also an editor at Journal of Health Economics as well as an associate editor at Review of Economics and Statistics. And if I can for just a moment tell you a little about that work, please bear with me.First the main area of her work that I am familiar with is the part that overlaps with my own historical research agenda in sex markets. That is because Manisha is arguably the leading expert on the economics of sex markets and has been for many years. She has published on just that topic alone in many high impactful studies like the effect of both legalizing sex work (Review of Economic Studies with me) and the effect of criminalizing it (Quarterly Journal of Economics with Lisa Cameron and Jennifer Seager), the identification of compensating wage differentials for unprotected sex (Journal of Political Economy with Paul Gentler and Stefano Bertozzi) as well as a Journal of Human Resources with Raj Arunachalam on a related topic, and more. But that is just her work on sex markets. There are also her many papers related to children development, like her Journal of Political Economy examining investments in human capital and child labor supply, her work on left-handedness and child development in Demography, another paper of hers looking at parents' investments in children by their underlying ability, her AEJ: Applied looking at the impact of children's development on their mother's own labor supply, her work on sanitation and child development, and it goes on and on. There is also her work looking at people's own risk preferences and how it relates to natural disasters they have experienced. One last thing and I'll quit listing. But one of the things I admire about Manisha's research is the shoe leather involved. Her usually involves primary data collection, running randomized field experiments, working directly with stakeholders, in places like Uganda, Mexico, India, Tanzania and more. It's such a nice treat, then, to get to interview her for the 100th episode, not just because I get to share her personal story to those who only know her by reputation, but also because I count her as one of my closest friends inside and outside the profession. We worked together on a study about the legalization of sex work in Rhode Island that took around ten years from start to completion to publication. It was during a difficult time for me personally and working on that project with her meant a lot to me everyday, but more than that, working with her meant a lot to me everyday. She says in the interview that me and her similar in that we are both intense and very into our projects, and that's true. But I guess I never really noticed that about her — all I have ever seen with Manisha is someone who is unbelievably kind, unbelievably fun and funny, unbelievably down to earth, non-judgmental, approachable, disarming, insightful, and hard working. All I can is that she has never once made me feel anything other than better about myself. Being around her, being friends with her, I mean, always leaves me feeling better than I think I would feel without her, and for that I am beyond grateful for her presence in the world. Forget the profession — in the world. So with that let me introduce you to her. Scott's Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Scott's Substack at causalinf.substack.com/subscribe
Esther DufloCollège de FrancePauvreté et politiques publiques2023-2024Colloque - Approches expérimentales en éducation – Learning Together for Children's Learning: An Interdisciplinary Convening : IntroductionColloque organisé par Esther Duflo, Professeur du collège de France, chaire Pauvreté et politiques publiques.Avec le soutien de la Fondation du Collège de France et de ses mécènes.Esther Duflo, Professeur du Collège de FranceStanislas Dehaene, Professeur du Collège de FranceCe colloque organisé par Esther Duflo, professeure d'économie au MIT et cofondatrice du J-PAL, en collaboration avec le programme Innovations, Données, Expérimentations en Éducation (IDEE), marque son année d'enseignement dans le cadre de sa chaire Pauvreté et politiques publiques au Collège de France et clôt le cycle de conférences Agir pour l'Éducation 2023/2024.Le système éducatif français est confronté à des défis de taille, qu'il s'agisse de la baisse du niveau de compétences en mathématiques depuis une trentaine d'années, ou encore de l'écart d'apprentissage croissant entre les enfants issus de milieux défavorisés et leurs pairs plus favorisés. Bien que de nombreux programmes innovants aient été élaborés pour répondre à ces défis, en France et à l'international, peu d'entre eux ont été évalués de manière rigoureuse, ce qui limite la diffusion des programmes les plus efficaces sur le territoire.C'est dans cette optique que ce colloque réunit des chercheurs internationaux de diverses disciplines sur la thématique de l'expérimentation en éducation et de la recherche translationnelle, des outils essentiels pour soutenir l'élaboration des politiques éducatives efficaces.
Here's a thought experiment: You want to spend a reasonably large sum of money providing assistance to a group of people with limited means. There's a lot of ways you might do that with a lot of strings and safeguards involved, but what about just giving them money -- "get cash directly into the hands of the poor in the cheapest, most efficient way possible." You and I might prefer that, since we, of course, are reputable people and good stewards and understand our own particular needs. But what about, well, others? Economist Tavneet Suri has done more than just think about that; her fieldwork includes handing out money across villages in two rural areas in Kenya to see what happens. Her experiments include giving out a lump sum of cash and also spreading out that same amount over time. The results she details for host David Edmonds in this Social Science Bites podcast are, to be frank, heartening, although the mechanisms of disbursement definitely affect the outcomes. Despite the good news, the idea of a universal basic income is by no means a settled remedy for helping the poor. For one thing, Suri says, "it's super, super expensive. It's really expensive. And so, the question is, “Is that expense worth it?” And to understand that I think we need a few more years of understanding the benefits, understanding what people do with the incomes, understanding whether this can really kickstart these households out of poverty." And perhaps the biggest question is whether the results of fieldwork in Kenya is generalizable. "I would love to do a study that replicates this in the West," she says. "The one thing about the West that I think is worth saying that's different is you wouldn't add it on top of existing programs. The idea is you would substitute existing programs with this. And that to me is the question: if you substituted it, what would happen?" Suri is the Louis E. Seley Professor of Applied Economics and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management. She is an editor at the Review of Economics and Statistics; co-chair of the Agricultural Technology Adoption Initiative at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, known as J-PAL, at MIT; co-chair of the Digital Identification and Finance Initiative at J-PAL Africa; a member of the executive committee at J-PAL; and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Cities stand on the frontline of the climate crisis - so they must also work to create frontline policies that support the global systems change required to ensure that cities have a future. Thanks to philanthropic support from both Global North and Global South organisations, the scientists, artists, and community leaders around the world who are making a climate-assured future possible are ensuring we are one step closer to this becoming reality.Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on UnsplashFeatured guests:Jesper Nygård is the CEO of Realdania, a Danish philanthropic association. As a C40 partner, Realdania has contributed significantly to research and projects that examine the intersection of the climate crisis and the built environment to enable more effective urban climate action. Under Jesper's tenure, Realdania and C40 created the world-leading DK2020 project, ensuring that all 98 municipalities in Denmark will have created a climate action plan by the end of 2024. The follow on project, the Climate Alliance, will concentrate on delivering these planned actions.Cléa Daridan is a Senior Curator and Cultural Lead with the philanthropic organization Community Jameel, which supports scientists, humanitarians, technologists and creatives to understand and address pressing human challenges - particularly in the Global South. Community Jameel has funded the Climate Labs in partnership with C40 and J-PAL. Cléa also has many interesting insights into how climate projects might fuse with health, arts and culture going forward.LinksMark Watts' speech at the C40 World Mayors' Summit in Mexico CityFrom local action to global impact: Denmark's groundbreaking climate action planning - C40 websiteAnalysis of the emissions reduction contributions of Danish municipalities towards meeting the 70% target by 2030 - C40 Knowledge HubChennai announces mainstreaming of climate action planning through the Jameel C40 Urban Planning Climate Labs - C40 websiteIf you want to learn more about the Journal of City Climate Policy and Economy, please visit our website: https://jccpe.utpjournals.press/Cities 1.5 is a podcast by University of Toronto Press and is produced in association with the Journal of City Climate Policy and Economy. Our executive producers are Dali Carmichael and Peggy Whitfield.Produced by Jess Schmidt: https://jessdoespodcasting.com/Music is by Lorna Gilfedder: https://origamipodcastservices.com/
The Do One Better! Podcast – Philanthropy, Sustainability and Social Entrepreneurship
Iqbal Dhaliwal, Global Executive Director of MIT's Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), and Vikrant Bhargava, Founder of Veddis Foundation, join Alberto Lidji to discuss the power of evidence, the ASPIRE partnership and the innovative Emissions Trading Scheme. We also explore how philanthropists should decide what to fund, where and how to fund; why evidence is so important in driving forward policy change; and why policy itself should be a key focus in the philanthropic space. The ASPIRE partnership (Alliance for Scaling Policy Impact through Research and Evidence) is a coalition of governments, philanthropic organizations, civil society groups, and research institutions. The Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is a flexible, market-based approach to solving the air pollution problem in India. It works by capping emissions for a particular pollutant, like particulate matter, in a particular area. It allows sources of the pollutant, such as industrial plants, to trade emissions permits among themselves. The capping ensures emissions targets are met while trading allows this to be achieved cheaply. The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) is a global research center working to reduce poverty by ensuring that policy is informed by scientific evidence. Anchored by a network of more than 900 researchers at universities around the world, J-PAL conducts randomized impact evaluations to answer critical questions in the fight against poverty. J-PAL co-founders Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, with longtime affiliate Michael Kremer, were awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics for their pioneering approach to alleviating global poverty. Veddis Foundation invests in organisations working at the intersection of technology, policy, and impact. Veddis also partners with governments on policy implementation, effective public service delivery and governance. Thank you for downloading this episode of the Do One Better Podcast. Visit our Knowledge Hub at Lidji.org for information on 250+ case studies and interviews with remarkable leaders in philanthropy, sustainability and social entrepreneurship.
Riskam pakļautie bērni pazūd "caurumā" starp valsts un pašvaldības sistēmām. Kā to labot? Kā laikus ieraudzīt bērnu, kuram jāpalīdz, un nodrošināt, lai visās pašvaldībās ir pieejams minimālais pakalpojumu grozs jauniešiem? Un kā sakārtot sistēmu, lai palīdzētu gan bērnam, gan viņa ģimenei? Krustpunktā diskutē Valsts kontroles padomes locekle Maija Āboliņa, Labklājības ministrijas valsts sekretāra vietniece Diāna Jakaite, Latvijas Pašvaldību savienības padomniece veselības un sociālajos jautājumos Ilze Rudzīte un Rīgas domes Labklājības departamenta piedalīsies Sociālo pakalpojumu nodaļas ģimenēm un bērniem vadītāja Līga Tetere. Raidījums Krustpunktā viesojas pie kolēģiem "Dod pieci" stikla studijā, lai runātu par to, kā palīdzēt jauniešiem, kas nonākuši riska zonā. Jau iepriekš raidījumā esam runājuši, kā Latvijā spēj vai nespēj palīdzēt tiem jaunajiem cilvēkiem, kas dzīvē nokļūst uz riskantāka ceļa, kas sāk darīt pāri sev, citiem, apkārtējiem rada grūtības. Pirms nedēļas bija diskusija par Naukšēnos likvidēto sociālās korekcijas centru un iecerēm veidot krietni labāka alternatīva Latvijā. Bet, runājot par sistēmu, mums atkal un atkal nākas atzīt, ka viena no lielākajām problēmām ir tā, ka mēs pārāk bieži nespējam palīdzēt tad, kad grūtības tikai parādās. Kāds bērns agresīvs, sāk lietot apreibinošus līdzekļus, klaiņo - mēs vai nu nezinām, reizēm arī negribam, nespējam iesaistīties laikus. Kad ir jau pavisam grūti, reizēm arī palīdzēt kļūst pat neiespējami. Kāpēc tā, ko darīt, lai šo situāciju mainītu?
Riskam pakļautie bērni pazūd "caurumā" starp valsts un pašvaldības sistēmām. Kā to labot? Kā laikus ieraudzīt bērnu, kuram jāpalīdz, un nodrošināt, lai visās pašvaldībās ir pieejams minimālais pakalpojumu grozs jauniešiem? Un kā sakārtot sistēmu, lai palīdzētu gan bērnam, gan viņa ģimenei? Krustpunktā diskutē Valsts kontroles padomes locekle Maija Āboliņa, Labklājības ministrijas valsts sekretāra vietniece Diāna Jakaite, Latvijas Pašvaldību savienības padomniece veselības un sociālajos jautājumos Ilze Rudzīte un Rīgas domes Labklājības departamenta piedalīsies Sociālo pakalpojumu nodaļas ģimenēm un bērniem vadītāja Līga Tetere. Raidījums Krustpunktā viesojas pie kolēģiem "Dod pieci" stikla studijā, lai runātu par to, kā palīdzēt jauniešiem, kas nonākuši riska zonā. Jau iepriekš raidījumā esam runājuši, kā Latvijā spēj vai nespēj palīdzēt tiem jaunajiem cilvēkiem, kas dzīvē nokļūst uz riskantāka ceļa, kas sāk darīt pāri sev, citiem, apkārtējiem rada grūtības. Pirms nedēļas bija diskusija par Naukšēnos likvidēto sociālās korekcijas centru un iecerēm veidot krietni labāka alternatīva Latvijā. Bet, runājot par sistēmu, mums atkal un atkal nākas atzīt, ka viena no lielākajām problēmām ir tā, ka mēs pārāk bieži nespējam palīdzēt tad, kad grūtības tikai parādās. Kāds bērns agresīvs, sāk lietot apreibinošus līdzekļus, klaiņo - mēs vai nu nezinām, reizēm arī negribam, nespējam iesaistīties laikus. Kad ir jau pavisam grūti, reizēm arī palīdzēt kļūst pat neiespējami. Kāpēc tā, ko darīt, lai šo situāciju mainītu?
