Podcast appearances and mentions of michael kremer

Global Food Policy Report IFPRI Policy Seminar 2025 Global Food Policy Report | Food Policy: Lessons and Priorities for a Changing World May 28, 2025 Over the last 50 years, the world's food systems have evolved tremendously amid major economic, environmental, and social changes. Throughout this period, policy research has played a critical role in providing evidence and analysis to inform decision-making that supports agricultural growth, better livelihoods, and improved food security, nutrition, and well-being for all. IFPRI's 2025 Global Food Policy Report—a special edition marking the Institute's 50th anniversary. This year's flagship report examines the evolution and impact of food policy research and assesses how it can better equip policymakers to meet future challenges and opportunities. Despite meaningful progress over the last half-century, conflict, climate change, rising inequality, and geopolitical tensions remain major challenges to reducing poverty, hunger, and malnutrition. As we approach 2050, policy research and analysis will be essential to help build sustainable healthy food systems in this changing world. Thematic presentations from IFPRI's leading researchers will explore the role of evidence in shaping policies over the past 50 years, as well as the potential for research to address emerging challenges and opportunities. A keynote lecture by Michael Kremer, Chair of the Innovation Commission and joint winner of the 2019 Economics Nobel Prize, will address innovations for the future. Following these remarks, a distinguished panel of experts will discuss priorities for policy research in the decades to come. Welcome Remarks Ismahane Elouafi, Executive Managing Director, CGIAR Unveiling of IFPRI's flagship Global Food Policy Report Johan Swinnen, Director General, IFPRI Christopher B. Barrett, Stephen B. and Janice G. Ashley Professor of Applied Economics and Management, Cornell University Thematic GFPR presentations James Thurlow, Director, Foresight and Policy Modeling (FPM) Unit, IFPRI Ruth Hill, Director of Markets, Trade and Institutions (MTI) Unit, IFPRI Steven Were Omamo, Director, Development Strategies and Governance (DSG) Unit and Director for Africa, IFPRI Shalini Roy, Senior Research Fellow, Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion (PGI) Unit, IFPRI and Agnes Quisumbing, Senior Research Fellow, Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion (PGI) Unit, IFPRI Stuart Gillespie, Nonresident Senior Fellow, IFPRI and Deanna Olney, Director, Nutrition, Diets, and Health (NDH), IFPRI David Spielman, Director, Innovation Policy and Scaling (IPS) Unit, IFPRI Keynote Address and Strategy Discussion: A Focus on Innovations for the Future Michael Kremer, Professor in Economics; Director of Development Innovation Lab; and Faculty Director, Development Economics Center, University of Chicago; and 2019 Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences Forward Looking Panel Discussion on Food Policy Research Priorities Moderator: Purnima Menon, Senior Director, Food and Nutrition Policy; Acting Senior Director, Transformation Strategy, IFPRI Alice Ruhweza, President, Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) Ramesh Chand, Member, National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog) Joan Matji, Global Director, Child Nutrition and Development, United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Ruben Echeverria, Senior Advisor, Agriculture Development, Gates Foundation Santiago Alba-Corral, Vice-President, Programs and Partnerships, International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada Marianne Grosclaude, Practice Manager, Agriculture and Food Global Practice, World Bank Moderator Charlotte Hebebrand, Director of Communications and Public Affairs, IFPRI Links: More about this Event: https://www.ifpri.org/event/2025-global-food-policy-report-food-policy-research-for-a-brighter-future-looking-towards-2050/ Subscribe IFPRI Insights newsletter and event announcements at www.ifpri.org/content/newsletter-subscription

John Green returns to the show to talk about tuberculosis — a disease that kills more than a million people a year. Steve has an idea for a new way to get treatment to those in need. SOURCES: John Green, best-selling author and YouTube creator. RESOURCES: Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection, by John Green (2025)."The Deadliest Infectious Disease Isn't a Science Problem. It's a Money Problem," by John Green (The Washington Post, 2024)."The Deadliest Infectious Disease of All Time," by John Green (Crash Course, 2024)."Barely Contained Rage: An Open Letter to Johnson & Johnson," by John Green (Vlogbrothers, 2023)."Designing Advance Market Commitments for New Vaccines," by Michael Kremer, Jonathan D. Levin, and Christopher M. Snyder (NBER, 2020)."Are CEOs Rewarded for Luck? The Ones Without Principals Are," by Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan (The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2001)."A Further Communication on a Remedy for Tuberculosis," by Robert Koch (The Indian Medical Gazette, 1891). EXTRAS: "His Brilliant Videos Get Millions of Views. Why Don't They Make Money?" by People I (Mostly) Admire (2025)."Sendhil Mullainathan Thinks Messing Around Is the Best Use of Your Time (Update)," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2024)."John Green's Reluctant Rocket Ship Ride (Update)" by People I (Mostly) Admire (2024)."Rajiv Shah Never Wastes a Crisis," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2024)."'There's So Many Problems — Which Ones Can I Make a Difference On?'" by People I (Mostly) Admire (2022).The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet, by John Green (2021).The Anthropocene Reviewed (podcast).Nerdfighteria.TBFighters.

For the holiday season we are joined by MBA alumnus Michael Kremer, Vice President of Marketing for the American Concrete Pipe Association. In this wide-ranging discussion, Michael shares knowledge gained over a 20+ year career in marketing, and how luck played a part in his story. The role of luck in life and business is often overlooked or underweighted. Many fall victim to this fallacy - myself included. However, luck rarely arrives for those not prepared to see it or capitalize on it. That's the role of strategy; to prepare for and navigate towards the range of opportunities most likely to present themselves. So, how do you prepare to meet luck with gratitude? Listen in.  

Kitap Kulübü'müzün 46ıncı buluşmasında Abhijit Banerjee ve Esther Duflo'nun Zor Zamanlarda İyi Ekonomi adlı kitabını konuştuk.Yazarlar son 25 yıldır yoksulluğu anlamaya kendilerini adamış MIT'de profesör evli bir çift ve 2019 yılında ekonomist Michael Kremer ile birlikte "küresel yoksulluğu hafifletmeye yönelik deneysel yaklaşımları" nedeniyle Nobel Ekonomi Ödülü'nü alıyorlar.Kitabın girişinde de anlatıldığı gibi dünya kamuoyunda ekonomistlerin repütasyonu kötü, kimin en iyi derseniz en üstte hemşireler var. Ekonomistler ise en dipteki politikacılardan sadece bir seviye üstte. Bunun nedenini genelde ekonomistlerin tek bir ideolojiye bağlı kalmaları, tarafsız, dengeli bakamamaları olarak görüyorlar. Aslında bir nevi politikacılar gibi. Görüşlerini açıklıkla ve netlikle ifade edememeleri de bir diğer sebep. Zira ekonomi gibi karışık bir olguyu fizik kuralları gibi açıklama yanılgısına düşmemek gerekiyor. Banerjee ve Duflo da önce yoksulluğa karşı önyargıları ve yanlış kabullere karşı mücadele ediyorlar, çünkü yoksulluğun ortadan kaldırılmasının bir sihirli çözümü yok, ülkeden ülkeye de farklılıklar gösteriyor.Biz kitap kulübü olarak açıkçası biraz zorlandık, zira biraz ders kitabı gibi yazılmış ve yer yer çok fazla detaya girilmiş. Yani gerçekten kitap bir mesai ayırmayı gerektiriyor. Ama kendi çıkarımlarımızı yaptık, konu biraz yapay zekaya da kaydı, iş gücünde daha fazla otomasyonun yol açacağı istihdam kaybı, dolayısıyla yoksulluk tehlikesi nedeniyle. Umarım sohbetimizi dinlediğinizde siz de bir fikir edineceksiniz, karşı karşıya olduğumuz yeni ekonomik düzen ve tartışılan konular hakkında. (02:10) Yavuz Abut, (09:29) Mete Yurtsever, (14:41) Ömer Tural Support the show

Comment la transition peut-elle prendre en compte les pays et les habitants du Sud ? L'argent promis dans les négociations internationales est-il versé aux pays du Sud ? Comment la transition peut-elle aider des populations à sortir de la pauvreté ? Quelles sont les pistes pour réussir une transition juste à l'échelle globale ?Esther Duflo est économiste, spécialiste du développement et de la lutte contre leapauvreté, professeure au MIT à Cambridge aux Etats-Unis et au Collège de France. Elle a récemment publié une série de livres jeunesse, dans une collection titrée “La pauvreté expliquée aux enfants”. Elle a reçu en 2019 le Prix Nobel d'économie - conjointement avec Abhijit Banerjee et Michael Kremer.« Chaleur humaine » est un podcast hebdomadaire de réflexion et de débat sur les manières de faire face au défi climatique. Ecoutez gratuitement chaque mardi un nouvel épisode, sur Lemonde.fr, Apple Podcast ou Spotify. Retrouvez ici tous les épisodes.Cet épisode a été produit par Cécile Cazenave et réalisé par Amandine Robillard. Musique originale : Amandine Robillard.Chaleur humaine c'est aussi un livre qui reprend 18 épisodes du podcast en version texte, que vous pouvez retrouver dans votre librairie favorite.C'est toujours une infolettre hebdomadaire à laquelle vous pouvez vous inscrire gratuitement ici. Vous pouvez toujours m'écrire et poser vos questions à l'adresse chaleurhumaine@lemonde.fr.