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Clean Water - the incredible 30% mortality reducer we can't explain, published by NickLaing on November 4, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. TLDR: The best research we have shows that clean water may provide a 30% mortality reduction to children under 5. This might be the biggest mortality reduction of any single global health intervention, yet we don't fully understand why it works. Here I share my exploration of a life-saving intervention that we don't fully understand, but really should. I may err a little on the side of artistic license - so if you find inaccuracies or I'm a bit loose please forgive me, correct me or even feel free to just tear me to shreds in the comments ;). Part 1: Givewell's Seemingly absurd numbers I first became curious after a glance at what seemed like a dubious GiveWell funded project. A $450,000 dollar scoping grant for water chlorination in Rwanda? This didn't make intuitive sense to me. In Sub-saharan Africa diarrhoea causes 5-10% of child mortality. While significant, the diarrhea problem continues to improve with better access to medical care, improving ORS and Zinc coverage, and antibiotics for more severe cases. Over the last 5 years, our own Ugandan health centers have encountered surprisingly few very sick kids with diarrhoea and I've hardly seen diarrhoea kill a child, as opposed to Malaria and Pneumonia which tragically kill kids all the time. It seemed to me that even if clean water hugely reduced diarrhoea mortality, the intervention would still likely be an expensive way to achieve 1 or 2 percent mortality reduction, So with my skeptic hat on, I clicked the GiveWell spreadsheet and my incredulity only grew. GiveWell estimated an upper-bound mortality reduction of an almighty 17% for the Rwandan chlorination program! At first that made no sense, but I did expect GiveWell would likely be lesswrong than me. The Global burden of disease estimates that Diarrhoea makes up only 4.9% of total deaths in Rwanda. How could an intervention which targets diarrhoea reduce mortality by over three times the total diarrhoea mortality? Even if the clean water cured all diarrhoea, that wouldn't come close to GiveWell's mortality reduction estimate. Something fishy was afoot, but I quickly found some answers, through a nobel prize winner's study which was partially funded by you guessed it…….. GiveWell Part 2: A Nobel Prize winner's innovative math Michael Kremer won a Nobel prize along with two J-PAL co-founders for their wonderful work pioneering randomised controlled trials to assess development interventions. What better person to try their hand at estimating the mortality benefit of clean water than a father of the RCT movement? But connecting clean water and mortality is tricky, because to date no-one has actually asked whether clean water can reduce child mortality. Instead, a number of RCT asked the more obvious question, does clean water reduce diarrhoea. The answer obviously yes. But Kremer and co. found a clever way around this. They sifted through all studies which looked at the relationship between clean water and diarrhoea and identified 12 studies [1] that also gathered bits and pieces of mortality data. They then performed a meta-analysis, pooling that mortality data together to see whether clean water save kids' lives. The result - they estimated that clean water caused an incredible 30% mortality reduction in kids under 5. If this is even in the ballpark of correct, clean water could could prevent one in three childhood deaths in much of sub-saharan Africa. If Africa could chlorinate and filter all drinking water, we could save perhaps 1 million lives every year in sub-saharan Africa alone . Mosquito nets might bow to their new king. To be as crystal clear as the water, this is not just a 30% reduction in diarrheal death...
A common trope in America depicts a traditional family of a married husband and wife and their 2.5 (yes, 2.5) children as the norm, if not perhaps the ideal. Leaving aside the idea of a “traditional” coupling or what the right number of children might be, is there an advantage to growing up with married parents? Definitely, argues Melissa Kearney, author of The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind and the Neil Moskowitz Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland. In this Social Science Bites podcast, she reviews the long-term benefits of growing up in a two-parent household and details some of the reasons why such units have declined in the last four decades. As befits her training, Kearney uses economics to analyze marriage. “Marriage,” she tells host David Edmonds, “is fundamentally an economic contract between two individuals—here, I'm gonna sound very unromantic—but it really is about two people making a long-term commitment to pool resources and consume and produce things together.” In her own research, Kearney looks specifically at being legally married within the United States over the last 40 years and what that means when children are involved. Her findings both fascinate her and, she admits, worries her. “We talk at length in this country about inequality as we should, but this divergence in family structure and access to two parents and all the resources that brings to kids and the benefits it gives kids in terms of having a leg up in sort of achieving things throughout their life—getting ahead economically, attaining higher levels of education—[well,] we will not close class gaps. without addressing this.” She provides data showing that the percentage of young Americans living with married parents is indeed falling. In 2020, 63 percent of U.S. children lived with married parents, compared to 77 percent 40 years earlier. Meanwhile, 40 percent of children are born to unmarried parents. While these percentages are evenly distributed across the geography of the U.S., they are less so among the nation's demographics. For example, children born to white or Asian, more educated or richer mothers are more likely to be born within wedlock. “The mechanical drivers of this,” Kearney explains, “are a reduction in marriage and a reduction in the share of births being born inside of marital union, not a rise in divorce, not a rise in birth rates to young or teen moms.” But economics does seem to be a driver, Kearney said – especially among men. As cultural tumult saw marriage itself growing less popular starting in the 1960s, non-college-educated men saw their economic prospects dimming. “We saw a reduction in male earnings or a reduction in male employment and a corresponding reduction in marriage and rise in the share of kids born outside of marital union. So, there is a causal effect here, economic shocks that have widened inequality hurt the economic security of non-college educated men, and this rising college gap and family structure.” Over time, new social norms were established, so even when the economic prospects of non-college-educated men rise, there is not a corresponding increase in marriage and decrease in non-marital births. “Once a social norm has been established, where this insistence on sort of having and raising kids in a marital union is broken, then we get this response to economic shocks that we might not have gotten if the social norm towards two-parent households and married-parent households was tighter.” In addition to her work at the University of Maryland, Kearney maintains a large footprint in the policy world. She is director of the Aspen Economic Strategy Group; a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research; a non-resident senior fellow at Brookings; a scholar affiliate and member of the board of the Notre Dame Wilson-Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities; and a scholar affiliate of the MIT Abdul Jameel Poverty Action Lab, known as J-PAL. So it's no surprise that she closes her interview with some policy suggestions. “[I]mproving the economic position of non-college educated men, I think, is necessary but won't be sufficient. We need more wage subsidies. We need a lot of investment in community colleges throughout the country—they train workers throughout the country—we need to be shoring up those institutions. We need to be stopping bottlenecks in the workforce that make it harder for people without a four-year college degree, or for people who have criminal past, right, criminal history—all of those things. We need to be removing barriers to employment, investing in training, investing in skills, investing in paths to families to sustaining employment.”
Titus Syengo, the Executive Director of Teaching at the Right Level Africa (“TaRL”), is this episode's guest. TaRL began as a joint venture between Pratham and J-PAL (whose Global Executive Director — Iqbal Dhaliwal — was a guest on Charity Talks last year). Its primary goal is to strengthen children's foundational literacy and numeracy skills by using its evidence-based approach. As Titus and Brooke discuss, TaRL is supporting governments and organizations in over 14 countries across Sub-Saharan Africa, helping them to build the capacity to design, deliver and scale impactful programs. TaRL's goal is to help every child across Africa build foundational skills for a better future. (0:29). Website: https://teachingattherightlevel.org/
The Do One Better! Podcast – Philanthropy, Sustainability and Social Entrepreneurship
Community Jameel's Director, George Richards, talks about their support of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) and numerous other initiatives supporting bright talent beyond the lab and across the globe. In 2019, the Nobel Prize for Economics was awarded to J-PAL's co-founders, Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee, and long-time J-PAL affiliate Michael Kremer, for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty. Community Jameel has supported and partnered with J-PAL since 2005. George explains how Community Jameel supports scientists, humanitarians, technologists and creatives to understand and address pressing human challenges. An inspiring conversation shedding light on the power of philanthropy. Thank you for downloading this episode of the Do One Better Podcast. Visit our Knowledge Hub at Lidji.org for information on 200+ case studies and interviews with remarkable leaders in philanthropy, sustainability and social entrepreneurship.
This week, I am joined by my very dear friend Stuti. Stuti is from Gurgaon in India and was an international student at Smith College, in western Massachusetts. She majored in Quantitative Economics with a minor in Statistics and Data Science and graduated in 2022. She currently works in the international development space, at the The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab or J-PAL and is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In this episode, we talked about the different discomforts we face as international students ranging from the weather, food, culture and even our identities. We talked about how we each navigated through the different hurdles we faced and the importance of leaning into healthy habits to cope with our discomfort. Tune-in to laugh, learn and appreciate the international student experience! Please send questions and feedbacks you have to internationaliebyruth@gmail.com or DM on the Instagram page @internationaliebyruth
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Starting the second Green Revolution, published by freedomandutility on June 30, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. The Green Revolution may have saved over a billion people from starvation, driven by active efforts by the Rockefeller Foundation, Mexico, the USA and the UN. Food security remains poor in conflict-affected areas, and is threatened by risks such as plant disease pandemics and nuclear war. Since the Green Revolution, we've made immense scientific progress, particularly in synthetic biology and AI. How can we make another large jump in agricultural efficiency, to tackle poor food security in conflict-stricken states now and in the future, and improve global resilience to wide-scale disasters? In development, a lot of work on agriculture focuses on adoption of existing technologies. I want to read more about the kind of frontier technologies we should be prioritising R&D investment in. In addition, do we need to develop new institutions to conduct RCTs (like a J-PAL spin-off focused on agriculture) to generate better evidence for evaluating new farming technologies? Do we need to engage farmers in large-scale RCTs, similar to the way we engage doctors and patients in medical RCTs? I'd like to see more EA work on this, but if there already is some work in this area, please point me towards it! Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Rejection thread: stories and tips, published by Luisa Rodriguez on June 22, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Getting rejected from jobs can be crushing — but learning how to deal with rejection productively is an incredibly valuable skill. And hearing others' rejection stories can make us feel less alone and judged, and generally help us orient toward rejection in more productive ways. Let's use this thread to help each other with this. If you're up for it, comment and share: Rejection stories you might have Any lessons you've learned for coping with rejection What has helped in the past You can also message Lizka to share rejections that she will anonymize and add to the comments, or you can omit some details or just share tips without sharing the rejection stories themselves. Sharing rejections like this can be hard. Don't force yourself to do it if it stresses you out. And if you're commenting on this post, please remember to be kind. Luisa's experience — shared in the 80,000 Hours newsletter Rejection was the topic of this week's 80,000 Hours newsletter, where Luisa shared a lot about her experience and how she's learned to cope with it. (That prompted this thread!) She wrote the following: I've been rejected many, many times. In 2015, I applied to ten PhD programs and was rejected from nine. After doing a summer internship with GiveWell in 2016, I wasn't offered a full-time role. In 2017, I was rejected by J-PAL, IDinsight, and Founders Pledge (among others). Around the same time, I was so afraid of being rejected by Open Philanthropy, I dropped out of their hiring round. I now have what I consider a dream job at 80,000 Hours: I get to host a podcast about the world's most pressing problems and how to solve them. But before getting a job offer from 80,000 Hours in 2020, I got rejected by them for a role in 2018. That rejection hurt the most. I still remember compulsively checking my phone after my work trial to see if 80,000 Hours had made me an offer. And I still remember waking up at 5:00 AM, checking my email, and finding the kind and well-written — but devastating — rejection: "Unfortunately we don't think the role is the right fit right now." And I remember being so sad that I took a five-hour bus ride to stay with a friend so I wouldn't have to be alone. After a few days of wallowing, I re-read the rejection email and noticed a lot of specific feedback — and a promising path forward. "We're optimistic about your career in global prioritisation research and think you should stay in the area and build experience," they said. "We're not going anywhere, and could be a good career transition for you further down the line." I took their advice and accepted a job offer at Rethink Priorities, which also does global priorities research. And a year and a half later, 80,000 Hours invited me to apply for a job again. It's hard to say what would've happened had I not opened myself to rejection in 2018, but it seems possible I'd be in a pretty different place. While that rejection was really painful, the feedback I got was a huge help in moving my research career forward. I think there's an important lesson here. For me, rejection is one of the worst feelings. But whether you're like me, looking to work in global priorities research at small nonprofits, or interested to work in another potentially impactful path, getting rejected can come with unexpected benefits: When you get rejected from a role you thought was a good fit, you get more information about your strengths and weaknesses. It can indicate whether you need more career capital or should perhaps consider different types of roles or paths altogether. When applying for roles in an ecosystem you want to work in, you grow the number of people in that field who know you and who might reach out to you for futu...
Esther DufloCollège de FrancePauvreté et politiques publiques2022-2023Colloque - Lutter contre la pauvreté : de la science aux politiques publiques : Opening Session, Esther Duflo, Bruno Le Maire & Abdourahmane CisséIntroduction, welcome, and address by Esther Duflo (Professor, Collège de France, MIT; J-PAL Director)Address by Bruno Le Maire (Minister of Economy, Finance and Industrial and Digital Sovereignty, France)Address by Abdourahmane Cissé (Minister, Secretary-General of the Presidency, Côte d'Ivoire)PrésentationCe colloque marque le point culminant de la première année d'Esther Duflo, cofondatrice et directrice de J-PAL, comme titulaire de la chaire Pauvreté et politiques publiques au Collège de France. Cette année lui a permis de faire le bilan des progrès accomplis pour développer et promouvoir des politiques fondées sur les preuves. Ce colloque est l'occasion d'en présenter les perspectives futures au niveau mondial ; il s'inscrit dans le travail de plaidoyer que mène J-PAL pour des réponses innovantes et rentables à nos défis les plus pressants.Ce colloque de deux jours a pour thème la contribution de l'innovation et de la recherche rigoureuse à la lutte contre la pauvreté. L'événement rassemble des chercheurs, des décideurs politiques, des entrepreneurs sociaux, des bailleurs de fonds, ainsi qu'un large public. Son objectif est d'explorer le rôle que peut jouer l'utilisation des résultats probants dans l'élaboration des politiques sociales et des programmes de développement dans différents contextes ; de diffuser les meilleures pratiques en matière de politiques fondées sur les preuves au niveau mondial ; de célébrer les progrès accomplis dans la lutte contre la pauvreté grâce à des recherches rigoureuses ; et de faire le point sur les efforts qu'il reste à fournir pour répondre aux défis globaux, en particulier celui du changement climatique.