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. 

Michael Kremer, volunteer director of the San Quentin baseball program, joins the boys to talk about how he got involved coaching baseball at one of America's most notorious prisons (and what people think when he tells them what he does), the history of baseball at San Quentin, the diversity and skill level of the players, celebrity sightings, whether or not and scouts have shown up and that one inmate who almost went pro. You can make a donation to the San Quentin Baseball Program HERE.  

Chapter 1 To understand Poor Economics book"Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty" is a book by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo.The book presents the results of extensive fieldwork conducted by the authors in various countries, including India, Kenya, Indonesia, and Morocco. It challenges conventional approaches to poverty alleviation and calls for a more nuanced understanding of the underlying causes and consequences of poverty.Banerjee and Duflo argue that traditional economic theories often fail to address the complex realities of poverty and that policies based on these theories may not be effective in improving the lives of the poor. They advocate for a more evidence-based approach, focusing on identifying specific problems faced by the poor and implementing targeted interventions to address them.The authors examine a range of issues related to poverty, such as education, health care, microfinance, and access to resources. They explore the impact of various interventions and evaluate their effectiveness, providing practical insights and valuable lessons for policymakers, practitioners, and researchers.Poor Economics received widespread acclaim for its innovative and insightful analysis of poverty. In 2019, Abhijit V. Banerjee, along with Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty, which was heavily influenced by the ideas presented in this book.Overall, Poor Economics offers a comprehensive exploration of poverty, challenging preconceived notions and presenting a compelling case for rethinking how we tackle poverty in the world.Chapter 2 Is Poor Economics book worth the investment?Yes, "Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty" by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo is generally considered a good book. It delves into a comprehensive study of poverty and provides a unique perspective on how to effectively combat it. The book challenges conventional thinking and offers evidence-based strategies to address poverty on a global scale. It has received widespread acclaim for its insights and has won several prestigious awards, including the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award in 2011.Chapter 3 Introduction to Poor Economics book"Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty" is a book by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo that explores the causes and possible solutions to global poverty. The authors, both economists, approach the subject with a focus on empirical evidence and field experiments rather than relying solely on theoretical frameworks.The book begins by challenging traditional perceptions of the poor and their decision-making processes. The authors argue that many of the factors keeping people in poverty are complex and often overlooked. For example, they discuss how the poor face a myriad of challenges, such as lack of access to credit, inadequate healthcare, low-quality education, and limited job opportunities.Banerjee and Duflo stress the importance of understanding the poor as rational individuals who make choices based on their limited options. They use real-life examples and research to explore the impact of various policies and interventions aimed at alleviating poverty.Throughout the book, the authors emphasize the need for tailored solutions that consider the specific context and challenges faced by the poor. They advocate for small steps and gradual changes, rather than overarching, grand-scale plans. By...

Le prix Nobel d'économie 2023 a été décerné à Claudia Goldin Cette économiste de 77 ans, professeure d'économie à Harvard est récompensée pour ses études sur les inégalités entre les hommes et les femmes sur le marché du travail. Elle devient la première femme à être - seule - lauréate du Prix. Claudia Goldin ne se considère pas que comme économiste : « J'ai toujours voulu être détective, répond-elle au téléphone du jury du prix Nobel qui l'appelle peu après sa récompense. Je mène ce travail de détective dans des documents d'archives. Il fut un temps où nous n'avions pas cette énorme quantité de données à notre disposition : il fallait donc les exhumer. »Claudia Goldin va donc passer sa vie à éplucher les données et les statistiques dans les bibliothèques, dans les registres des banques et des entreprises et compile deux-cents ans d'histoire économique. Cette fouille minutieuse lui permet de dessiner une courbe de l'évolution de la participation des femmes au marché du travail sur deux siècles.L'économiste montre que la participation des Américaines au marché du travail n'évolue pas comme on pourrait le croire, de façon linéaire et continue dans le temps, mais plutôt selon les époques et les bouleversements économiques.Au début des années 1800, les femmes travaillaient par exemple massivement dans le secteur agricole. Ce n'est que plus tard, au moment de la révolution industrielle au XIXe siècle, qu'elles se retirent peu à peu de la vie active pour ensuite y revenir à partir des années 1960.Inégalités de salaires, discrimination à l'embaucheSes travaux permettent en lumière les inégalités en fonction des genres. Bien qu'une partie des écarts de rémunération entre les hommes et les femmes s'expliquent par des différences d'éducation ou de choix professionnels, Claudia Goldin démontre que l'arrivée du premier enfant est un facteur déterminant d'accroissement des disparités salariales entre les hommes et les femmes.À la fin des années 1960, Claudia Goldin décrit aussi l'avènement d'une « révolution silencieuse » avec l'arrivée de la pilule aux États-Unis. Dès lors, explique la chercheuse, les Américaines n'hésitent plus à se lancer dans de longues études comme dans le droit ou la médecine. « Pour elle, la contraception donne aux femmes le moment de choisir quand elles vont avoir des enfants et donc des carrières qui nécessitent un certain investissement, note Cecilia Garcia-Peñalosa, directrice de recherche au CNRS et membre de l'École d'économie Aix-Marseille (AMSE). Claudia Goldin considère que c'est une liberté médicale mais qui donne aussi une liberté énorme aux femmes. »PionnièreNée à Brooklyn en 1946, Claudia Goldin se rêvait d'abord biologiste. Mais c'est à l'université qu'elle découvre l'économie. En 1990, elle deviendra d'ailleurs la première femme à la tête du département d'économie de l'université de Harvard.Ce lundi 9 octobre, Claudia Goldin est devenue la première femme, récompensée seule, depuis la création du Prix Nobel d'économie en 1968. Les deux précédentes lauréates, la Française Esther Duflo (2019) et l'Américaine Elinor Olstrom (2009) l'avaient partagé avec des hommes (Abhijit Banerjee et Michael Kremer pour la première, et Oliver Williamson pour la seconde).Pionnière, Claudia Goldin l'est aussi à travers ses recherches. Personne comme elle n'avait auparavant combiné histoire et théorie économique sous l'angle de l'étude de la place des femmes sur le marché du travail, ce qui fait d'elle un pilier de « l'économie de genre ».« Pour combattre les inégalités, mieux faut-il les comprendre, les mesurer et voir les dynamiques à l'œuvre, analyse Hélène Périvier, économiste à l'Observatoire français des conjonctures économiques (OFCE) et l'une des héritières de Claudia Goldin. La participation des femmes au marché du travail dans les pays riches et démocratiques, c'est le phénomène socio-économique majeur du XXe siècle. Donc travailler sur cette question-là, récompenser les travaux qui sont venus éclairer ces dynamiques, ça me semble être quelque chose de tout à fait positif. »Seuls 16% des économistes sont des femmesLundi, à l'annonce de son prix Nobel, Claudia Goldin a salué une récompense « très importante » mais rappelé qu'il « reste de grandes inégalités ». Exemple, au sein même de sa discipline, l'économie où les Américaines ne représentaient, d'après une étude de 2017, que 16% des effectifs. C'est ainsi pour tenter d'inverser la tendance qu'elle a créé un programme pour inciter les jeunes filles à se diriger vers un cursus économique.« Claudia Goldin, explique Hélène Perivier, a permis d'éclairer la situation des femmes sur le marché du travail aux États-Unis. C'est une façon de voir quelle partie du chemin nous avons parcouru et quelle partie il reste à parcourir pour atteindre l'égalité. »

Le prix Nobel d'économie 2023 a été décerné à Claudia Goldin Cette économiste de 77 ans, professeure d'économie à Harvard est récompensée pour ses études sur les inégalités entre les hommes et les femmes sur le marché du travail. Elle devient la première femme à être - seule - lauréate du Prix. Claudia Goldin ne se considère pas que comme économiste : « J'ai toujours voulu être détective, répond-elle au téléphone du jury du prix Nobel qui l'appelle peu après sa récompense. Je mène ce travail de détective dans des documents d'archives. Il fut un temps où nous n'avions pas cette énorme quantité de données à notre disposition : il fallait donc les exhumer. »Claudia Goldin va donc passer sa vie à éplucher les données et les statistiques dans les bibliothèques, dans les registres des banques et des entreprises et compile deux-cents ans d'histoire économique. Cette fouille minutieuse lui permet de dessiner une courbe de l'évolution de la participation des femmes au marché du travail sur deux siècles.L'économiste montre que la participation des Américaines au marché du travail n'évolue pas comme on pourrait le croire, de façon linéaire et continue dans le temps, mais plutôt selon les époques et les bouleversements économiques.Au début des années 1800, les femmes travaillaient par exemple massivement dans le secteur agricole. Ce n'est que plus tard, au moment de la révolution industrielle au XIXe siècle, qu'elles se retirent peu à peu de la vie active pour ensuite y revenir à partir des années 1960.Inégalités de salaires, discrimination à l'embaucheSes travaux permettent en lumière les inégalités en fonction des genres. Bien qu'une partie des écarts de rémunération entre les hommes et les femmes s'expliquent par des différences d'éducation ou de choix professionnels, Claudia Goldin démontre que l'arrivée du premier enfant est un facteur déterminant d'accroissement des disparités salariales entre les hommes et les femmes.À la fin des années 1960, Claudia Goldin décrit aussi l'avènement d'une « révolution silencieuse » avec l'arrivée de la pilule aux États-Unis. Dès lors, explique la chercheuse, les Américaines n'hésitent plus à se lancer dans de longues études comme dans le droit ou la médecine. « Pour elle, la contraception donne aux femmes le moment de choisir quand elles vont avoir des enfants et donc des carrières qui nécessitent un certain investissement, note Cecilia Garcia-Peñalosa, directrice de recherche au CNRS et membre de l'École d'économie Aix-Marseille (AMSE). Claudia Goldin considère que c'est une liberté médicale mais qui donne aussi une liberté énorme aux femmes. »PionnièreNée à Brooklyn en 1946, Claudia Goldin se rêvait d'abord biologiste. Mais c'est à l'université qu'elle découvre l'économie. En 1990, elle deviendra d'ailleurs la première femme à la tête du département d'économie de l'université de Harvard.Ce lundi 9 octobre, Claudia Goldin est devenue la première femme, récompensée seule, depuis la création du Prix Nobel d'économie en 1968. Les deux précédentes lauréates, la Française Esther Duflo (2019) et l'Américaine Elinor Olstrom (2009) l'avaient partagé avec des hommes (Abhijit Banerjee et Michael Kremer pour la première, et Oliver Williamson pour la seconde).Pionnière, Claudia Goldin l'est aussi à travers ses recherches. Personne comme elle n'avait auparavant combiné histoire et théorie économique sous l'angle de l'étude de la place des femmes sur le marché du travail, ce qui fait d'elle un pilier de « l'économie de genre ».« Pour combattre les inégalités, mieux faut-il les comprendre, les mesurer et voir les dynamiques à l'œuvre, analyse Hélène Périvier, économiste à l'Observatoire français des conjonctures économiques (OFCE) et l'une des héritières de Claudia Goldin. La participation des femmes au marché du travail dans les pays riches et démocratiques, c'est le phénomène socio-économique majeur du XXe siècle. Donc travailler sur cette question-là, récompenser les travaux qui sont venus éclairer ces dynamiques, ça me semble être quelque chose de tout à fait positif. »Seuls 16% des économistes sont des femmesLundi, à l'annonce de son prix Nobel, Claudia Goldin a salué une récompense « très importante » mais rappelé qu'il « reste de grandes inégalités ». Exemple, au sein même de sa discipline, l'économie où les Américaines ne représentaient, d'après une étude de 2017, que 16% des effectifs. C'est ainsi pour tenter d'inverser la tendance qu'elle a créé un programme pour inciter les jeunes filles à se diriger vers un cursus économique.« Claudia Goldin, explique Hélène Perivier, a permis d'éclairer la situation des femmes sur le marché du travail aux États-Unis. C'est une façon de voir quelle partie du chemin nous avons parcouru et quelle partie il reste à parcourir pour atteindre l'égalité. »

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.   

Esther DufloCollège de FrancePauvreté et politiques publiques2022-2023Séminaire - Lutter contre la pauvreté : de la science aux politiques publiques : Fostering the Funding of Innovation in Development CooperationIntervenant(s)Michael Kremer, Professor, University of Chicago

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: Announcing the University of Chicago's $2M Market Shaping Accelerator's Innovation Challenge: Biosecurity, Pandemic Preparedness, and Climate Change, published by schethik on June 22, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. The Market Shaping Accelerator (MSA) is a new initiative at the University of Chicago aiming to accelerate innovations to address pressing global challenges. It is led by Michael Kremer, Rachel Glennerster and Christopher Snyder. Our current focus areas are climate change, biosecurity and pandemic preparedness. We recently launched the MSA Innovation Challenge, which will award up to $2,000,000 total in prizes for ideas about problems to tackle with pull incentives for innovation in these areas. Pull mechanisms reward outputs and outcomes in contrast to push funding which pay for inputs (e.g. research grants). We want to invite members of the EA community and others to submit your ideas to the challenge. We are interested in hearing from domain experts, innovators, EA organizations as well as people just interested in a problem. You can read more about the challenge here (check out the FAQ on the bottom of this page) and view the application template here. The deadline to submit for Phase I is Friday, July 21, 2023 (12 PM CT). Submissions that meet a minimum criteria will receive $4,000. Up to $500,000 in prizes will be awarded in Phase I. Ideas that are selected for entry into Phase II will benefit from support and guidance of the MSA team as well as domain specialists to help turn their ideas into fully worked up contracts. Top ideas will also gain the MSA's support in fundraising for the multi-millions or billions of dollars needed to back their pull mechanism. ITN Framework The MSA Innovation Challenge is partly informed by the ITN Framework – we are seeking to surface major problems (importance), that can plausibly be addressed by innovation (tractability), but where innovation is under-incentivized by markets (neglectedness). We would welcome both technologically close and technologically distant targets – we think pull mechanisms can accelerate innovation and scale up for both. What is pull funding? Pull mechanisms reward outputs and outcomes rather than fund inputs. They create an incentive for the private sector to invest in R&D and bring solutions to market. Advance Market Commitments (AMCs) are an example of a pull mechanism. AMCs involve promising, in advance, to purchase or subsidize the purchase of a large quantity of an innovative product if it is invented. The $1.5 billion Advance Market Commitment for the Pneumococcal Vaccine was launched in 2009. Since then three vaccines for the strains of pneumococcus common in low- and middle-income countries have been developed, hundreds of millions of doses delivered, and an estimated 700,000 lives saved. The rate of vaccine coverage for the pneumococcal vaccine in GAVI countries converged to the global rate five years faster than for the rotavirus vaccine which GAVI supported without an AMC. Pull mechanisms have important advantages: They can be designed to be firm and solution-agnostic. The funder does not have to choose a particular firm or technological path in advance, they can just commit to rewarding an effective solution. The funder does not have to pay unless the targets are met. Payment can be linked to scale and take-up. They reduce demand uncertainty – they can signal to firms there will be demand for socially useful innovations. They can incentivize solutions that appeal to consumers. The funder can provide a matching subsidy to a consumer purchase. This incentivizes firms to develop products that consumers will actually use. Further reading Advance Market Commitments: Insights from Theory and Experience The Case for More Pull Financing Making Markets for Vaccines: Ideas to Action...

In the early 90s, when a young economist named Michael Kremer finished his PhD, there had been a few economic studies based on randomized trials. But they were rare. In part because randomized trials – in which you recruit two statistically identical groups, choose one of them to get a treatment, and then compare what happens to each group – are expensive, and they take a lot of time.But then, by chance, Michael had the opportunity to run a randomized trial in Busia, Kenya. He helped a nonprofit test whether the aid they were giving to local schools helped the students. That study paved the way for more randomized trials, and for other economists to use the method. On today's show, how Busia, Kenya, became the place where economists pioneered a more scientific way to study huge problems, from contaminated water to low graduation rates, to HIV transmission. And how that research changed government programs and aid efforts around the world. This episode was produced by James Sneed with help from Willa Rubin. It was engineered by James Willetts. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez and Emma Peaslee. It was edited by Molly Messick. Jess Jiang is our acting executive producer.Help support Planet Money and get bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.

There is considerable and growing attention and interest on understanding what works, where, how, and why in development. This also means there are numerous debates on how best we ought to generate evidence and measure development success and impact. One way of measuring development impact is through randomized control trials (RCTs), which have been very useful for establishing causal relationships and providing robust and reliable evidence for evaluating the effectiveness and safety of development programs.While some regard RCTs as the gold standard, others are more critical of using it to measure what works. Critics argue that it is not just about 'what works,' but 'why things work' which should be prioritized when designing effective policies and interventions that can be scaled up. Another related aspect in this context is the generalizability puzzle, i.e., whether the results of a specific program can be generalized to other contexts. For example, there are questions about whether a study can inform policy only in the location in which it was undertaken. Should policymakers mainly rely on whatever evidence is available locally, even if it is not of very good quality? There is also the question of whether a new local randomized evaluation should be undertaken before an attempt to scale up and the number of times such evaluations should be repeated before scaling up.Rachel Glennerster is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. She uses randomized trials to study democracy and accountability, health, education, microfinance, and women's empowerment mainly in West Africa and South Asia. Rachel spent 13 years as the executive director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at MIT, a key leader in popularizing RCTs in development economics. Thereafter she served as chief economist of the United Kingdom's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). Twitter: @rglennerKey highlights:Introduction - 00:44Asking the right questions and answering them correctly - 03:45The added-value of RCTs and critique - 08:00The generalizability puzzle - 17:37Education and learning - 23:20Microfinance in India - 26:13Improving public services through participation - 34:30Impact of the media in Burkina Faso - 38:38Translating evidence into policy - 46:00Host:Professor Dan Banik (Twitter: @danbanik  @GlobalDevPod)Apple Google Spotify YouTubeSubscribe: https://globaldevpod.substack.com/https://in-pursuit-of-development.simplecast.com/

Innovation is a key long-run driver of economic growth, and wellbeing more broadly. In this talk, Michael Kremer will discuss how governments and philanthropists can accelerate innovation and shape it to meet human needs, and why doing this can have such large returns. Kremer will give examples from his current work at the Development Innovation Lab, including on developing innovations to expand access to clean water. He will also answer questions, including on his experience founding organizations.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.