C'est l'un des sujets chauds actuellement en France, l'immigration, et pour cause un projet de loi est en préparation. Ce thème très (trop ?) politisé revêt un fort enjeu économique. Comment dépassionner le débat ? Y a-t-il un pays modèle en Europe ? Où doit se situer le bon équilibre ? Pour en débattre :- Jean Christophe Dumont, chef de la division Migration de l'Organisation de Coopération et de Développement Économiques (OCDE)- PierreBuhler , diplomate, ancien ambassadeur de France en Pologne entre 2012 et 2016, professeur à Sciences Po - Luc Behaghel, économiste, directeur de recherche à l'Institut national de recherche pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement et enseigne à l'École d'économie de Paris, Il codirige l'Initiative de J-PAL sur l'inclusion sociale en Europe.
C'est l'un des sujets chauds actuellement en France, l'immigration, et pour cause un projet de loi est en préparation. Ce thème très (trop ?) politisé revêt un fort enjeu économique. Comment dépassionner le débat ? Y a-t-il un pays modèle en Europe ? Où doit se situer le bon équilibre ? Pour en débattre :- Jean Christophe Dumont, chef de la division Migration de l'Organisation de Coopération et de Développement Économiques (OCDE)- PierreBuhler , diplomate, ancien ambassadeur de France en Pologne entre 2012 et 2016, professeur à Sciences Po - Luc Behaghel, économiste, directeur de recherche à l'Institut national de recherche pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement et enseigne à l'École d'économie de Paris, Il codirige l'Initiative de J-PAL sur l'inclusion sociale en Europe.
A growing number of research organizations like IDinsight, IPA, J-PAL, and many local and regional research groups have found that long-term partnerships with governments lay a powerful foundation for generating highly policy relevant evidence; catalyzing adoption at scale of evidence-based interventions; and building government demand and interest in using evidence and data. A recent Center for Global Development (CGD) working group highlighted the importance of these partnerships—and robust funding to support them—to ensure that policymakers realize the full potential of research and evidence to improve lives and wellbeing. But limited flexible, long-term support holds them back. In this session, speakers discuss specific case studies that demonstrate the potential high returns on investments in evidence-to-policy partnerships.Effective Altruism is a social movement dedicated to finding ways to do the most good possible, whether through charitable donations, career choices, or volunteer projects. EA Global conferences are gatherings for EAs to meet. You can also listen to this talk along with its accompanying video on YouTube.
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Dean Karlan is now Chief Economist of USAID, published by Henry Howard on January 24, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. In November 2022, the United Stated Agency for International Development appointed Professor Dean Karlan as their Chief Economist. Dean Karlan is a development economist who founded Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) in 2002 and has been its president since. He's also on the Executive Committee of MIT's Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). IPA and J-PAL have been responsible for a lot of the research that underpins GiveWell's charity recommendations (GiveWell has a 2011 overview of IPA's contributions here). Their work includes: Evidence for the effectiveness of free vs. priced bednets Ongoing work on unconditional cash transfers Evidence for positive effects from deworming (a 2019 Cochrane review suggests otherwise) Work suggesting that microfinance isn't that great Evidence for the effectiveness of chlorine dispensers Work on incentives for immunisation This is among hundreds of other policy/intervention evaluations the two groups have done. Dean Karlan seems to have played a big role in advancing evidence-based global development. USAID has an allocation of $29.4 billion for 2023. Wikipedia says this is the world's largest aid budget. If Prof. Karlan improves the effectiveness of the USAID program by even a small amount it could have a huge positive impact. Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Monitoring & Evaluation Specialists – a new career path profile from Probably Good, published by Probably Good on December 8, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Probably Good is excited to share a new path profile for careers in monitoring and evaluation. Below, we've included a few excerpts from the full profile. Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) specialists collect, track, and analyze data to assess the value and impact of different programs and interventions, as well as translate these assessments into actionable insights and strategies to increase the impact of an organization. M&E specialist careers might be a promising option for some people. If you're an exceptional fit, especially if you're based in a low- or middle-income country where there's lots of scope for implementing global health and development interventions, then it may be worth considering these careers. However, the impact you'll be able to have will be determined in large part by the organization you enter – making it particularly important to seek out the best organizations and avoid those that only superficially care about evaluating their impact. Additionally, if you're a good fit for some of the top roles in this path, it's likely you'll also be a good fit for other highly impactful roles, so we'd recommend you consider other paths, too. How promising is this path? Monitoring and evaluation is important for any organization aiming to have an impact. Without collecting evidence and data, it's easy to seem like an intervention or program is having an impact, even when it's not. Here are a few ways in which M&E might be able to generate impact: Discover effective interventions that do a lot of good. For example, rigorous evaluation by J-PAL affiliates and Evidence Action found that placing chlorine-treated water dispensers in rural African villages reduced under-5 child mortality by as much as 63%. Evidence Action has now pledged to double the size of its water-treatment program, reaching 9 million people. Make improvements to known effective interventions. Improving the efficacy of an already-impactful intervention by even a little bit can generate a large impact, especially if the intervention is rolled out on a large scale. Consider this study run by malaria charity TAMTAM, which found that charging even a nominal price for malaria bednets decreased demand by up to 60%, leading a number of large organizations to offer them for free instead. Identify ineffective or harmful interventions, so that an organization can change course. A great example of this is animal advocacy organization the Humane League, which determined that their current strategy of performing controversial public stunts was ineffective, and pivoted its strategy towards corporate campaigns. In doing so, they convinced Unilever to stop killing male chicks, saving millions of baby chicks from gruesome deaths. Advantages Clear links to effectiveness - Because M&E is explicitly concerned with measuring the impact of interventions, there's often a clear “theory of change” for how your work might translate into positive impact. Leverage - If you're working in a large organization, or working on an intervention with a large pool of potential funders and implementers, your work can influence where large amounts of money is spent, or how large amounts of other resources are distributed. Flexible skill set - the skills and qualifications you'll need for a career in M&E are robustly useful across a range of careers. As such, it's likely that M&E work will provide you with flexible career capital for pursuing other paths. Disadvantages Narrow range of cause areas - Within our top recommended cause areas, there are far more M&E roles within global health and development than the others. This means M&E may be a promising career path if y...
We often speak of economic development as a phenomenon of sovereign national countries, but the process by which that happens is through what happens at individual firms in the economy. The decisions by firms to upgrade their products (services), export, and adopt new technology are the most important determinants of economic development. The incentives and conditions that shape these decisions are the subjects of my conversation with my guest on this episode. Eric Verhoogen is a professor of economics at Columbia University school of international and public affairs. He is one of the leading thinkers and researchers on industrial development.TRANSCRIPT (edited slightly for context and clarity)Tobi; Usually, in the development literature, I know things have changed quite a bit in the last few years. But there is a lot of emphasis on cross-country comparisons and looking at aggregate data, and a lot less focus, at least as represented in the popular media on firms. And we know that, really, the drivers of growth and employment and the source of prosperity usually are the firms. The firms in an economy, firms are the ones creating jobs, they are the ones investing in technology, and doing innovation. So firms are really important. One of the things you often hear a lot is that one of the reasons poor countries are poor is that the firms are not productive enough. So that's sort of my first question to you, how exactly do we define and also measure productivity, you know, for us to be able to distinguish why firms in the developed countries are more productive than the lower income countries?Eric; Yeah, this is a big important question. So I agree, in principle, that firm productivity is very key. So countries that are going to be doing well are countries that are populated by firms that are being very innovative, and their productivity is rising, they're learning how to do new stuff, they're producing new products, etc. And so there's a reason why people are very focused on this conversation about firm productivity. The sort of, I would say, dirty secret of economics is that it's very hard to measure productivity well, right? And so the productivity measures we have, I think, are very noisy, and most likely fairly biased. But basically, the way you estimate productivity is you run a regression of like sales on inputs, okay, so on how much you're spending on labour and how much you're spending on materials, and then the part that's left over, we call that productivity. So it's like unexplained sales, you know, sales that can't be explained by the fact that you're just purchasing inputs and purchasing workers. But that is actually a very noisy measure of productivity. And so I've been working on a review paper, and a separate research paper kind of pointing out some of the issues with productivity estimation. So in principle, it's exactly what we want to know; in practice, it's very hard to measure. So one argument I was making in that paper is we should go to things that we can actually directly observe. Okay, so sometimes like technology adoption, we can often directly observe whether the firm has adopted this particular new technology, or if they're producing new products, we can directly observe that. Sometimes we can observe the quality of products that can be measured. Now, the standard datasets that we have typically don't have those things. It is possible now, in many countries, to follow manufacturing firms or even other sorts of firms, [to] follow them over time, which is great, at a micro level. But those that have the technology, they don't have quality, they do it now increasingly have like what products they're producing, often they don't have the product people are producing and so it's harder, you have to go out and you have to talk to people, you have to access new sorts of data, there's a lot more work, a lot more shoe leather - we'd say you wear out your shoe is going to talk to people trying to get access to other datasets in order to have these measures that you can observe directly. But I think there's a big advantage to that. Just in terms of measurement. Like, can we measure these things, and record that technology quality and product innovation together? I'm not sure that's answering your question. But, you know, I mean, I totally agree that what firms are doing, that's crucial, right? So the big macro question is, why are some countries rich and some countries poor and how can we make poor ones richer? That's the big question. I think that's kind of too big to be able to say much about. The much more concrete thing, which we need to be focusing on is how can you make firms in countries more innovative and productive. That's the absolutely right question. But that's just hard. There are challenges and research about, you know, how you actually analyze that, and it has to do with these issues of measurement.Tobi; I understand the measurement problem, and of course, TFP, the residual, and so many things like that. But practically, I want to ask you, what can you say, maybe if you have a handy checklist or something? what distinguishes firms in rich countries from firms in poorer nations? Eric; Yeah. So let me say what I don't think first, and then I'll say what I think. So it's become increasingly common to say that firms in poor countries are just poorly managed. The firms in rich countries have better management, and the firms in poor countries have poor management, right? And partly that's coming from the influential paper by Nicholas - Nick Bloom - and others, and David McKenzie and John Roberts. You know, they had consultants go to some factories in India. In some they camped out for four months, some they were there for only one month, and the ones where they camped out for four months ended up doing better, right? And they say that that's because these consultants improve the management of the firms and management matters. And I do agree that sometimes these management practices matter, but I don't think... sort of, one kind of implication of that line of work is somehow, like, the firms in a developing country are just making mistakes. They haven't gone to business school in the United States, and so, therefore, they don't know what they're doing. And I think that's incorrect. I think that's incorrect. I think the problem is, firms in developing countries face many, many constraints that firms in rich countries don't face. Right. So often, for instance, gaining access to high-quality inputs can be very difficult, right? That you just don't have the supply chains domestically producing high-quality inputs. Often skilled workers are very expensive relative to unskilled workers, and even relative to the price that you might pay in rich countries. Having skilled workers, including skilled managers, is very expensive. In addition, you have all these frictions on trying to get your goods to market or trying to, you know, trying to access export markets, often there are, you know, their costs involved in that. In addition, being productive requires know-how and often firms lack that know-how, right and so the question is, how do you get that know-how, you know, like, the distinction I'm trying to make is, it's not that they're making mistakes, it's just that they're doing the best they can given know-how they have, and given the constraints that they face. And so in that sense, I would sort of point to those constraints, right, those constraints both in know-how and both in the input and output markets, rather than just failure of management. So now, one of the constraints I should say, actually, so is often, you know, legal and regulatory institutions are much weaker in many countries. It is true in Nigeria, and it's true in many places, right? And so then that does create a complicating factor also when you're trying to do business with somebody, but you don't have the legal recourse of going to court to enforce whatever contract you write down. And so that creates friction. So then you have to do things differently in part because of that. And so you're likely to be much more based on, like, networks of various types. It might be ethnic networks, or it might be people that you know or that you have long-term relationships with. But then that means you can't necessarily just find the best supplier of something, you actually have to find someone that you trust, and that can complicate your life, basically, if you're trying to do business and develop.Tobi; So one thing I want us to discuss is the issue of firm upgrading. I mean, one of the things that have helped me in reading your work and taking this firm-level view of development is that, okay, on the one hand, if you look at a country like Korea, we can say the average income, the income per capita for Korea 40 years ago versus now and compare with say Nigeria, but also we can look at Korean firms 40 years ago versus where they are today. Today, Korea have global firms that are at the very frontier of technology. Companies like Samsung are innovating and making chips and making electronics and making smartphones and you compare with firms in Nigeria who have not been able to upgrade their products over that same period. And now what I want to ask you is how important is a firm's ability to upgrade productivity. I take your point on the measurement but controlling for that, how important is a firm's ability to upgrade its output? Its products on its productivity?Eric; No, no, I think upgrading is crucial. And upgrading in various ways, you know, more specifically