Innovation is often associated with developments in information and communication technologies, but for economists, innovation is also about developing new business models and new ways for governments to deliver public services like health and education. Michael Kremer is a professor of economics at the University of Chicago and the founder of the Development Innovation Lab. His work on poverty reduction with colleagues Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee won them the Nobel Prize in economics in 2019. In the early 2000s, Kremer helped develop the design of Advance Market Commitment models used to incentivize the private sector to work on issues of relevance for the developing world. Michael Kremer was invited to deliver the IMF Richard Goode Lecture, an annual event to discuss policy issues and debates. In his talk, Kremer says commercial incentives for innovation are not always aligned with social needs, which results in underinvestment in some types of innovation and creates a role for public investment. Transcript: https://bit.ly/3ka1daT

In this podcast, Nobel laureate Michael Kremer, an economics professor at the University of Chicago, discusses digitalization experiences and lessons learned within the agricultural sector and prospects for digital rural and agricultural development. Transcript: adbi.me/3UzcXS5

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: The Case for Funding New Long-Term Randomized Controlled Trials of Deworming, published by MHR on August 4, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Summary Despite significant uncertainty in the cost-effectiveness of mass deworming, GiveWell has directed over a hundred million dollars in donations to deworming initiatives since 2011. Almost all the data underlying GiveWell's cost-effectiveness estimate comes from a single 1998 randomized trial of deworming in 75 Kenyan schools. Errors in GiveWell's estimate of cost-effectiveness (in either direction) could be driving an impactful misallocation of funding in the global health and development space, reducing the total welfare created by Effective Altruism (EA)-linked donations. A randomized controlled trial replicating the 1998 Kenya deworming trial could provide a substantial improvement in the accuracy of cost-effectiveness estimates, with a simplified model indicating the expected value of such a trial is in the millions of dollars per year. Therefore, EA-aligned donors may have made an error by not performing replication studies on the long-run economic impact of deworming and should prioritize running them in the future. More generally, this finding suggests that EA organizations may be undervaluing the information that could be gained from running experiments to replicate existing published results. Introduction Chronic parasitic infections are common in many regions of the world, including sub-Saharan Africa and parts of East Asia. Two common types of parasitic disease are schistosomiasis, which is transmitted by contaminated water, and the soil-transmitted helminth infections (STHs) trichuriasis, ascariasis, and hookworm. Mass deworming is the process of treating these diseases in areas of high prevalence by administering antiparasitic medications to large groups of people without first testing each individual for infection. The antiparasitic medications involved, praziquantel for schistosomiasis and albendazole for STHs, are cheap, have relatively few side effects, and are considered safe to administer on a large scale. There is strong evidence that deworming campaigns reduce the prevalence of parasitic disease, as well as weaker evidence that deworming campaigns improve broader life outcomes. GiveWell has included charities working on deworming in its top charities list for over a decade, with the SCI Foundation (formerly the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative) and Evidence Action's Deworm the World Initiative being the top recipients of GiveWell-directed deworming donations. As of 2020, GiveWell has directed $163 million to charities working on deworming, with this funding coming from individual donors giving to deworming organizations based on GiveWell's recommendation, GiveWell funding deworming organizations directly via its Maximum Impact Fund, and Open Philanthropy donating to deworming organizations based on GiveWell's research. GiveWell's recommendation of deworming-focused charities is based almost entirely on the limited evidence linking deworming to long-term economic benefits, particularly increases in income and consumption. Regarding impacts on health, the GiveWell brief on deworming states “evidence for the impact of deworming on short-term general health is thin. We would guess that deworming has small impacts on weight, but the evidence for its impact on other health outcomes is weak.” So-called “supplemental factors” other than the effect on income change GiveWell's overall cost-effectiveness estimate for Deworm the World by 7%. GiveWell's estimate of the long-term economic benefit produced by deworming comes from “Twenty-Year Economic Impacts of Deworming” (2021), by Joan Hamory, Edward Miguel, Michael Walker, Michael Kremer, and Sarah Baird. This paper is a 20-year follow-up to “Worms: Ident...

A University Professor in Economics and the College and the Harris School of Public Policy, Director of the Development Innovation Lab, Michael Kremer, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss Kremer's latest working paper, which examines the impact of enrolling in Bridge International Academies in Kenya. Kremer's paper, "Can Education be Standardized? Evidence from Kenya," co-written with Guthrie Gray-Lobe, Anthony Keats, Isaac Mbiti, and Owen Ozier, is available now. https://bfi.uchicago.edu/working-paper/2022-68/

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: Why Effective Altruists Should Put a Higher Priority on Funding Academic Research, published by Stuart Buck on June 25, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Since folks are interested in encouraging critiques of EA—an admirable sentiment!—I wrote the following as a good-faith, friendly, and hopefully modest critique. [Note: all of the following is about global health/development, not about long-termist endeavors. I try to make this clear throughout, but might occasionally have let slip some overly-broad phrasing.] EAs write compelling articles about why RCTs are a great way to understand the causal impact of a policy or treatment. And GiveWell's claim to fame is that it has led to many millions of dollars of donations to “several charities focusing on RCT-backed interventions as the ‘most effective' ones around the world.” But I wonder if the EA movement is allocating nearly enough money to new RCTs and program evaluations, or to R&D more broadly, so as to build out new evidence in a strategic way. After all, the agreed-upon list of the “best” interventions identified by RCTs seems . . . a bit stagnant. When I spoke at the EA Global conference in 2016, GiveWell's best ideas for global giving involved malaria, deworming, and cash transfers. When I look at GiveWell's current list of the top charities, they still are mostly focused on malaria, deworming, and cash transfers (albeit with the addition of Vitamin A supplements and a vaccine program operating in northwest Nigeria). Such a tiny set of interventions doesn't seem anywhere near the scale of the many inequities and problems in the world today. Indeed, Open Phil is offering up to $150 million in a regranting challenge, which seems to be a signal that they have more money to give away than they currently are able to deploy to existing causes. In any event, how do we know that a handful of interventions and organizations are the best ideas to fund? Because at some point in the past, someone thought to fund rigorous RCTs on anti-malaria efforts, deworming, Vitamin A, cash incentives, etc. But why would a handful of isolated ideas be the best we can possibly do? To be a bit provocative (commenters will hopefully point out corrections): We've mostly [albeit not entirely] taken the world's supply of research as a given—with all of its oversights, poorly-aligned academic incentives, and irreproducibility—and then picked the best-supported interventions we could find there. But the world's supply of program evaluations, RCTs, jurisdiction-wide studies (e.g., difference-in-differences), and implementation research is not fixed. Gates, WHO, Wellcome, the World Bank, etc., do fund a constant stream of research, but it isn't clear why we would expect them to identify and fund the most promising programs and the best studies for EA purposes. If we want to expand the list of cost-effective ideas, and if EA as a movement has more money than it knows what to do with, perhaps we should develop an EA-focused R&D agenda that is robust, coherent, and focused on the problems of effectiveness at a broad scale? Over time, we could come up with any number of ideas to add to GiveWell's list. Doesn't EA Already Fund Research? There are a number of cases where EA does indeed fund academic research on the effectiveness of interventions, such as GiveWell's recent funding of this Michael Kremer et al. meta-analysis finding that water chlorination is a highly cost-effective way of improving child mortality. GiveWell has written recently of its commitment to research on malnutrition and lead exposure, while OpenPhil has recently funded research on air quality sensors, Covid vaccines, a potential syphilis vaccine, etc. And I'm sure there are other examples I've missed. But on a closer look, not much of this research is squarely within the realm ...