technology, producing higher quality products, producing new products, new innovative products, you know, you might be reducing costs, right, all those things. I do think that's crucial. I think that's crucial to the development process. I mean, much of the conversation in development economics has often been not about firms. It's about, you know, social policy, or it's about education. It's about human capital accumulation. But I'm with you on that, the firm-level upgrading is totally crucial. You know, the question of like, why isn't it happening? Or how could you promote upgrading? That's a very difficult question. There are lots of papers that are sort of speaking to that subject. And this review article I was trying to write was basically all about that. So Alexander Gerschenkron way back in 1962, is a historian writing about late industrialization had this phrase, not very politically correct phrase, but basically, advantages of backwardness. So in principle, if you're a developing country, you should benefit from the fact that technologies have been developed in rich countries, and you should be able to go and adopt them off the shelf. But for some reason, that's difficult, right? It's hard to do. Partly, it's difficult because of, you know, know-how reasons. So I'd say that often, much of the knowledge that you need in order to implement these technologies is not written down anywhere, it's not really in the manual, right? You have to kind of talk to people who know it, rather than just downloading the instruction sheet. That's one reason. It's also true that many times, machines or processes, actually, may be context specific. So like the picker machine, in a very humid environment, they operate differently than in a non-humid environment. And so, you know, there are things that you need to learn. So I'd say that kind of like gaining the know-how is an important kind of constraint on upgrading. And partly that happens through networks or through... there's a ... Juan Carlos Hallak, who's in Buenos Aires (who would be a good person for you to have on your show, actually, I think that he'd be an interesting person to interview) as a very interesting paper. It's basically on like Argentina, looking at industries that have done well, they've been able to upgrade essentially and looking at what was it about them that made it possible, and especially the leading firms, what were the leading firms doing? And what we're basically finding is that often the key person in the firm, like, had been embedded in markets in rich countries, maybe in the US or in Europe or someplace. So they understood very much how those markets work and what consumers want. So one was like making boats, sailboats, or motorboats right, that was one of the interesting things he focused on. But knowing sort of what the people who are buying those boats really want to see in their boats ended up being important for what they're doing. And so that's an important part of the know-how. It's like, yeah, understanding the customer understanding also how if there are firms that are producing there, understand what the competition is. And so that's know-how that often has to be sort of gained in person rather than, you know, just reading a book or talking to somebody on the phone. And so when I think about... I don't know Nigeria very well, but when I imagine, you know, Nigerian producers, I think, partly what might be holding back is, sort of, maybe not having the understanding of what are the requirements, what are the expectations of consumers in the export markets, right, in the rich countries that they may be selling to?We've talked about the barrier, we can talk about the driver of upgrading. So then, like, gaining know-how would be a driver. So that's one. I think, and part of a lot of my work has been about quality upgrading, you know, producing higher quality. And I think that's in part driven by who you're selling to, right? So Mexican firms, you know, if they're selling to Mexican consumers, they produce different products than if they're selling to us consumers, which is their main export market, right? And so, you know, and if you're selling to Mexican consumers who have a certain willingness to pay for quality, we would say, right, they have a certain level of, you know, demand for certain characteristics, the optimal thing to do is keep producing that kind of lower quality stuff, right, rather than producing the higher quality. So I had this famous example of a big Volkswagen factory in Puebla, Mexico, which for a long time, it stopped in 2003, but for a long time been producing the old beetle. The old beetle that had first been produced in 1940, or certainly the 1950s. But for a long time, in the Mexican market, that was the main car that people were buying, and they were happy with that because it was cheaper. It was like, you know, it's very reliable. But that same factory started producing the New Beetle, basically, for the US market, right, for the US and European market, which is much more sophisticated, but also much more expensive. So it depends a little bit on which market you're selling into and whether you're going to upgrade or not. And so accessing export market can, in some sense, like pull the upgrading process, you know, once they access these export markets, they'll start producing higher quality stuff for these consumers. And that I think, actually, generates some learning, and I can talk about one paper that shows that a bit. But it seems to be that by gaining access to markets and producing high quality, then firms learn how to do stuff better. And so that can be an important driver of upgrading. And conversely, not having access to export markets or having a hard time breaking into export [markets] can be a reason why firms failed to upgrade. Let me tell you about one paper that, you know, demand effects can drive learning. Tobi; Yeah. Go ahead.Eric; Okay. It's a paper by David Atkin, Amit Khandelwal and Adam Osman. It's in Egypt. Okay, it's an RCT experiment, a randomized controlled trial. And it's among rug producers, producing rugs. What they did is they randomly allocated initial export contracts, right? So if they work with an intermediary, like a buyer of rugs, you know, among several hundred rug producers, they say, Okay, some guys are gonna get an initial contract, and some guys not. And so that was a way, this is a way of investigating basically what's the effect of exporting on the decisions and in a very clean way, and they found a couple of things. So one is those guys who had the export contracts and started producing higher quality stuff. So that's sort of consistent with my Volkswagen story, too, right? So increasingly, export markets produce higher quality and they did lots of measures of, you know, how thickly packed the rugs were and how straight the edges were - the very dimensions of quality of rugs. That was one thing. And then the other thing that they found which is very interesting is that you know, these weavers of rugs got to be better at producing rugs, basically. So then, when they took them into a laboratory, and they say, okay, produce this identical rug to a whole bunch of producers, both in their treatment group, and in their control group to produce this identical rug, and they found that the guys who had gotten the export contracts were better at producing that rug, they produce sort of higher quality rugs than the other guys. This suggests that demand can drive upgrading, right, in the sense that it induces firms to produce higher quality, but there's also learning involved in that process. These Egyptian rug producers became more productive as a result of having access to these export countries. Tobi; Yeah, I mean, listening to you, I can think of a few things that click in place. When I look at, say, a country like Nigeria, I think about the way the central bank has been running the exchange rate policy, which is messing seriously with the way firms actually source inputs. Some firms actually don't have access to the foreign exchange quota to actually source quality inputs. I mean, from manufacturing firms to agribusinesses who want to buy high-quality seeds overseas, I see how that can be a constraint. But two things I want to get at. Also, if you look at Nigeria whose industrial policy is really about domestic self-sufficiency, you could see that there isn't really an incentive for upgrading, and therein lies my question. If we talk about upgrading and how important it is, even though it's not really discussed as it should, what role do you think industrial or state-directed policies can play in this? Why because industrial policy is back in fashion, you know, it's being discussed everywhere... but usually, at least in my experience and in my opinion, what most scholars and advocates are focused on are [things like] state investments, you know, how the state can put money in one sector or the other. There really isn't so much focus on this sort of micro-level detail and what happens at firms, which your work is about. So for practical purposes, do you see industrial policy as something that can really, really, play a role and incentivize domestic firms to upgrade? For example, something like export quotas, you know, for firms?Eric; I mean, in terms of your question, do I think industrial policy can be helpful? I do. I do think that industrial policy can be helpful. Basically, I think that learning generates spillovers that firms themselves can't fully capture. And so I think there is a role for government to promote learning, basically, in a way. To subsidise learning such that - the socially optimal, or - the best sort of amount of investment in learning for society is more than individual firms to do on their own. And so there's a role for industrial policy. But I agree that it's got to be smart industrial policy, it's not just any old industrial policy. And so many countries have this idea...it's a little bit of nostalgia for import substitute industrialization, or it's very much like inwardly focused industrial policy. We're going to try and guarantee a domestic market for our producers, something like that, right? I'm not a fan. I'm not a fan of imports substitute industrialization or these very inward-focused strategies because then you get to the point where there's just not a lot of pressure on domestic firms to be more productive. They become kind of in a comfortable situation where they have kind of protected markets, not very competitive, they have a lot of market power in that market, and so that is a recipe for stagnation over the long term. So I think the crucial thing is that the targets for industrial policy be export-oriented, you know, outwardly oriented. You want your firms to be successful in world markets, right? I think that should be the key, rather than domestic self-sufficiency. Or rather than just the government investing in well, okay, so I don't have a problem with the government investing in infrastructure, investing in things as long as the aim is always ''what's going to facilitate our firms being successful in world markets'', right, I think that's a good target. Because those world markets are competitive [and] for firms to be able to be successful there, they're going to have to up their game and be more productive and be more innovative, subject to the measurement constraints we talked about, right and to upgrade. And so I think that the smart industrial policies are going to be things that sort of push firms to learn and to be more innovative and to be successful as exporters. Now, the other thing we have to keep in mind in thinking about industrial policy, is that [for] the governments, it's just very hard to [know] in the future what are the sectors that are going to be successful. What are the activities that are likely to have a future? It's just very hard, it's very hard for people who are, you know, private equity firms embedded in the sector... it's very hard to know, it's gonna be even harder for a government official or someone making government policy to do that. So I think we need to think about policies that have this effect of promoting learning or subsidizing innovative activities, but that, you know, don't require too much knowledge and understanding of the future on the part of the people setting the policy. Right. So things like collaborations between universities and firms for, you know, how to train workers to have the skills that the higher tech firms in your country need. That's something that seems like a good idea that's probably going to promote upgrading without having to pick and say, I think this product or this sector is the future of the Nigerian economy and therefore we're going to subsidize that thing. And you also want policies that are somewhat flexible, right, so that if something happens... so I'm working on a project in Tunisia, where the Tunisian Government was trying to promote exports. But the issue that they've had, and it's a matching grant program where sort of half of the costs of exporting of a certain category of costs of exporting will be paid by the government. The problem with that program, though, has been that it was somewhat inflexible. So basically, if something happened, you know, there's a big shock, and in fact, COVID shock, you know, and that changes what firms want to do. And it's very hard for them to switch gears and say, now I want to spend money on something else, can you please subsidize this other thing, and there were a lot of frictions in the program. And so that's often the case for government programs. The government sets a policy and then the world changes, firms want to do something else, but the policy is still stuck, you know, in the old world. So we need to think about how to build in, you know, flexibility into the programs so that if firms decide, actually, the market is moving in this direction, rather than this direction that we were expecting, that the support that they receive could move in the same direction.Tobi; Yeah, I agree. And I don't mean export quotas as hard targets. So I'll give you an example. Nigeria has this policy that we've been running for about six to seven years now, where there are multiple exchange rate windows for different parts of the economy or sectors that the government deems should have priority, you know, to import. And I recall a paper where Korea had a similar arrangement, but it was focused on firms that export. Firms that export to world markets sort of get priorities so that they can source inputs at a very low cost and seamlessly, you know, but it's not just something that we really think about in Nigeria, because we are so focused on the domestic market and how large the population is not minding, you know, how much of that population is poor.Eric; Yes, no, absolutely. So, certainly, Korea did this. But the Korean model, a key part of it, and they definitely picked sectors in a way that, you know, it's, there's a little bit of tension with what I just said about, you know, the government officials are not going to be very knowledgeable, there they seem to have done a good job of picking sectors to advance. But the key part was it really was oriented towards success in export markets. And the industries that were not successful on the export markets, they pulled the plug, they removed the, you know, they removed the support, which is politically hard to do, you need a fairly insulated, like, secure government in order to be able to do that. Because, otherwise, you start providing support, and then the industry lobbies a lot to maintain that support, you know, and so then it becomes politically very difficult to remove it. But I think if the government is committed to ''if these industries are not successful, we're gonna pull the plug on the support'', then this can work. Right. But you're absolutely right, in the Korean model, the key thing is the export orientation rather than the import orientation. And what you mentioned about exchange rates, I didn't comment on that. But I think it is an issue, you know, especially for a resource-rich economy, that the exchange rate can be, you know, highly valued, arguably overvalued, which makes it hard to develop the domestic industry. And so I think that's a real issue that, you know, some countries seem to be able to handle that, you know, ''what do we do with the natural resource wealth a little better than others'', if you just let it accumulate and people are going to spend and that leads to devalues your currency to increase that's going to make it harder to achieve export success in export markets for manufacturing goods or other exporting services. And so that is something that needs to be a focus of thinking about how to upgrade.Tobi; Yeah, I want to talk about technology for a bit. You had this very, very, an interesting paper on the soccer ball, we call it football, the soccer ball producers in Pakistan. And in a bit, you're going to tell me some of the interesting things you learned about that study. But first, Dani Rodrik and Margaret McMillan had this interesting paper about industrialization in Africa, and how domestic manufacturing firms are now shifting more towards capital-intensive technology. So hence, manufacturing firms are not creating jobs as much as historical patterns should suggest, do you see this as sort of a problem? I know so many other people have this worry about automation and how this technology can be exported everywhere, which is really a concern for maybe a continent like Africa with a large, jobless, and young population. So do you see this as a trend that we should worry about, you know, more capital-intensive technologies, or are there opportunities?Eric; Yeah. So I do see it as a trend. I do think it is something to be worried about. You know, Dani Rodrik recently organized a panel with the International Economics Association I participated in, along with Daron Acemoglu and Fabrizio Zilibotti and Francis Stewart from Oxford. And I sort of had two points there. One point was, yes, I think this diagnosis is correct. Basically, economists refer to it as appropriate technology. But the idea is that many technologies are developed in rich countries, you know, given factor proportions, we would say in those rich countries, so basically, skilled workers are more abundant, unskilled workers are less abundant, and so people develop machines that kind of conserve on unskilled workers. That's, in part, the background to the story that Dani Rodrik and Margaret McMillan are saying that in Africa, many firms are using this technology that's been developed in rich countries, that's very skill intensive, but it's not generating a lot of them. Right. So I think the diagnosis there is correct that that happens, right? And so the technology often is inappropriate for poor countries given, you know, their supply of unskilled labour, given how many workers they have that could use employment. On the other hand, the other question, though, was, what do you do about it? And so I was less convinced. So my worry about that. There are two versions of that concern about what you do about it. One is, given the set of existing technologies, you could try to encourage firms to use more labour-intensive technologies. Okay. But the problem is that you may encourage them to be less productive. Maybe they might generate more employment, but they'll be less productive, right? There was an interesting paper that I cited in Brazil by Gustavo D'Souza, which was sort of saying the Brazilian government basically put a tax on international technology licensing. And he shows that sure enough, firms were less likely to use International Technology. They're more like to use domestic technology. They actually generated employment, but they were less productive. Right, and they overall did worse. So there's a worry that you're gonna make firms less productive in an immediate sense. The other worry is that, like, if the Nigerian government starts encouraging Nigerian firms to develop new technologies, which are more labour intensitive, you know, then they'll generate more employment, the worries that you're gonna get sort of fall behind the world technology trajectory, I'll call it that. Like, you can think about the world frontiers moving in whatever, pick an industry, and the world frontier is moving at a particular place, and then, you know, firms are competing with each other and they're, you know, someone gets a patent, someone comes up with a new idea and sort of technology moves in a certain direction. And then Nigeria says, no, no, we want to be on a different trajectory that generates more employment, right? The problem is, you're going to be permanently behind where the technology curve is, right? Where the world frontier is. And I feel like that's worrisome, right, you're likely to have less learning, right, there's gonna be a gap between where the Nigerian firms are and where, you know, the world frontier is that it's gonna be hard for them to catch up afterwards. So in the short term, you might generate more employment, but you're gonna have a less dynamic industry as a result. And so I think, my own view, and this is, it's a feeling rather than something that's very research based at this point. But my own view is, even though it means that firms are not going to generate that much employment, they have to try and stick as close to the technology frontier as possible, or, you know, catch up as quickly as possible to where the world technology frontier is.Tobi; And so talk to me a bit about lessons from your walk with the Pakistani soccer ball manufacturers. What did you learn from that particular experiment, especially on the role of appropriate technology and technology use and the incentives that surround it for firms and investors? Eric; Yeah, so it was a study of technology adoption, what are the factors that encourage technology adoption? And what made it possible was that the football producers, I'll use that word football instead of the soccer ball, these football producers, there are a lot of producers using the same simple technology, right? And this football design is, you know, 85 or 90% are just these hexagons and pentagons. If you can imagine a, you know, a football, it's got hexagons and pentagons. And so the simple technology involves cutting out hexagons and pentagons and then stitching them together. And there were a lot of those and what made the project possible is we came up with a new improved technology, which is basically a way of cutting pentagons from these sheets. The main costs, you know, 50% of the cost are the sheets, they call it rexine. It's like artificial leather, that's the exterior of the ball. But they were cutting pentagons in a way that was wasting some material. Wasting more than they need to and so the new technology is a way of cutting these pentagons so that you can fit more into a given sheet so that you can get basically 8% more pentagons which ended up being about a 1% reduction in total costs. Which wasn't enormous but on the other hand, it's a pretty competitive industry, profit margins are about 8% so we felt like they shouldn't have been paying the 1%. And actually, when we started out, we thought we were gonna be studying technology diffusion, right, which is, you know, one person adopts, then is that their neighbours who adopt or is it their cousins? Or is it the, you know, people who share suppliers, and what are the channels of diffusion, right, and we're trying to keep everything secret, and we thought, okay, when we let it out, it's obviously the people we give it to who are gonna adopt right away, and then it's gonna spread. And so then we gave out this technology, for free, we gave it to 135 firms. And then, you know, we had a few firms adopt, and they started using it, and including one big firm that was producing - I can tell you the name later, but basically had like 2000 employees and is producing for Nike, and as a big producer adopted this technology, and, you know, is basically cutting all of its pentagons using our design and our die for cutting rather than the old one. So after, you know, 15 months, there were six total firms that had adopted. And that was puzzling and thought, you know, why is that? So then we started asking firms, we started talking to people and basically, it was revealed that the reason was that the guys doing the cutting... so the cutters are basically paid piece rates, they're paid per pentagon or per hexagon, or essentially per ball like, which is, you know, 20 hexagons and 12 pentagons they're paid. That was what their salaries were based on. And they didn't have the incentive to reduce waste, like, they weren't penalized if they wasted the material, right? And so they just wanted to go fast. And our die was slowing them down, right, made them go more slowly because they had to be more careful how they placed it and also, it was a different design, it was the design that they were used to. Now, it turns out that within about a month, they could get back up to speed, to the speed they were at before but they didn't know that, and in any case, for that month, their salaries would be way down, they'd just be slower and knowing that if the firm didn't change the contracts, their salaries would be lower. And the workers were figuring this out, the cutters are figuring this out, they said, this is not good for me, right, that my salary is gonna go down if I use this thing, I have no incentive to use this new technology. And so then they started telling their firms, you know, this is bad, bad technology, it doesn't work, it's dangerous, it has all these issues. Okay, so then we realized that this was happening and we said that we were going to do a second experiment. So, you know, half of the people we originally gave the technology to who hadn't yet adopted, we did a second experiment where we said to workers, we're gonna give you a month's bonus, which is not very much it is about $150 US dollar. So these guys are not paid very much we said ''a month's bonus if you can demonstrate to us and the owner of the factory that the technology works.'' And actually, that was enough. The workers were excited about that, you know, they got paid for doing this. Everybody who did it then subsequently passed the tests. So they demonstrated that the technology is working, and then a statistically significant share of the firms that they worked at ended up adopting the technology as a result. So those were the two experiments, those were the facts. What are we learning from that? I think we're learning that, basically, the lack of information flow from workers to their owners, to their managers, was what was getting in the way of technology adoption in this case. Like, the workers knew that the technology was working, but the owners didn't know because they sort of delegated the process of cutting the pentagons to the workers, and given the contracts, the workers didn't have the incentive to share the information. Right. So I think those sorts of, like, information flows or barriers to information flows are actually very important in the learning process. And kind of what our second experiment did when we did this bonus of a month's pay, which induced the workers to share the information and that was sufficient to make the technology be adopted. And so I think the punch line or the one-sentence version of this is, workers need to see that they're going to benefit from the adoption of new technology or from upgrading generally in order for the process to work well. They have to buy into the process. And they have to see that they have the incentive to do so. One recommendation coming out of that would be some sort of profit sharing, or some sort of gain sharing between workers and firms would actually be very useful. And will it help there be more innovation?Tobi; It brings me in a way to another very interesting paper of yours which [they] also had a summary essay about, I think, in VOX or something, which is about wages in poor countries. And I mean, thinking about the soccer ball story and the lesson. One issue and this has generated quite a number of debates between I think Rodrik and a bunch of other scholars who are thinking about Africa, is that the reason Africa is not really industrializing, or firms are not creating jobs is because wages are too high relative to the level of income. But what I learned from your paper, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, is that paying higher wages in poorer countries is not really a disincentive to creating employment and even generating productivity and profit. Tell me a little bit about how that works. Because, usually, we've gotten familiar with this logic that for you to be able to industrialize, if you think about China, and so many other countries, you need to have access to low-wage workers, you know, you need to be able to do very cheaply, and labour is where you can really cut a lot of your costs. And then it becomes a problem if your domestic wages are too high for the level of your income or what firms and investors are willing to pay. So tell me this high-wage, low-wage dynamics, especially... I remember the famous Paul Krugman was it article defending sweatshops in Bangladesh, where if you force firms who are outsourcing to pay higher wages or impose certain conditions, poor people in those countries will lose jobs, and they will lose their livelihoods. And so you should not mess with that process. What are your thoughts on these [issues]?Eric; Yeah, very interesting. So I think the article you were thinking of, it's related to the specific case of the football producers and seal coats. In Pakistan. Tobi; Yeah. Eric; There was a very interesting thing that happened. I mentioned that one firm adopted this new technology. And you know, one very large firm and it was producing for Nike, it's called Silver Star. The interesting thing about that firm is that because they're producing for Nike, which had had sweatshop scandals in the past, Nike required them to do a bunch of things, basically, so that Nike wouldn't be vulnerable to a further scandal, right? And among the things that they had to do was make sure they were paying the minimum wage in Pakistan. And the only way this firm could guarantee that they were paying the minimum wage in Pakistan, which many firms were violating basically, the only way they could is to say, we're not going to pay a piece rate, we're going to pay a fixed wage. Right. So this firm was paying a fixed wage rather than a piece rate. And actually, we talked to them about when they first won the Nike contract. They said their labour costs went up 20 to 30%. So they did a bunch of things. They had this fixed wage, there was a medical clinic on the factory grounds. They had sickness pay, they had some retirement benefits. So a bunch of things, they did raise wages. But the advantage of that was that the workers were much less likely to block the adoption of this new technology. Because in a specific way, they did not have a disincentive, you know, their wage was going to be their wage no matter what happened, rather than in other firms [where] what was happening is that the worker can see if they adopt this technology, their wage would go down. And so we believe, and I wrote this in an article that you saw in the Harvard Business Review, I think that's where it was, that those wages, you know, higher wage payments and fixed wage payments, which were imposed by Nike actually contributed to the process of innovation. The title of the article is how labour standards can be good for growth, and also in the process of upgrading. So that's an example of how having higher wages can actually be good for this upgrading process. Now, there are factors going in both directions, right? On the one hand, you know, the 20 or 30% higher labour costs, I think they did contribute to innovation. On the other hand, 20 or 30% higher labour costs may mean that firms will hire fewer workers or that the industry will be less competitive. So it's not that, you know, this innovation effect is all powerful and it's going to overwhelm anything that's about labour costs. But I think it is something that we need to take into account. And so, you know, labour market institutions that, you know, maybe promote profit sharing with workers, that promote longer-term employment so you have people who are around for longer, that have some job security, the sorts of things that often labour unions want to negotiate, can actually be good for this innovation process. And that's one factor that should be weighed against this issue of, you know, how higher labour costs and how competitive is the sector going to be. You often hear, like, the World Bank or the USAID, the development agencies will often say, you just have to be cheap. Like, you know, the competitive advantage of Nigeria is cheap labour and therefore, you should be focusing on having low wages and producing, you know, garments and textiles and toys and low-end manufacturing. But I think that's kind of a low-road model. You know, and I think that there are viable high road models, which would involve somewhat higher wages, some sort of gain sharing or profit sharing, and being more innovative at the same time. I can't tell you I have it all worked out exactly what that model would look like, I think it's going to vary by country. But I think we need to try to think about and push in that direction of where you can have, it may not be high wage, but it's gonna be higher wage than the market by itself maybe would bring about. So I am optimistic that that can happen. But again, the devil's in the details, you know. So Nigeria needs to think about what are we relatively good at doing right now and let's think about how can we be more innovative and move up to the quality ladder, the technology ladder in those industries. And then how can we get our workers on board to the process of moving up that ladder? And that will probably involve paying those workers more, rather than just trying to cut wages to the extent possible.Tobi; Before I let you go, let me... I know you're a relatively quiet person so let me draw you in a little bit... yeah, I know you're not active on Twitter or anything like that. Let me draw you into a little bit of professional controversy. And one of the things that I admire most about your work, I should confess, is that it's methodologically diverse. You know, you do structural econometrics, you do RCT, you do regular modelling and so many things. So there's this huge debate currently that I think, a lot of my colleagues may not think so but I think has important consequences for the policymaking process on development, which is that - is development research right now focused on the right things? You know, RCTs are like the standard tool for the investigation of development questions. Empirics have sort of taken over the field. But on the other hand, you have folks like Lant Pritchett who are constantly pushing back that this is encouraging researchers to think too small, they are researching cash transfers, and so many other key interventions, whereas we really should be focused on the big questions. And in my experience, these have real-life implications, especially in poor countries where they have