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: A major update in our assessment of water quality interventions, published by GiveWell on April 26, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. As we continue to grow, GiveWell seeks to maximize both the cost-effectiveness of the funding we direct and the likely room for more funding of the programs we support. We think we've identified a category of interventions that rates really well on both: water treatment, such as chlorination. This is a major update for us. Before 2020, based on the available evidence, we didn't believe that water quality interventions had a large enough effect on mortality to make them a competitive target for funding. We've since seen new evidence that has led us to significantly increase our estimate of the mortality reduction in young children that's attributable to these interventions: a 14% reduction in mortality from any cause,[1] up from around 3%. Though we have remaining uncertainties about these numbers, we've substantially updated our view of the promisingness of water treatment. Where we previously found that Evidence Action's Dispensers for Safe Water program was about as cost-effective as unconditional cash transfers, we now believe it's about four to eight times as cost-effective, depending on the location. That was a primary factor in our decision to recommend a grant of up to $64.7 million to Dispensers for Safe Water in January 2022. We're sharing this news in brief form before we've published a grant page, because we're excited about the potential of this grant and what it represents. It's an area of work we haven't supported to a significant degree in the past, but one that we now think could absorb hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for cost-effective programming. The problem and the intervention In low-income settings, contaminated water is a major cause of diarrhea, a leading cause of death in children under five years old.[2] Several interventions exist to either purify water or protect it from contamination in the first place, but chlorination has a number of features that made it an attractive intervention for us to explore: it is inexpensive and widely used, several charities are already set up to implement it, and the technology behind it is well established.[3] Chlorine is well-known as a disinfectant; it reacts with disease-causing microorganisms in water, inactivating viruses and bacteria.[4] There is evidence that chlorination programs, such as distributing chlorine to households, reduce diarrhea in children, but there had been scant evidence that such interventions reduce mortality, which is the single largest driver of cost-effectiveness in our models of water quality interventions.[5] Before 2020, we estimated the effect chlorination had on the prevalence of diarrhea, and then extrapolated from that effect to arrive at an indirect mortality reduction estimate of roughly 3%.[6] This translated to a low cost-effectiveness estimate relative to the programs GiveWell typically funds. What led us to update In mid-2020, Michael Kremer, one of the researchers who conducted the initial trial studying dispensers for safe water, and now a researcher at the University of Chicago who has extensively studied global health interventions, shared with us preliminary results from his team's new meta-analysis of mortality data from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of water quality interventions.[7] (The working paper has since been published, here.) Pooling studies allowed Kremer's team to obtain statistically significant results from studies that weren't individually large enough to produce such results on their own. These results suggest that water treatments have a significant effect on mortality from any cause (“all-cause mortality”) in children under five—Kremer et al. currently estimate a roughly 25% reduction.[8] T...

A new meta-analysis by Michael Kremer and co-authors suggests water treatment could reduce child mortality by about 30% in low- and middle-income countries, making it a highly cost-effective treatment for saving lives. Kremer joined his co-author Stephen Luby to discuss some of their findings in an event hosted by the Development Innovation Lab and the Center for Global Development. For more information on the research, visit dil.uchicago.edu.

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: Does Economic History Point Toward a Singularity?, published by Ben Garfinkel on the Effective Altruism Forum. Write a Review I've ended up spending quite a lot of time researching premodern economic growth, as part of a hobby project that got out of hand. I'm sharing an informal but long write-up of my findings here, since I think they may be relevant to other longtermist researchers and I am unlikely to write anything more polished in the near future. Click here for the Google document.[1] Summary Over the next several centuries, is the economic growth rate likely to remain steady, radically increase, or decline back toward zero? This question has some bearing on almost every long-run challenge facing the world, from climate change to great power competition to risks from AI. One way to approach the question is to consider the long-run history of economic growth. I decided to investigate the Hyperbolic Growth Hypothesis: the claim that, from at least the start of the Neolithic Revolution up until the 20th century, the economic growth rate has tended to rise in proportion with the size of the global economy.[2] This claim is made in a classic 1993 paper by Michael Kremer. Beyond influencing other work in economic growth theory, it has also recently attracted significant attention within the longtermist community, where it is typically regarded as evidence in favor of further acceleration.[3] An especially notable property of the hypothesized growth trend is that, if it had continued without pause, it would have produced infinite growth rates in the early twenty-first century. I spent time exploring several different datasets that can be used to estimate pre-modern growth rates. This included a number of recent archeological datasets that, I believe, have not previously been analyzed by economists. I wanted to evaluate both: (a) how empirically well-grounded these estimates are and (b) how clearly these estimates display the hypothesized pattern of growth. Ultimately, I found very little empirical support for the Hyperbolic Growth Hypothesis. While we can confidently say that the economic growth rate did increase over the centuries surrounding the Industrial Revolution, there is approximately nothing to suggest that this increase was the continuation of a long-standing hyperbolic trend. The alternative hypothesis that the modern increase in growth rates constituted a one-off transition event is at least as consistent with the evidence. The premodern growth data we have is mostly extremely unreliable: For example, so far as I can tell, Kremer's estimates for the period between 10,000BC and 400BC ultimately derive from a single speculative paragraph in a book published decades earlier. Putting aside issues of reliability, the various estimates I considered also, for the most part, do not clearly indicate that pre-modern growth was hyperbolic. The most empirically well-grounded datasets we have are at least weakly in tension with the hypothesis. Overall, though, I think we are in a state of significant ignorance about pre-modern growth rates. Beyond evaluating these datasets, I also spent some time considering the growth model that Kremer uses to explain and support the Hyperbolic Growth Hypothesis. One finding is that if we use more recent data to estimate a key model parameter, the model may no longer predict hyperbolic growth: the estimation method that we use matters. Another finding, based on some shallow reading on the history of agriculture, is that the model likely overstates the role of innovation in driving pre-modern growth. Ultimately, I think we have less reason to anticipate a future explosion in the growth rate than might otherwise be supposed.[4][5] EDIT: See also this addendum comment for an explanation of why I think the alternative "phase transition" ...

Just about everyone knows correlation does not equal causation, and probably that a randomized controlled experiment is the best way to solve that problem, if you can do one. If you've been following the economics discipline you will have heard about the Nobel Prize given to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer for their work applying the experimental method to test real-world policy interventions out in the field. But what if you can't do this? Are you just stuck with untestable claims? This year's Nobel Prize to Josh Angrist, David Card, and Guido Imbens for methods of causal inference with observational data confirms that you don't have to give up. Scott Cunningham's Causal Inference: The Mixtape (Yale UP, 2021) provides an accessible practical introduction to techniques developed by these luminaries and others. Along with the statistical theory, it provides intuitive explanations of these techniques, and examples of the computer code needed to run them. In our conversation we discuss why economists needed these techniques and how they work. Scott Cunningham is a professor of economics at Baylor University. He researches topics including mental healthcare, sex work, abortion and drug policy. He is active on Twitter, has a blog on Substack, and frequently conducts workshops on causal inference methods. A complete web version of his book is available here. Host Peter Lorentzen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of San Francisco, where he leads a new digital economy-focused Master's program in Applied Economics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Just about everyone knows correlation does not equal causation, and probably that a randomized controlled experiment is the best way to solve that problem, if you can do one. If you've been following the economics discipline you will have heard about the Nobel Prize given to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer for their work applying the experimental method to test real-world policy interventions out in the field. But what if you can't do this? Are you just stuck with untestable claims? This year's Nobel Prize to Josh Angrist, David Card, and Guido Imbens for methods of causal inference with observational data confirms that you don't have to give up. Scott Cunningham's Causal Inference: The Mixtape (Yale UP, 2021) provides an accessible practical introduction to techniques developed by these luminaries and others. Along with the statistical theory, it provides intuitive explanations of these techniques, and examples of the computer code needed to run them. In our conversation we discuss why economists needed these techniques and how they work. Scott Cunningham is a professor of economics at Baylor University. He researches topics including mental healthcare, sex work, abortion and drug policy. He is active on Twitter, has a blog on Substack, and frequently conducts workshops on causal inference methods. A complete web version of his book is available here. Host Peter Lorentzen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of San Francisco, where he leads a new digital economy-focused Master's program in Applied Economics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Just about everyone knows correlation does not equal causation, and probably that a randomized controlled experiment is the best way to solve that problem, if you can do one. If you've been following the economics discipline you will have heard about the Nobel Prize given to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer for their work applying the experimental method to test real-world policy interventions out in the field. But what if you can't do this? Are you just stuck with untestable claims? This year's Nobel Prize to Josh Angrist, David Card, and Guido Imbens for methods of causal inference with observational data confirms that you don't have to give up. Scott Cunningham's Causal Inference: The Mixtape (Yale UP, 2021) provides an accessible practical introduction to techniques developed by these luminaries and others. Along with the statistical theory, it provides intuitive explanations of these techniques, and examples of the computer code needed to run them. In our conversation we discuss why economists needed these techniques and how they work. Scott Cunningham is a professor of economics at Baylor University. He researches topics including mental healthcare, sex work, abortion and drug policy. He is active on Twitter, has a blog on Substack, and frequently conducts workshops on causal inference methods. A complete web version of his book is available here. Host Peter Lorentzen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of San Francisco, where he leads a new digital economy-focused Master's program in Applied Economics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/medicine