budgetary constraints. We might say this is due to corruption, and that will be true, but sometimes they have a real balance of payment crisis, because a lot of these countries are resource-dependent, and it's often cyclical. So a policymaker may really want to know where to spend the most resources to have the maximum benefit for the citizen. So I find these questions very important. What do you think about this debate? As someone who transverses the field very often in your work, how have you been able to navigate this debate? And what do you think is the, maybe right is not the right word here...what do you think is the useful approach going forward?Eric; Yeah, good question. Yeah, in my own work, I've been very question driven rather than methods driven. Right. So I've always thought, you know, I'm interested in this question of from upgrading, what are the barriers to upgrading? What drives upgrading? How can we, you know, learn about that, and if we can learn about that using an experiment, that's great. If we're in about that using other methods, that's great, too. So I, sort of, don't have a dog in the hunt, as Bill Clinton would say about, you know, the methodology. And I'm kind of in the middle of the road, I think, in terms of this debate between, you know, J-PAL and Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee and Lant Pritchett or others on the other side. I think, you know, in situations where you can run an experiment, I think that is the most credible source of information. Okay, so I'd rather have a randomized experiment than do a correlation and put some causal interpretation on a correlation. At the same time, I do think that there are many questions, either that can't be answered with an experiment, or that are just very, very costly to answer with an experiment, right? And so it's very hard to run, you know, it's running experiments on firms. I've tried to do it, but it takes a long time. It can be very costly. You have to give much bigger shocks to firms to get them to react, etc. And so, I've heard Abhijit Banerjee articulate that, like, we should never do a policy that hasn't first been evaluated by random experiment, I think that's too strong. Because we're gonna be waiting years and years and years to get the experiments and with a huge investment of resources in order to get the experiments that would then inform the policy. So we're going to have to make policy and, you know, make decisions based on other sorts of information. And so there, I do think we need to be like small ''c'' Catholic, allow for lots of different types of methods, quasi-experimental methods, you know, even structural methods, and then also experiments. There's this famous joke about the drunk guy with a streetlight, you know, he's looking for his keys, and he's looking under the streetlight, because that's where the light is, maybe not where the keys have been lost. And so I take that point, like, maybe we really care about these big questions about, you know, what's going to drive growth, then in that sense, I'm sympathetic to the sort of the Lant Pritchett view. On the other hand, under the lamppost, we actually are learning stuff, right, I feel like we're more confident that we're making progress by looking under the lamppost. And so I think the, you know, the trick, the art here is to sort of stay near the edge of the lights and we're getting closer to the big questions, but in a way that's still credible, and that we're still, you know, we can believe the answers that we're actually given. To sort of counter the Lant Pritchett view, you can post these big questions, and you can, you know, think big thoughts. But at the end of the day, you have to be able to convince, you know, you have to show us the data, right, you have to show that this is really correct. And that's just very hard to do for many of these big questions. So we need to incrementally build up based on this work. That's why I kind of like this work on firms, we're getting towards these big questions about growth, but in a way that you can actually have some confidence that you understand what's going on.Tobi; In your experience doing this work, what are misconceptions that you have encountered in the field that either the professional development industry, so I'm talking about aid and the think-tank and all the other folks, or it may even be your academic colleagues, what are the common misconceptions that you have encountered? Eric; Yeah. I mean, so one big thought [is] I think that the of field development agencies, right, it's like, how are we going to spend aid dollars in a way that's going to have a positive effect? And I think there's value to that. All right. I'm all in favour of spending, you know, aid dollars, in the most effective way. But I think that you know, a set of questions does limit to some extent the impact of the field of development on the development process. So I actually think we could spend every aid dollar in an optimal way, and would it have a meaningful effect on the material standard of living of people in poor countries? I'm not sure. I mean, maybe a little bit, maybe marginal, right? I think what's really going to matter is, do these countries start getting industrialization happening? Are they getting upgrading? Are they growing? And so in that sense, I sometimes get a little bit frustrated with the development discussions, it's all about this, you know, how do we spend aid dollars, and let's do RCTs to figure out how to spend the aid dollars, rather than these bigger questions, which are going to have a longer-term effect on people's living standards. You know, that's changing a little bit. I'm encouraged. There are more and more people talking about firms, there are more and more people taking sort of industrial policy ideas seriously. They're talking about bigger-picture questions in a kind of micro-founded way. So there are some encouraging signs. But I think a lot of development is still about that issue of like, what's the right way to do social policy? What's the right way to do, you know, aid spending, rather than trying to understand deeply why is it that Korea was able to make this transition from a poor country to a rich country, essentially, in a generation? And why is it that many countries in Africa are not? What is it that's actually getting in the way? And for that, that's not really like how to spend aid dollars question that's more about how firms behave. What are the factors that constrain them? And those sorts of things.Tobi; This is a show about ideas. So I want to ask you, what's the one idea? Just one. One idea that you think everybody should think about and adopt, that you would like to see spread everywhere. What's that idea? It may be from your work, or it may be from other things that inspire you. What's that one idea?Eric; I think the one idea I would choose is, uh, workers have a brain. This goes back to the soccer ball study, that there's knowledge and information that, like, workers have or people who are lower down in the hierarchy have, which is not being taken advantage of. Right, the soccer ball thing was an example. The workers were understanding the technology, but because of the way they were paid, and because of the, you know, institutional arrangements, they didn't have the incentive to share that. And I think the world, including the economics profession, tends to undervalue the intelligence that people have. Even the people who are actually, you know, on the frontlines doing the work. And if we can figure out ways to harness that knowledge and give people incentives to share it and give people incentives to develop their own intellectual thinking about whatever it is they're doing, I think that'll have a big payoff. And so I'm interested in sort of investigating what are the sorts of arrangements, what are the sorts of policies that can lead that to happen more?Tobi; Yeah. Thank you so much, Eric. I mean, tell me a little bit about what you're working on right now.Eric; What am I working on right now? I mean, so one thing related to what we've been talking about that I'm excited about is, again, a paper on technology adoption. This is in Bangladesh, with an energy-efficient motor like sewing machines. They're different sorts of motors that the traditional ones they're kind of spinning all the time. And then people have the foot pedal they like to press the foot pedal and then the needle comes down and stitches right but they're actually wasting a lot of energy because these motors are spinning all the time. And so there's a new type of motor called a servo motor which spins Only when the needle is moving, right, so it's energy efficient, energy efficient motor, but it can just replace the old motor, you don't have to change anything else about the machine, you just put this new servo motor to replace the old clutch motor. And we're studying when new managers or when new owners, when do they make those decisions. And so we're trying to track we're giving them information in different intensities, like including installing the machines in their factory one is just showing a video when it's just providing information, but one is actually installing their machines. And we're seeing how they react to that information. So I think that's a big topic. It's like what's getting in the way of the adoption of energy-efficient technology? These are the people who are making mistakes, or they just don't have good information. Or that basically, maybe if they have the right information, they actually will adapt very quickly. So that's one thing I'm thinking about.Tobi; It's been fascinating talking to you, Eric. I enjoyed it so much.Eric; Thank you, Tobi. Good questions. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.ideasuntrapped.com/subscribe
Iqbal Dhaliwal, the Global Executive Director of MIT's Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), is this episode's guest. J-PAL's mission for the last twenty years has been to reduce poverty by ensuring that policy is informed by scientific evidence. Anchored by a network of hundreds of affiliated professors at universities around the world, J-PAL conducts rigorous research to find solutions to the world's greatest challenges, and then translates its finding into action by promoting a culture of evidence-informed policymaking globally. Its work has been so impactful that its co-founders were awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics for their pioneering approach to alleviating global poverty. (0:36). Website: https://www.povertyactionlab.org/
Biblioteca Antonieta de Barros Conta e Canta: " Somos todos extraordinários". --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/ebm-tapera/message
Link to my Book - https://www.voicesinmyhead.in/bookYameer Adhar, host of Voices In My Head gets inside the head of Captain. Rupinder Kaur - an ex army officer and now a naturopath. Capt. Rupinder Kaur grew in up in small town India, in places like Pithoragarh and Wellington, before Dr Manmohan Singh opened the country up to Coca Cola and Clinique shampoo. She is a product of the 1980s, but that's not the only thing that shaped her. Her parents, both in the army, also did. Her mother was a doctor and her father rose to be a general.She herself finished college in St Bede's, Simla, and then came to Delhi to do a post grad degree in psychology. She never finished it, and wonders what life would have been like if she had. Instead, she headed to Allahabad to sit for the SSB, where candidates applying to join the army as officers gradually get weeded out over the course of a week.The sixteenth batch of women officers, she won the gold medal for the best lady cadet, and went on to join the Army Ordnance Corps that to a layperson is all about weapons and ammunition. Rocket launchers interested her the most! Her first posting was in an ammunition depot near Ludhiana, where she was the security officer responsible for everything from rifles to Bofors shells.After six years, she left (in those days women didn't have permanent commission and she didn't see a future here), and joined the corporate world, working across companies like Google and Microsoft.Quickly she realised the corporate life was not for her, and she went to the UK to do a masters degree in Poverty Reduction. Her longest career stint has been in the social sector, with organizations like STiR, UnLtd, and J-Pal, a set up founded by Nobel laureates Abhijeet Banerjee and Ester Duflo.From early in life, so-called alternate systems of healing was something her father dabbled in, taking her to naturopathy centres as early as 1 and half years old!In her early 40s, she realised she needed to revisit naturopathy to develop a deeper connection with her own body. In fact connection is something she talks about frequently, whether with oneself, the community, or with Nature. --The discussion on this episode of the podcast is all about naturopathy and things that Rupinder has experienced as an ex army officer. Voices In My Head is a podcast dedicated to mental and physical health that will teach anyone aspiring to improve themselves and learn the secrets to become happy and healthy! Find your ultimate state of wellbeing and become the BEST version of YOU! Contact Capt. Rupinder KaurEmail: rupinder78@gmail.comBlog: http://yoururbannaturopath.com/Follow & Contact Yameer Adhar:Instagram: @yameeradharEmail: yameer@voicesinmyhead.inWebsite: https://www.voicesinmyhead.inSupport the show (https://www.patreon.com/VIMH)
Our failure to make sure that globally all kids get all of their basic vaccinations leads to 1.5 million child deaths every year. According to today?s guest, Varsha Venugopal, for the great majority this has nothing to do with weird conspiracy theories or medical worries ? in India 80% of undervaccinated children are already getting some shots. They just aren't getting all of them, for the tragically mundane reason that life can get in the way. Links to learn more, summary and full transcript. As Varsha says, we're all sometimes guilty of "valuing our present very differently from the way we value the future", leading to short-term thinking whether about getting vaccines or going to the gym. So who should we call on to help fix this universal problem? The government, extended family, or maybe village elders? Varsha says that research shows the most influential figures might actually be local gossips. In 2018, Varsha heard about the ideas around effective altruism for the first time. By the end of 2019, she?d gone through Charity Entrepreneurship's strategy incubation program, and quit her normal, stable job to co-found Suvita, a non-profit focused on improving the uptake of immunization in India, which focuses on two models: 1. Sending SMS reminders directly to parents and carers 2. Gossip The first one is intuitive. You collect birth registers, digitize the paper records, process the data, and send out personalised SMS messages to hundreds of thousands of families. The effect size varies depending on the context but these messages usually increase vaccination rates by 8-18%. The second approach is less intuitive and isn't yet entirely understood either. Here's what happens: Suvita calls up random households and asks, "if there were an event in town, who would be most likely to tell you about it?" In over 90% of the cases, the households gave both the name and the phone number of a local 'influencer'. And when tracked down, more than 95% of the most frequently named 'influencers' agreed to become vaccination ambassadors. Those ambassadors then go on to share information about when and where to get vaccinations, in whatever way seems best to them. When tested by a team of top academics at the Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) it raised vaccination rates by 10 percentage points, or about 27%. The advantage of SMS reminders is that they?re easier to scale up. But Varsha says the ambassador program isn't actually that far from being a scalable model as well. A phone call to get a name, another call to ask the influencer join, and boom - you might have just covered a whole village rather than just a single family. Varsha says that Suvita has two major challenges on the horizon: 1. Maintaining the same degree of oversight of their surveyors as they attempt to scale up the program, in order to ensure the program continues to work just as well 2. Deciding between focusing on reaching a few more additional districts now vs. making longer term investments which could build up to a future exponential increase. In this episode, Varsha and Rob talk about making these kinds of high-stakes, high-stress decisions, as well as: * How Suvita got started, and their experience with Charity Entrepreneurship * Weaknesses of the J-PAL studies * The importance of co-founders * Deciding how broad a program should be * Varsha?s day-to-day experience * And much more Get this episode by subscribing to our podcast on the world?s most pressing problems and how to solve them: type 80,000 Hours into your podcasting app. Producer: Kei
durée : 00:58:39 - Cultures Monde - par : Florian Delorme - L'enquête des Pandora Papers, révélée le 3 octobre 2021, met en cause de nombreux particuliers qui cherchent à éviter l'impôt, notamment les chefs d'Etat encore en fonction. Des révélations qui font douter de la volonté des pouvoirs politiques à lutter efficacement contre l'évasion fiscale. - invités : Christian Chavagneux Journaliste et éditorialiste à Alternatives Economiques.; Vincent Vicard Economiste au CEPII, responsable du programme analyse du commerce international; Alexia Van Rij Chercheuse en économie, rattachée au laboratoire J-Pal.
Maria Zuber, vice president for research at MIT, on a lifelong interest in space, the human side of energy, and MIT as a testbed for climate solutions. Timestamps: 02:40 - Growing up in Pennsylvania 07:25 - Family response to the NASA GRAIL mission 09:26 - Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences 12:14 - Plan for Action on Climate Change 18:25 - SESAME 19:36 - Climate Grand Challenges, Climate and Sustainability Consortium 23:44 - Campus sustainability 27:46 - Humanities, School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences 28:50 - Developing world, J-PAL, King Climate Action Initiative 30:50 - President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology 35:44 - Listener questions Show notes and transcript: https://energy.mit.edu/podcast/39 Sign up for notifications of new episodes: https://energy.mit.edu/podcast/signup
In this episode at Economists on Zoom Getting Coffee (#ezgc) we host Prof. Seema Jayachandran, a Professor of Economics at Northwestern University. Seema's research focuses on economic issues in developing countries, including environmental conservation, gender equality, labor markets, health, and education. She serves on the board of directors for the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, known as J-PAL, and is the chair of its gender sector. She is also the co-director of the National Bureau of Economic Research's program in Development Economics and co-editor of the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics. Seema is also a columnist in the New York Times as a contributor to the Economic View column. Seema's research is not only pioneering scientifically speaking, but also contains enormously important policy implications, which are novel, effective, implementable and scalable. In this episode we focus our discussion on gender discrimination in developing countries, where she has been able to show us that this problem starts really early on, even prenatally. And that the way we think about progress when it comes to economic growth might make things even worse. But not everything is bad news, because her research also shows that there are ways to influence some of these trends, which we also discuss.For future episodes please don't forget to SUBSCRIBE to this podcast. You can WATCH this and all other episodes in their video-cast form by visiting our website www.economistsonzoomgettingcoffee.com. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit danybahar.substack.com
Attīstoties tehnoloģijām, mainās arī darba vide, un otrādi, mainoties darba videi, tam piemērojas arī tehnoloģijas. Taču šodien, kad liela daļa darbu tiek organizēti attālināti, bet birojos uz vietas jāievēro īpaši piesardzības pasākumi, šīs pārmaiņas varētu būt aktuālākas nekā jebkad agrāk. Kā Covid-19 pandēmija ir likusi mainīties darba videi un kādi izaicinājumi mūs sagaida nākotnē, raidījumā Zināmais nezināmajā vērtē Rīgas Stradiņa universitātes asociētais profesors Darba drošības un vides veselības institūta direktors Ivars Vanadziņš un Rīgas Tehniskās universitātes Datorzinātnes un informācijas tehnoloģijas fakultātes dekāns Agris Ņikitenko. Ivars Vanadziņš atzīst, ka jebkurš darba devējs domā, kas būs pēc tam. Ap 60 - 80% cilvēku, kas var attālināti strādāt, viņi vēlētos atgriezties tādā hibrīdrežīmā - pamatā pa mājām un reizēm uz darbu. Tā varētu būt stabilākā tendence, ka mēs lielā mērā paliekam mājās, tie, kas var. Tomēr ne visi var attālināti strādāt. Globālās tendences rāda, ka attālināti strādā kādi 40 %. "Ir darbi, ko nevar darīt attālināti. Tā lielākā izmaiņa darba tirgū, uz ko neviens pagaidām nespēj atbildēt, kam būs dramatiskas sekas, ka tos 40 %, faktiski apkalpo viena ceturtā daļa citu - tie, kas nodrošina transportu, kurš tagad vairs nav vajadzīgs, tie, kas nodrošina kaut kādas vietējās kafejnīciņas pilsētu centros, kurus tagad vairs nav vajadzīgas, un tamlīdzīgas lietas. Tie paši skolu apkopēji," vērtē Ivars Vanadziņš. "Tā ir globālā problēma, ko darīt ar tiem cilvēkiem, jo viņu dzīves un viņi jau līdz šim pamatā gadījumu ir bijuši mazāk atalgoti, grūtākiem darba apstākļiem. Tur būs liela sociālekonomiska globāla problēma. "Baltajām apkaklītēm", tiem faktiski paliks labāk, ja viņi sakārtos savus mājas birojus un apgūs mākslīgo intelektu un visas virtuālās iespējas, viņiem viss būs kārtībā, viņi būs ieguvēji. Bet viena liela daļa cilvēku, mēs par viņiem ļoti nepelnīti aizmirstam." Agris Ņikitenko piekrīt, ka to, kas var strādāt attālināti, ir mazāk, to, kas nevar attālināti savu darbu padarīt, viņu ir skaitliski ir ļoti daudz. "Lai arī valsts kopumā, ja skatāmies statistiski, mēs it kā naudu iegūstam varbūt vēl vairāk nekā līdz šim, nopelniem visi kopā, bet ir liela daļa cilvēku, tie paši viesnīcu, viesu māju īpašnieki un darbinieki, tās ir veselas industrijas, kas šobrīd ir apstājušās faktiski," atzīst Agris Ņikitenko. Universāls risinājums tam ir pārkvalifikācija, bet tam ir sekas "Šis konkrētais cilvēks aiziet prom no vienas jomas, viņš aiziet citā jomā. Viena joma vinnē, otra - zaudē savu darbinieku. Tas nozīmē, ka joma, kas zaudē darbinieku, nespēs atgriezties darba ritmā, ka iepriekš. Latvija atkal šeit kopumā ir ir salīdzinoši labākā stāvoklī nekā tādas ierastas tūrisma zemes kā Spānija vai Grieķija, kur šī proporcija ir ievērojami savādāka nekā tas Ziemeļvalstīs un Latvijā tajā skaitā," bilst Agris Ņikitenko. Vanadziņš norāda, ka vēl vienas principiālas izmaiņas skars darba laiku, jo nevar mehāniski pārlikt parasto darba laika regulējumu uz mājas biroju. Pasaules tendences rāda, ka izmaiņas visvairāk ietekmēs vidējo menedžmenta līmeni uzņēmumos. "Mēs līdz šim meklējām uz vidēja līmeņa vadītāja vietu tehniski gudru cilvēku, kurš par to kaut ko jēdz. Pašlaik tas vairs nav īsti aktuāli, jo būtībā jau nav tā pieskatīšana vajadzīga, bet ir vajadzīgs faktiski prasa sociāli empātisks menedžeris, kas saprot psiholoģiju. Tās tehniskās prasmes aiziet otrajā plānā, jo tās var labāk kontrolēt mašīna vai mākslīgais intelekts labāk nekā cilvēks. Vairāk paliek tā puse empātiski saprast, kā tam otram tur iet un kas viņam ir jāpalīdz ne tikai ar programmatūru, bet arī ar galvu. Tās būs lielas izmaiņas un domāju, ka Latviju viņas skarts tikpat daudz kā jebkuru citu valsti," uzskata Ivars Vanadziņš. Aicina pieteikt liecības UNESCO programmas "Pasaules atmiņa" Latvijas nacionālajam reģistram Gluži kā olimpiskajās spēlēs reizi četros gados tiek izsludināta pieteikšanās UNESCO programmas "Pasaules atmiņa" Latvijas nacionālajam reģistram. Šis brīdis ir pienācis šogad, tāpēc pārskatīt Latvijai nozīmīgākās dokumentālā mantojuma liecības tiek aicināti gan muzeji, gan bibliotēkas, gan arhīvi, gan juridiskās un privātās personas. Kas ir programma "Pasaules atmiņa" un kas līdz šim nonācis Latvijas nacionālajā reģistrā, stāsta UNESCO Latvijas nacionālās komisijas Komunikāciju un informācijas sektora vadītāja Beāte Lielmane. Programma “Pasaules mantojums” attiecas uz vietām, kuras nevar piederēt mums katram un ir kaut kas netverams. Savukārt programmas “Pasaules atmiņa” liecības ir kaut kas tverams, jo dokumenti ir fiziski saglabājušies, bet pats svarīgākais - tie nes būtisku vēstījumu. Par programmas “Pasaules atmiņa” dažādajiem līmeņiem turpina Beāte Lielmane. “Pasaules atmiņas” Latvijas nacionālajā reģistrā līdz šim iekļauto astoņu nomināciju dokumentārajām liecībām ir kāds glabātājs, piemēram, arhīvs vai muzejs. Arī šīs institūcijas ir digitalizējušas savas kolekcijas, kā rezultātā tās sabiedrībai ir pilnīgi vai daļēji pieejamas elektroniskā formātā. Reizi četros gados, kad tiek izvērtēti Latvijas nacionālā reģistra pieteikumi, saraksts vienā reizē var tikt papildināts gan ar vienu, gan vairākām nominācijām. Daudz materiālu gan par Baltijas ceļu, gan barikādēm, kam nesen aizvadījām trīsdesmito gadadienu, glabājas cilvēku privātos arhīvos. Pat ja tajā brīdī likās, ka mēs to visi zinām un piedzīvojam, tad ar laiku liecību skaits var mazināties. Tāpēc UNESCO aicinājums ir vienlaikus iespēja pārskatīt savus fotogrāfiju, videoierakstu un citu dokumentu krājumus. Tāpat arī Latviešu folkloras krātuves un interneta žurnāla “Punctum” iniciatīva “Pandēmijas dienasgrāmatas” ir piemērs tam, ka dokumentāri fiksējam izjūtas un notikumus, lai nākamās paaudzes var gūt autentisku pieredzi, iepazīstoties ar vēstures avotiem, un uzzināt, kā savulaik 2020. gadā pasauli pāršalca jauns vīruss. Bet pieteikumu dokumentāro liecību iekļaušanai Latvijas nacionālajā reģistrā līdz 30. aprīlim var sūtīt uz e-pasta adresi office@unesco.lv vai arī pa pastu, kontaktus meklējot mājas lapā unesco.lv.
Tuesday, January 12, 2020 at 7:00 PM (PST) Moderator: Dr. Nadeem ul Haque, VC PIDE Speaker: Prof. Abhijit V. Banerjee About Speaker: Professor Banerjee is the recipient of the 2019 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, awarded jointly with Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer "for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty." Banerjee is a past president of the Bureau for the Research in the Economic Analysis of Development, a Research Associate of the NBER, a CEPR research fellow, International Research Fellow of the Kiel Institute, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society and has been a Guggenheim Fellow and an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow. Professor Banerjee received the Infosys Prize 2009 in Social Sciences and Economics. In 2011, he was named one of Foreign Policy magazine's top 100 global thinkers. His areas of research are development economics and economic theory. Banerjee is a member of J-PAL's Executive Committee and previously served as co-chair of J-PAL’s Education Sector.
NGOs, social enterprises, philanthropists, and businesses are fast realising that socio-environmental problems need to be tackled at their root, and not just at the symptomatic level. Yet, how do we ensure what we are doing is right? How much of what we do brings about enduring transformation or a systems change? Some of the most successful changemakers are here today to share their lessons and advice on how to be a catalyst for systemic change. Moderated by Tim Hanstad, CEO of Chandler Foundation, this episode will hear from Iqbal Dhaliwal, Global Executive Director of J-Pal, Neera Nundy, Partner and Co-Founder of Dasra, James Chen, Chairman of The Chen Yet-Sen Family Foundation, and Rukmini Banerji, CEO of Pratham Education Foundation.
How can we change the story from the Tragedy of the Commons to the Happiness of the Commons? Praharsh Patel communicates how we can flip this switch by providing proper incentives to farmers. We hear a unique first-person story from Praharsh and how this can drive tangible change for the farmers in India; and the world. Praharsh Patel is a young enthusiast working in the field of Policy Research that graduated with a Masters in Mathematics from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. He is trained as a BigData analyst and holds a MicroMasters in Data, Economics, and Development Policy from J-PAL, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston. His academic interests include Water Resource Management, Groundwater, Resource Policies, and Arid-region agriculture practices. He is the co-founder of the "Prayaas: The Movement for Grassroot Changes" that is working to develop and implement successful model for the scalable solution is the domain of 1) Agriculture and Livelihood, 2) Education, 3) Heath and Wellness, and 4) Skill Development. https://www.linkedin.com/in/praharsh-m-patel/
Hosted by Senior Research and Policy Manager Rohit Naimpally, the inaugural season of J-PAL Voices will explore how summer jobs programs fit into the broader goals of fostering mobility from poverty in the United States. Hear from advocates and program coordinators, researchers, and most importantly, the participants themselves about why these programs matter to them and why they should matter for all of us. We hope you’ll join the conversation and tune into J-PAL Voices. Coming to you this October, wherever you listen to podcasts.
Rachel Glennerster is the Chief Economist for the UK Department for International Development (DFID), which is the UK's ministry for international development cooperation. Previously, she was the Executive Director of J-PAL (the Jameel Poverty Action Lab) at MIT. This March, Prof. Glennerster gave the closing keynote remarks at the 2020 annual conference at Julis-Rabinowitz Center for Public Policy and Finance, where she touched on challenges of working in fragile states and the linkages between the macro- and micro-levels. The economic policy tools used in advanced economies either do not exist or are ineffective in poor, conflict-afflicted areas. Shifts in macro-level policies can have devastating effects at the household level, leading to hyperinflation, parallel exchange rates, or major debt crises. In this interview, we discuss some of the innovative policy and research tools in fragile states, especially RCT (randomized controlled trials). And we touch on various debates on foreign aid, non-profits, and what it’s like to work in Africa. Some of our questions include: - RCT is a new way of studying impacts of social programs or medicines through randomizing individuals into control groups so that we can assess the actual causality. What is the difference between RCT specifically and other methods that help us conduct careful policy impact evaluations? Is there still a tension between those who accept and not accept RCTs? What are some of the reasonable arguments against the further adoption of RCTs? What are some of the main advantages and disadvantages to the system of "community-driven development?" Is it better to hand control over development to locals even if this may not be the best way to motivate more systemic change that may have to come from outside communities? Or is this question posing a “straw man” to a non-existent dilemma? What is it like to advise the distribution of the U.K’s international aid? What is the philosophy behind how nations should give and receive aid? Should it be viewed as a moral obligation, or something that is in the national security or economic interests of the U.K., or both?
Latvijas nacionālo basketbola izlašu koordinatori Edijs Eglītis un Emīls Toms “Basketstudijā 2+1” stāsta par izlašu vasaras darba plāniem. Jau 1. jūnijā sāksies Individuālie treniņi plašam kandidātu lokam, augustā iecerētas Baltijas kausa izcīņas jauniešu komandām. Vai darbībā redzēsim arī valstsvienības? Ieskatīsimies un ieklausīsimies arī jaunajā Latvijas Basketbola savienības izstrādātajā reģionālo izlašu programmā, kas sola jaunas iespējas gan talantīgākajiem basketbolistiem, gan aktīvākajiem jauniešu treneriem visā Latvijā. Tiekamies “Basketstudijā 2+1”.01:45min - Vīriešu izlašu darba plāns, treniņos gaidāmie basketbolisti;08:20min - Jūnija pasākumi, kurus piespiedu kārtā jāaizstāj sieviešu izlasēm;11:50min - Iespēja, ka treniņos piedalīsies Anete Šteinberga;17:15min - Lēns starts, sākotnējais darbs pie individuālas tehnikas;25:50min - Iespējas jauniešiem no reģioniem;31:20min - Situācija ap spēlēm, gaidāmie FIBA mači;36:50min - "TTT Rīga" basketbolistu liktenis;42:05min - Reģionu izlases koncepcija, iespējas treneriem;56:10min - Galvenā trenera loma U-14 izlasei, spēļu translēšana
By focusing on practical solutions to small questions, Abhijit Banerjee helped revolutionize development economics. Now, he’s turning his focus to rehabilitating the battered reputations of economists themselves. Abhijit Banerjee is the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at MIT. In 2003, he co-founded J-PAL, the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab. He is the author of several books, most recently, Good Economics for Hard Times, co-written with Esther Duflo. In 2019, he, along with Duflo and Michael Kremer, won the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Bragi fær til sín Íslandsmeistarana í ralli frá árinu 1998 í spjall. Í þættinu ræða þeir Páll og Jóhannes um gullaldartímabilið svokallaða í rallinu í kringum aldamótin og margt fleira.