Just about everyone knows correlation does not equal causation, and probably that a randomized controlled experiment is the best way to solve that problem, if you can do one. If you've been following the economics discipline you will have heard about the Nobel Prize given to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer for their work applying the experimental method to test real-world policy interventions out in the field. But what if you can't do this? Are you just stuck with untestable claims? This year's Nobel Prize to Josh Angrist, David Card, and Guido Imbens for methods of causal inference with observational data confirms that you don't have to give up. Scott Cunningham's Causal Inference: The Mixtape (Yale UP, 2021) provides an accessible practical introduction to techniques developed by these luminaries and others. Along with the statistical theory, it provides intuitive explanations of these techniques, and examples of the computer code needed to run them. In our conversation we discuss why economists needed these techniques and how they work. Scott Cunningham is a professor of economics at Baylor University. He researches topics including mental healthcare, sex work, abortion and drug policy. He is active on Twitter, has a blog on Substack, and frequently conducts workshops on causal inference methods. A complete web version of his book is available here. Host Peter Lorentzen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of San Francisco, where he leads a new digital economy-focused Master's program in Applied Economics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Just about everyone knows correlation does not equal causation, and probably that a randomized controlled experiment is the best way to solve that problem, if you can do one. If you've been following the economics discipline you will have heard about the Nobel Prize given to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer for their work applying the experimental method to test real-world policy interventions out in the field. But what if you can't do this? Are you just stuck with untestable claims? This year's Nobel Prize to Josh Angrist, David Card, and Guido Imbens for methods of causal inference with observational data confirms that you don't have to give up. Scott Cunningham's Causal Inference: The Mixtape (Yale UP, 2021) provides an accessible practical introduction to techniques developed by these luminaries and others. Along with the statistical theory, it provides intuitive explanations of these techniques, and examples of the computer code needed to run them. In our conversation we discuss why economists needed these techniques and how they work. Scott Cunningham is a professor of economics at Baylor University. He researches topics including mental healthcare, sex work, abortion and drug policy. He is active on Twitter, has a blog on Substack, and frequently conducts workshops on causal inference methods. A complete web version of his book is available here. Host Peter Lorentzen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of San Francisco, where he leads a new digital economy-focused Master's program in Applied Economics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

Just about everyone knows correlation does not equal causation, and probably that a randomized controlled experiment is the best way to solve that problem, if you can do one. If you've been following the economics discipline you will have heard about the Nobel Prize given to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer for their work applying the experimental method to test real-world policy interventions out in the field. But what if you can't do this? Are you just stuck with untestable claims? This year's Nobel Prize to Josh Angrist, David Card, and Guido Imbens for methods of causal inference with observational data confirms that you don't have to give up. Scott Cunningham's Causal Inference: The Mixtape (Yale UP, 2021) provides an accessible practical introduction to techniques developed by these luminaries and others. Along with the statistical theory, it provides intuitive explanations of these techniques, and examples of the computer code needed to run them. In our conversation we discuss why economists needed these techniques and how they work. Scott Cunningham is a professor of economics at Baylor University. He researches topics including mental healthcare, sex work, abortion and drug policy. He is active on Twitter, has a blog on Substack, and frequently conducts workshops on causal inference methods. A complete web version of his book is available here. Host Peter Lorentzen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of San Francisco, where he leads a new digital economy-focused Master's program in Applied Economics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/drugs-addiction-and-recovery

Just about everyone knows correlation does not equal causation, and probably that a randomized controlled experiment is the best way to solve that problem, if you can do one. If you've been following the economics discipline you will have heard about the Nobel Prize given to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer for their work applying the experimental method to test real-world policy interventions out in the field. But what if you can't do this? Are you just stuck with untestable claims? This year's Nobel Prize to Josh Angrist, David Card, and Guido Imbens for methods of causal inference with observational data confirms that you don't have to give up. Scott Cunningham's Causal Inference: The Mixtape (Yale UP, 2021) provides an accessible practical introduction to techniques developed by these luminaries and others. Along with the statistical theory, it provides intuitive explanations of these techniques, and examples of the computer code needed to run them. In our conversation we discuss why economists needed these techniques and how they work. Scott Cunningham is a professor of economics at Baylor University. He researches topics including mental healthcare, sex work, abortion and drug policy. He is active on Twitter, has a blog on Substack, and frequently conducts workshops on causal inference methods. A complete web version of his book is available here. Host Peter Lorentzen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of San Francisco, where he leads a new digital economy-focused Master's program in Applied Economics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Just about everyone knows correlation does not equal causation, and probably that a randomized controlled experiment is the best way to solve that problem, if you can do one. If you've been following the economics discipline you will have heard about the Nobel Prize given to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer for their work applying the experimental method to test real-world policy interventions out in the field. But what if you can't do this? Are you just stuck with untestable claims? This year's Nobel Prize to Josh Angrist, David Card, and Guido Imbens for methods of causal inference with observational data confirms that you don't have to give up. Scott Cunningham's Causal Inference: The Mixtape (Yale UP, 2021) provides an accessible practical introduction to techniques developed by these luminaries and others. Along with the statistical theory, it provides intuitive explanations of these techniques, and examples of the computer code needed to run them. In our conversation we discuss why economists needed these techniques and how they work. Scott Cunningham is a professor of economics at Baylor University. He researches topics including mental healthcare, sex work, abortion and drug policy. He is active on Twitter, has a blog on Substack, and frequently conducts workshops on causal inference methods. A complete web version of his book is available here. Host Peter Lorentzen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of San Francisco, where he leads a new digital economy-focused Master's program in Applied Economics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Just about everyone knows correlation does not equal causation, and probably that a randomized controlled experiment is the best way to solve that problem, if you can do one. If you've been following the economics discipline you will have heard about the Nobel Prize given to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer for their work applying the experimental method to test real-world policy interventions out in the field. But what if you can't do this? Are you just stuck with untestable claims? This year's Nobel Prize to Josh Angrist, David Card, and Guido Imbens for methods of causal inference with observational data confirms that you don't have to give up. Scott Cunningham's Causal Inference: The Mixtape (Yale UP, 2021) provides an accessible practical introduction to techniques developed by these luminaries and others. Along with the statistical theory, it provides intuitive explanations of these techniques, and examples of the computer code needed to run them. In our conversation we discuss why economists needed these techniques and how they work. Scott Cunningham is a professor of economics at Baylor University. He researches topics including mental healthcare, sex work, abortion and drug policy. He is active on Twitter, has a blog on Substack, and frequently conducts workshops on causal inference methods. A complete web version of his book is available here. Host Peter Lorentzen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of San Francisco, where he leads a new digital economy-focused Master's program in Applied Economics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Just about everyone knows correlation does not equal causation, and probably that a randomized controlled experiment is the best way to solve that problem, if you can do one. If you've been following the economics discipline you will have heard about the Nobel Prize given to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer for their work applying the experimental method to test real-world policy interventions out in the field. But what if you can't do this? Are you just stuck with untestable claims? This year's Nobel Prize to Josh Angrist, David Card, and Guido Imbens for methods of causal inference with observational data confirms that you don't have to give up. Scott Cunningham's Causal Inference: The Mixtape (Yale UP, 2021) provides an accessible practical introduction to techniques developed by these luminaries and others. Along with the statistical theory, it provides intuitive explanations of these techniques, and examples of the computer code needed to run them. In our conversation we discuss why economists needed these techniques and how they work. Scott Cunningham is a professor of economics at Baylor University. He researches topics including mental healthcare, sex work, abortion and drug policy. He is active on Twitter, has a blog on Substack, and frequently conducts workshops on causal inference methods. A complete web version of his book is available here. Host Peter Lorentzen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of San Francisco, where he leads a new digital economy-focused Master's program in Applied Economics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

Just about everyone knows correlation does not equal causation, and probably that a randomized controlled experiment is the best way to solve that problem, if you can do one. If you've been following the economics discipline you will have heard about the Nobel Prize given to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer for their work applying the experimental method to test real-world policy interventions out in the field. But what if you can't do this? Are you just stuck with untestable claims? This year's Nobel Prize to Josh Angrist, David Card, and Guido Imbens for methods of causal inference with observational data confirms that you don't have to give up. Scott Cunningham's Causal Inference: The Mixtape (Yale UP, 2021) provides an accessible practical introduction to techniques developed by these luminaries and others. Along with the statistical theory, it provides intuitive explanations of these techniques, and examples of the computer code needed to run them. In our conversation we discuss why economists needed these techniques and how they work. Scott Cunningham is a professor of economics at Baylor University. He researches topics including mental healthcare, sex work, abortion and drug policy. He is active on Twitter, has a blog on Substack, and frequently conducts workshops on causal inference methods. A complete web version of his book is available here. Host Peter Lorentzen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of San Francisco, where he leads a new digital economy-focused Master's program in Applied Economics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

Have you heard of the ‘Randomistas'? Seemingly they are taking the economics world by storm and at the heart of this group of research economists is a French-American named Esther Duflo. With her husband Abhijit Banerjee and colleague Michael Kremer, she became only the second woman to win the Nobel Prize for Economics, for her use of Randomised Control Trials, aimed at testing the efficacy of different social policies in combatting poverty and other ills in the developing (and in parts of the developed) world. Lauded by world leaders (and philanthropists with deep pockets) they have put forward a vision of economics unclouded by prejudice and politics. But in a profession seemingly divided between free marketeers and interventionists, does she successfully cut through the noise by dealing only in the data? In other words is it possible or even desirable to be free of ideology in the pursuit of economic truth and "what works"? This question and many more surrounding the life and ideas of Duflo, are discussed as always by your friendly neighbourhood economists, Pete and Gav. Technical support is provided by Nic and music comes from Jukedeck. You can create your own at Jukedeck.com

For 200 years—from 1800 to 2000—first the Industrial Revolution Age and next the Modern Economic Growth Age rolled forward, bringing previously unimaginable wealth to the global north. And the global south fell further and further behind. Don’t get us wrong—life expectancy, nutrition standards, and material well-being in 2000 were all much higher in the global south in 2000 than in 1800. But the proportional gap vis-a-vis the global north had grown to staggering and awful proportions that were a scandal, a disgrace, and a crime. But since 2000 the worm may have turned: now it looks as though the global south—virtually the entire global south—is now “converging” and catching up to the global north.References:William Baumol (1986): Productivity, Convergence, & Welfare: What the Long-Run Data Show J. Bradford DeLong (1988): Productivity, Convergence, & Welfare: Comment Paul Krugman (1991): _ Increasing Returns and Economic Geography_ Lant Pritchett (1997): Divergence, Big Time Masahisa Fujita, Paul Krugman, & Anthony J. Venables (1999): The Spatial Economy: Cities, Regions, & International TradeAlberto Alesina, William Easterly, & Janina Matuszeski (2009): Artificial States Joe Studwell (2013): How Asia Works: Success and Failure In the World's Most Dynamic Region Noah Smith (2021): _All Futurism is Afrofuturism Dev Patel, Justin Sandefur, & Arvind Subramanian (2021): The New Era of Unconditional Convergence Michael Kremer, Jack Willis, & Yang You (2021): Converging to Convergence Noah Smith: Checking in on the Global South: ‘Developing countries are catching up, but not evenly… LINK: Twirlip of the Mists: Hexapodia as the Key InsightVernor Vinge: A Fire Upon the Deep Vernor Vinge: A Deepness in the Sky Get full access to Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe

With billions of dollars a day disappearing as much of the northern hemisphere is shutdown to contain the spread of Covid-19, it is critical for vaccines to be rolled out as soon as possible. In this episode of Inside Covid-19, we focus on vaccine roll out in Africa and elsewhere. Coming up: We hear from Professor Shabir Madhi, vaccines expert at the University of the Witwatersrand, and Chief Executive Officer of AstraZeneca Pascal Soriot who says supply partners are getting ready to produce hundreds of millions of doses of their vaccine. Also in the programme, Nobel Laureate, Michael Kremer, shares insights with the International Monetary Fund on his research into how to expedite the production and distribution of the COVID-19 vaccines. We also share some highlights from the first BizNews Great Debate, which featured Panda's Nick Hudson and healthy policy expert Professor Alan Whiteside exploring the pros and cons of lockdowns to curb the spread of Covid-19. First, the Covid-19 news making world headlines.

With billions of dollars a day disappearing as much of the northern hemisphere is shutdown to contain the spread of Covid-19, it is critical for vaccines to be rolled out as soon as possible. In this episode of Inside Covid-19, we focus on vaccine roll out in Africa and elsewhere. Coming up: We hear from Professor Shabir Madhi, vaccines expert at the University of the Witwatersrand, and Chief Executive Officer of AstraZeneca Pascal Soriot who says supply partners are getting ready to produce hundreds of millions of doses of their vaccine. Also in the programme, Nobel Laureate, Michael Kremer, shares insights with the International Monetary Fund on his research into how to expedite the production and distribution of the COVID-19 vaccines. We also share some highlights from the first BizNews Great Debate, which featured Panda's Nick Hudson and healthy policy expert Professor Alan Whiteside exploring the pros and cons of lockdowns to curb the spread of Covid-19. First, the Covid-19 news making world headlines.

Peggy Frith interviews John Ledingham, professor of Clinical Medicine and former Director of Clinical Studies, 23 April 2012. Topics discussed include: (00:03:45) grand rounds and Concilia; (00:04:43) George Pickering and growth of Oxford Medical School; (00:08:15) other main drivers of the growth of the medical school including influx of young and liaison with Cambridge Medical Society and Theo Chalmers, success of medical school; (00:10:50) university and NHS; (00:12:38) student uptake; other key elements of Oxford Medical School success including: (00:15:00) alumni; (00:15:45) Osler house, teaching; (00:17:40) student opinion encouraged and equal part of team, as opposed to 'worship of the consultant'; (00:19:19) juggling teaching and research balance; (00:21:22) Medical Research Society; (00:22:35) Dphil students, including Peter Ratcliffe; (00:24:43) time as Director of Clinical Studies including what the role is there for (00:33:16) Evan Harris, MP (00:36:30) Osler House Boat Club; (00:37:30) College fees and meeting estate bursars relating to Green College; (00:38:39) women in medicine; (00:39:49) women physicians in the family, women in professorships; (00:43:25) career of mother, Una Ledingham; (00:44:37) career of wife, Elaine Ledingham; (00:45:47) treat people not diseases, what makes a good doctor or clinician; (00:49:48) the Clinical gift; (00:52:00) careers and the importance of role model; (00:55:44) particularly inspirational role model – Michael Kremer; (00:58:39) advice from his father; (01:00:26) general conversation, memorable patients, Munchausen syndrome; (01:05:00) Dick Bayliss; (01:06:50) decision to study medicine; (01:09:00) clinical school at Middlesex; (01:10:45) career path, returning to Oxford; (01:11:27) funding for Osler House refurbishment, Wing Tat Lee; (01:17:56) rowing and John Bell; (01:20:30) application decisions as Director of Clinical Studies. Note the following sections of audio are redacted: 00:13:08-13:58; 29:21-32:32; 00:33:48-00:33:58; 00:34:05- 00:36:32; 00:37:37- 00:38:22; 01:00:46-01:00:54; 01:11:38-01:13:30; 01:14:31-01:15:25.