Cash transfers are a popular strategy for poverty reduction. But how do their results compare to those of more traditional programs? In this talk, Sam Carter, a senior policy associate at J-PAL, shares evidence from impact evaluations spanning a set of countries that have directly compared cash transfers to other interventions. She also discusses how … Continue reading EAG London 2019: Are cash transfers the best policy option? (Sam Carter)
Want to support future conversations? Visit conversationswithtyler.com/donate. Esther Duflo’s advice to students? Spend time in the field. “It's only through this exposure that you can learn how wrong most of your intuitions are and preconceptions are,” she explains. For Duflo, it was time spent in the Soviet Union on the brink of collapse. While there she saw how Jeff Sachs used the tools of economics to advise policymakers on matters of crucial importance. To her it seemed like the best job in the world—and she began to pursue it in earnest. Now it is she who is advising governments on how best to reduce poverty, having co-founded one of the leading policy research centers in the world. That work, together with that of frequent collaborators Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer, has now been honored with the Nobel Prize. She joined Tyler to discuss that work, including how coaching increases the effectiveness of cash transfers, why she cautions against falling in love with growth rates, what France gets right about child-rearing, the management philosophy behind her success building J-PAL, how she briefly became the face of an anti-Soviet revolution, the under-looked reasons behind the decline of geographic mobility in the United States, what rock climbing can teach us about being a good empirical economist, her daily musical move from Bach to Bob Dylan, and more. Follow us on Twitter and IG: @cowenconvos Email: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu Follow Tyler on Twitter Facebook Twitter Instagram Email
In this episode we share Oxfam's journey in measuring women's empowerment in our impact evaluations. Our Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Lead, Marina Torre, speaks to Simone Lombardini, Oxfam's Impact Evaluation Lead, who has been working in this area of work. Simone delves into the details on what methodologies have been used, the challenges the team has faced and what we have learnt. See below to access to the many references made in the episode:Oxfam’s effectiveness reviews and how they are carried out)OPHI and IFPRI’s Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (IFPRI’s resources)Still learning: a critical reflection on three years of measuring women’s empowerment in Oxfam (Journal of Gender and Development, 2013)ODI’s Review of evaluation approaches and methods used by interventions on women and girl’s economic empowerment (report, launching event)‘How To’ Guide to Measuring Women’s Empowerment: Sharing experience from Oxfam’s impact evaluations Measuring women’s empowerment so that it reflects perceptions and opinions of all women involved into the study. Pilot PIWE in Tunisia (report, blog)Oxfam’s We-CARE and Household Care Survey Real-Geek blog: Comparing questionnaire designs Rachel Glennerster and Claire Walsh’s blog – Is it time to rethink how we measure women’s household decision-making power in impact evaluations? J-PAL’s Practical Guide to Measuring Women’s and Girl’s Empowerment in Impact EvaluationsAmber Peterman and Tia Palermo’s blog – Measuring taboo topics: List randomization for research and gender-based violenceUsing internal evaluations to measure organisational impact: a meta-analysis of Oxfam’s women’s empowerment projects (journal article, report, blog)(Photo capti
Après s'être intéressés aux riches, Etienne Tabbagh et Laureen Melka se penchent maintenant sur la pauvreté et posent une question brûlante : ''les pauvres ont-ils besoin de leçon d'économie ? ''. La question est un thème d'actualité récurrent. On se souvient notamment des ''émeutes" lors des promotions de pots de Nutella en 2018 qui avaient fait la une des JTs ou, plus récemment, de cet article du journal Le Monde qui racontait le quotidien d'un couple de Gilets jaunes et détaillait leur budget - un article qui avait fait lui aussi coulé beaucoup d'encre. Dans cet épisode de Spla$h, nos deux profs d'éco s'attaquent aux préjugés entourant la question et pour y répondre, ils ont convié la chercheuse au CNRS Ana Herrin-Peredia et le directeur-adjoint du labo J-PAL en Europe Ilf Bencheickh.Sources documentaires :Article d’analyse sociologique à propos des soldes sur le Nutella http://www.slate.fr/story/157150/consommation-affaire-nutella-gate-condescendance-mepris-menages-modestesArticle du Monde sur les commentaires à propos de la gestion d’un budget serré par un couple de “gilets jaunes” https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2018/12/20/pourquoi-le-quotidien-d-un-couple-de-gilets-jaunes-derange-une-partie-des-lecteurs_5400408_3224.html?xtmc=budget_gilets_jaunes&xtcr=46Expérience d’évaluation des capacités cognitives des agriculteurs de canne à sucre de l’Etat du Tamil Nadu en Inde (revue Science en 2013) : https://www.lemonde.fr/sciences/article/2013/08/29/les-problemes-d-argent-rendent-ils-moins-intelligent_3468504_1650684.html , http://science.sciencemag.org/content/341/6149/976Ouvrage de l’économie du développement sur la pauvreté : Abhijit V. Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Repenser la pauvreté, Paris, Le Seuil, 2012Articles de la sociologue Ana Herrin-PerediaPerrin-Heredia, Ana. « Le « choix » en économie. Le cas des consommateurs pauvres », Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, vol. 199, no. 4, 2013Perrin-Heredia, Ana. « La gestion des comptes en milieux populaires : des catégories administratives désajustées par rapport aux pratiques », Informations sociales, vol. 182, no. 2, 2014Perrin-Heredia, Ana. « La mise en ordre de l'économie domestique. Accompagnement budgétaire et étiquetage de la déviance économique », Gouvernement et action publique, vol. 2, no. 2, 2013Perrin-Heredia, Ana. « Les logiques sociales de l'endettement : gestion des comptes domestiques en milieux populaires », Sociétés contemporaines, vol. 76, no. 4, 2009Spla$h est une émission d’Etienne Tabbagh produite par Nouvelles Écoutes, co-écrite et co-animée avec Laureen Melka. Cet épisode est réalisé par Marine Raut. Mixé par Laurie Galligani. Générique : Aurore Mayer-Mahieu
In this talk, Sam Carter of J-PAL and Joe Huston of GiveDirectly talk about the state of the evidence on universal basic income: what we know, what we’d like to know, and what we’re currently in the process of learning. To learn more about effective altruism, visit http://www.effectivealtruism.org To read a transcript of this video, … Continue reading EAG 2018 SF: Understanding universal basic income (Sam Carter and Joe Huston)
If I told you it's possible to deliver an extra year of ideal primary-level education for under $1, would you believe me? Hopefully not - the claim is absurd on its face. But it may be true nonetheless. The very best education interventions are phenomenally cost-effective, and they're not the kinds of things you'd expect, says Dr Rachel Glennerster. She's Chief Economist at the UK's foreign aid agency DFID, and used to run J-PAL, the world-famous anti-poverty research centre based in MIT's Economics Department, where she studied the impact of a wide range of approaches to improving education, health, and governing institutions. According to Dr Glennerster: "...when we looked at the cost effectiveness of education programs, there were a ton of zeros, and there were a ton of zeros on the things that we spend most of our money on. So more teachers, more books, more inputs, like smaller class sizes - at least in the developing world - seem to have no impact, and that's where most government money gets spent." "But measurements for the top ones - the most cost effective programs - say they deliver 460 LAYS per £100 spent ($US130). LAYS are Learning-Adjusted Years of Schooling. Each one is the equivalent of the best possible year of education you can have - Singapore-level." Links to learn more, summary and full transcript. "...the two programs that come out as spectacularly effective... well, the first is just rearranging kids in a class." "You have to test the kids, so that you can put the kids who are performing at grade two level in the grade two class, and the kids who are performing at grade four level in the grade four class, even if they're different ages - and they learn so much better. So that's why it's so phenomenally cost effective because, it really doesn't cost anything." "The other one is providing information. So sending information over the phone [for example about how much more people earn if they do well in school and graduate]. So these really small nudges. Now none of those nudges will individually transform any kid's life, but they are so cheap that you get these fantastic returns on investment - and we do very little of that kind of thing." In this episode, Dr Glennerster shares her decades of accumulated wisdom on which anti-poverty programs are overrated, which are neglected opportunities, and how we can know the difference, across a range of fields including health, empowering women and macroeconomic policy. Regular listeners will be wondering - have we forgotten all about the lessons from episode 30 of the show with Dr Eva Vivalt? She threw several buckets of cold water on the hope that we could accurately measure the effectiveness of social programs at all. According to Vivalt, her dataset of hundreds of randomised controlled trials indicates that social science findings don’t generalize well at all. The results of a trial at a school in Namibia tell us remarkably little about how a similar program will perform if delivered at another school in Namibia - let alone if it's attempted in India instead. Rachel offers a different and more optimistic interpretation of Eva's findings. To learn more and figure out who you sympathise with more, you'll just have to listen to the episode. Regardless, Vivalt and Glennerster agree that we should continue to run these kinds of studies, and today’s episode delves into the latest ideas in global health and development. Get this episode by subscribing: type '80,000 Hours' into your podcasting app. The 80,000 Hours Podcast is produced by Keiran Harris.
VoxDev's own Editor-in-Chief, Tavneet Suri, drawing insights from her work at J-PAL and VoxDev, emphasises the importance of researchers deeply engaging with, as well effectively communicating the findings of the vast body of existing research to, policymakers. Find out more at [VoxDev.org](https://voxdev.org/topic/methods-measurement/evidence-practice-time-bridge-gap)
durée : 00:57:05 - Les Savantes - par : Lauren Bastide - L'économiste Elise Huillery est professeure en économie du développement à l'Université Paris-Dauphine, chercheuse associée au J-Pal - le laboratoire créé par Esther Duflo - et membre du Conseil d'Analyse Economique. Elle étudie les moyens de lutter contre les inégalités et combat les injustices sociales. - invités : ELISE HUILLERY - ELISE HUILLERY - réalisé par : Khoï NGUYEN
As technology advances, fewer jobs require human labor. Governments from Canada to Finland are experimenting with a universal basic income scheme as a way to ensure that their constituents maintain some level of economic security, even in the face of shrinking employment opportunities. Meanwhile, a pilot study in Kenya is testing whether universal basic income can be an effective way to lift citizens out of poverty. Can guaranteeing everyone a minimum amount of money reduce or prevent poverty? What effect will a universal basic income have on the overall economy? Based at MIT, J-PAL is a network of economists who have run over 800 randomized controlled trials in over 80 countries to ensure that policy is informed by scientific evidence. Alison Fahey, Senior Policy Manager at J-PAL Global, will share insights from some of these randomized controlled trials that can help shed light on the possible impacts of universal basic income schemes.Source: Effective Altruism Global (video).
In both rich and poor countries, government policy is often based on no evidence at all and many programs don’t work. This has particularly harsh effects on the global poor - in some countries governments only spend $100 on each citizen a year so they can’t afford to waste a single dollar. Enter MIT’s Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). Since 2003 they’ve conducted experiments to figure out what policies actually help recipients, and then tried to get them implemented by governments and non-profits. Claire Walsh leads J-PAL’s Government Partnership Initiative, which works to evaluate policies and programs in collaboration with developing world governments, scale policies that have been shown to work, and generally promote a culture of evidence-based policymaking. Summary, links to career opportunities and topics discussed in the show. We discussed (her views only, not J-PAL’s): * How can they get evidence backed policies adopted? Do politicians in the developing world even care whether their programs actually work? Is the norm evidence-based policy, or policy-based evidence? * Is evidence-based policy an evidence-based strategy itself? * Which policies does she think would have a particularly large impact on human welfare relative to their cost? * How did she come to lead one of J-PAL’s departments at 29? * How do you evaluate the effectiveness of energy and environment programs (Walsh’s area of expertise), and what are the standout approaches in that area? * 80,000 Hours has warned people about the downsides of starting your career in a non-profit. Walsh started her career in a non-profit and has thrived, so are we making a mistake? * Other than J-PAL, what are the best places to work in development? What are the best subjects to study? Where can you go network to break into the sector? * Is living in poverty as bad as we think? And plenty of other things besides. We haven’t run an RCT to test whether this episode will actually help your career, but I suggest you listen anyway. Trust my intuition on this one.
Many in the social and health sciences claim their fields are facing reproducibility crises, in which researchers have failed to replicate many of the major experimental findings in their fields, and that much of the problem is due to bad research. What practices and incentives are driving the problem and how bad is it? What practical steps can we take to improve research practice, transparency, and reproducibility? Based at MIT, J-PAL is a network of economists who have run over 800 randomized controlled trials in over 80 countries to ensure that policy is informed by scientific evidence. James Turitto, head of J-PAL's Research Transparency and Reproducibility Initiative, will tackle these questions and share how trial registries, pre-publication replications, and data publication can help address these challenges in social science.Source: Effective Altruism Global (video).
Never miss another interview! Join Devin here: http://bit.ly/joindevin. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/2mdnSRv. --------------------- The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, commonly referred to as J-PAL, is based at MIT and seeks to reduce poverty by providing academic research on interventions by social entrepreneurs and others working in the space. Quentin Palfrey, the executive director of J-PAL North America, worked for the Obama Administration before taking on the role at J-PAL. He notes that the center receives its funding from MIT and other philanthropic donors. The center has a staff of more than 30 full-time employees. He says, "J-PAL North America does not charge for services or generate sales revenue." J-PAL works on global poverty. J-PAL North America focuses on poverty in the United States. A lawyer by training, Palfrey thinks about the work in terms of policy implications. The lessons from J-PAL may be more relevant to social entrepreneurs who may be betting more than some public funding on their ventures. ----------------- Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/2mdnSRv. Need a corporate social responsibility speaker? Learn more about Devin Thorpe at http://corporatesocialresponsibilityspeaker.com.
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