Garett Jones is one of the smartest people I have ever talked to - and he is at his usual brilliant best in this conversation. We started by trying to see how his latest book fit into the context of less developed countries with weak rule of law. I have often remarked that Garett is underrated as a development economist. I still think so.You can listen or download to the podcast on any platform of your choice (some links here), and you can also rate us here.TranscriptTobi: WeIcome to Ideas Untrapped and today I am on with economist, Garett Jones. Garett Jones is a professor of economics at George Mason University and he has written two excellent books "Hive Mind" and "10% Less Democracy". Welcome, Garett.Garett: Thanks very much for having me, Tobi.Tobi: Thinking on the margin is something I admire so much which is what you did quite well in your latest book 10% Less Democracy. Are economists just better at this than everybody else, and if yes, why?Garett: You're right. I do try to do that a lot in the book. I agree with you, Economists, I think, are better at this than other social scientists because it's just so much a part of our training. It's so normal for us to think, do you want to buy two more peanut butter sandwiches or two fewer? Should this company hire three more workers or fire two workers? So that kind of marginalist thinking which is where... the Marginal Revolution of the 19th century embodies that. Yeah, that really helps us think about big social questions in a very productive way. When I applied this to democracy what I realised it was quickly, something that a lot of people know, which is that all of the things we call democracies are a blend of democracy with oligarchy of one form or another. So getting the balance right is more important than an all-or-nothing question. All or nothing is off the table, thank goodness, but getting the blend right between insiders and outsiders, between elite and the masses, that's something that can be evaluated and fortunately, my economist friends have evaluated it. For some people, they'll quite naturally assume that democracy means an independent judiciary, the rule of law, impartial, fairly uncorrupt government. And those things are not democracy. They are good things but they are not democracy. - GJTobi: So given all the trade-offs that are involved with social decisions and reforms, how can we be better at thinking on the margins? We live in an era of protest movement where people want sweeping changes and that's not really how society works, so how can people better train themselves to be marginalist thinkers?Garett: Yeah, you're right. There aren't that many questions where we have to go all or nothing. Most policy questions can be a question of incrementalism, so I think whenever possible we should just ask ourselves 'if I can dial this up a little bit or dial this down a little bit, which would be the better way to work? Which would be the better way to move?' Whether that's thinking about whether I want my judges to have a little bit longer terms, whether I want my voters to have a little bit more information before they walk into the voting booth, whether I want a healthcare program to be available for people who are 62 rather than 65? Just thinking about it in terms of small changes helps us better evaluate...it helps the mind better weigh the benefits versus the cost of the decision. Because when we talk about revolutionary change, there are often just too many things going on for our brains to even weigh them, to even weigh the benefits, and weigh the costs. So marginalism, I think, is better suited for human minds and fortunately most, but not all, political decisions are well suited to a little more vs a little less.Tobi: I read your book, great book by the way...Garett: Thank you very much.Tobi: The writing is fantastic, I'm a big fan. In the book, I know you are applied the 10% Less Democracy framework to rich countries...Garett: Yeah.Tobi: But I've been trying to extrapolate and apply it to developing countries, and one thing I noticed (you can shed more light on this) is, sometimes it feels like low-income and middle-income countries are torn in some kind of institutional paradox. You have multilateral institutions like [the] IMF who have these prescriptions that are bureaucratic but have long-term benefits - Central Bank independence, don't manipulate the exchange rate, keep inflation low, be responsible with your budget, and all that. And on the other side of that, you have think tanks, aid agencies and other foundations (who are also interested in development and give it advice) who seem to favour radical democratisation of everything, basically. So what do you think, as a policymaker, as a voter in a low and middle-income country, how best to approach this paradox on a mental level?Garett: I think a message that I bring up early on in the book is that most of the clear benefits of democracy come from a moderate level of democracy. As Amartya Sen, the Nobel laureate who showed that if you want to avoid famines, what you need is democracy. In modern times there's never been a famine as he defines it in a functioning democracy. But his measure for functioning democracy is a pretty basic one. It's competitive elections and a free press. And that's not too hard a standard for a lot of countries to meet and more countries are meeting it now than they were meeting it, of course, three decades ago though, perhaps, less than a couple of years ago. So if you're pushing for democratisation, I think we should draw on the best evidence we have for what it is, what kind of democracy we need to get the benefits of democracy, and that seems to be a moderate level. Also, there is a lot of lazy talk about democracy where people stuff all of the good things they like into the word democracy. For some people, they'll quite naturally assume that democracy means an independent judiciary, the rule of law, impartial, fairly uncorrupt government. And those things are not democracy. They are good things but they are not democracy. So I think just clearly speaking about what it is that you want is valuable because we realised quickly that the things we like out of modern so-called democracies are a blend of the rule of the people and the rule of insiders, with a third thing that I don't talk much about in the book directly but the rule of law - the impartial rule of law, a bureaucracy that just operates on its own according to [the] rules that have been around for a long time. That is undemocratic and it seems to be very useful. So simply talking clearly about what it is we want in a reform and is this valuable reform truly about the voice of the people or is it more about something like an independent bureaucracy? That would help us get away from this lazy jargon of calling everything good democratic.Tobi: You also discussed the relationship between democracy and growth in your book and you conclude that the evidence is a bit of a muddle. What I was thinking when I was reading that part, I thought about Chile...Garett: Uh-huhTobi: And one of the famous examples when economists and some other thinkers discuss Chile is to look at GDP growth from the Pinochet years and the democratic years, and then they conclude that, oh, GDP growth is higher after Pinochet and hence democracy is better. But again, if you look at that history a bit, you'll see that there were some things, though they weren't palatable and I'm not saying I prefer autocracies here or anything...there were some hard reforms that Pinochet pushed through that clearly had benefits even during the Chilean democracy. One such rule was the inability of the parliament to hike the budget. You either cut it low or you pass it as it is which introduced a lot of fiscal responsibility in the budgeting process. So what do you think is responsible for this muddle in the evidence in the relationship between democracy and growth? Why can't we get a really clear picture?Garett: A big problem is the real-life fact which is just that a lot of autocrats do a terrible job. They come into power and they make the place worse off. So some autocrats come to power and appear to make the country better off, or at least, it predicts better performance and other autocrats come into power and things get worse. So when we stop looking at individual anecdotes and when we pull them together and do something rigorous and statistical, the evidence that autocrats are more likely to create great reforms looked pretty weak. There are plenty of anecdotes, right? We can call them case studies where autocrats are associated with and may have put into place things that look like good pro-growth reforms. Pinochet gets a lot of credit for this kind of stories but also Park Chung-hee of South Korea. The problem is that (a) we don't have a great counterfactual (b) maybe they just got lucky. And that's why using rigorous cross-country comparisons is more useful than individual case studies and when we do that, it's very hard to find evidence that either democracy causes growth or that an autocrat taking over causes growth. It's too much of a coin flip to recommend any particular policy if our goal in choosing a government is economic growth. So this is why we should stick to the things where we have better evidence and so these big changes - autocrat in charge versus free press multi-party democracy, there there's a muddle. That's the reason why the framing in my book 10% Less Democracy is about smaller changes where we have better identified better causal stories with better testings like independent central banks, independent judges. We have more evidence for the small things than we do for the big things.Thinking in marginalist terms is important but also good public education really can improve policy if we teach true important economic ideas to people - GJTobi: Looking at this really well, is it really about voter control? Because I imagine the issues are different, for example, I think voters care a lot about Central Bank independence than, say, a national minimum wage for example. So isn't the case that in some situations or on some issues, again, sticking with Central Bank independence, politicians adjust ill-informed or ignorant and they're not necessarily responding to voter preference?Garett: That's a great point. It's always a good idea to wonder whether the politicians themselves are poorly informed and they don't have an incentive to be very well-informed on most policy issues. A friend of mine had a conversation with the prominent United States politician who I won't name and this person said...the elected official said 'my job isn't to understand all the details of the policy, that's what my staff job is. My job is to keep track of all of the other members of Congress and find out how to cut deals with them.' So their real specialty is deal-making, deal cutting. They don't know that much about the detail of policy. So you are right that basically part of the problem is that the politicians themselves don't know that much, but they need to know enough to be able to pick someone who's good to run some of these things. So running [knowing] someone who is competent to run an independent central bank, it's kind of a hard job but you can outsource that to some staff; and if you're worried about things working pretty well for a long time, then you'll task your staff with picking somebody who seems like a pretty good candidate who won't cause much trouble and who will make the economy look pretty good before the electorate. So this idea that elected officials don't know that much themselves but they do have an incentive to get some things right when they know they're going to be held accountable by the voters.Tobi: But again, wouldn't less democracy, at least, in some cases lead to populist backlash? I mean, we're seeing that with Brexit...Garett: Oh, yes.Tobi: Some part of the American polity is also in that mode. The EU is a very good example where some British voters say 'oh, we are not going to be subjected to Brussels' rule'. There's a case of Africa, also, where people respond quite negatively to what they perceive as external technocratic interventions. So wouldn't less democracy run a risk of populism in the long-term?Garett: Actually, that's a great point and it's the one that I literally never discussed in the book - it's the idea of a populist backlash. Because it's one of these things that is important and too hard to quantify. The risk of a populist backlash to 10% Less Democracy is a little bit like the risk of a doctor being reluctant to give someone tough advice about diet and exercise because the person just might not come to the doctor anymore. So this is an important question - when should informed people, when should people who are relative experts just not push that hard for the best solution because they are afraid the patient won't take the medicine? In a way that's part of the reason I stick to 10% Less Democracy. I just want people to think about a little bit longer term, a little bit more independent Central Bank because I think these things are less likely to provoke that kind of backlash. But, you're right. But know this, to the extent you're right, this should tell us something about the cost of democracy - if one of the costs of democracy is that voters don't want things that are actually good for the voters, this should be part of our understanding [of] what democracy really is. If the problem is that the voters don't want to take advice that's just some person's opinion, 'ok, well, who cares?' Voters shouldn't have to listen to some person's random opinion. But if voters don't want to take [a] medicine that's actually good for the voters themselves, that should be part of our understanding of one of the weaknesses of democracy and something we should try to find a solution to. Maybe it's the solutions I present in my book, maybe it should be something else, but understanding the weaknesses of modern democracy is important to improving it.Tobi: A good illustration of that point is trade policy. I was just reading Matthew Klein and Michael Pettis's book where they basically say that trade wars are class wars.Garett: Uh-huh.Tobi: It's a reaction. And also it's a tactic for politicians to whip up voter sentiments and possibly win votes. How can people, again, I'm quite interested especially on the key issues that matters like central banking, like trade policy... things that affect the welfare and long-term prosperity, how can voters be a lot more informed to know that taking the choices out of my hands does not really mean I'm being oppressed?Garett: Yeah. This is really an important question. Part of it is that there is some evidence that just education in schools really changes people's minds. So when my colleague Bryan Caplan - he wrote a great book Myth of the Rational Voter, and he wrote a follow-up article where he looked at whether education or IQ scores were better predictors of pro-market attitudes. And he found that particularly on free trade, there was evidence that education itself, years of education was a better predictor of pro-trade attitudes than IQ. This is a signal and it's a reminder of something that made a lot of us believe which is that one of the things you learn in school is that people in other countries are good and, sometimes, they are great people and you should care about them. Also, you might learn some complicated ideas like the benefits of free trade. So education that is focused on teaching true and important facts about public policy, I think, can be a big part of this. But there is another element, another solution is just that we should think like a marginalist and go up the marginal cost curve. Push for a little less populism on topics where the voters aren't going to resist as much. Voters around the world have been pretty cool comparatively speaking with independent central banks - letting neutral banks lend out money and respond to financial crisis, (and) I think people can kind of understand why that's better than having one political party trying to lend to its buddies all the time. So, yeah, thinking in marginalist terms is important but also good public education really can improve policy if we teach true important economic ideas to people.Tobi: Let's let's go of the cuff a bit. Why did East Asia converge faster than the rest of the developing world?Garett: This is a great question. I mean part of it you could say that they actually had pretty high levels of productivity before say about 1800. This is part of what the deep roots literature shows, of Putterman and Weil and Bill Easterly at NYU - that, like, before 1500, before the great age of exploration, East Asia was pretty close to the technological frontier for the planet as a whole and so what's happened in the last 50 years in a way is a return to trend. That's not an answer. That's just more of a reminder that sometimes the more things change the more they stay the same. But when I look for the proximate cause, something more like a proximate cause, then I turned back to my first book, Hive Mind, which is that as far back as we have data on test scores, East Asia with particular countries we had good tests on in the ’60s and early 70s - Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, and soon after that Singapore - these countries were doing pretty well on standardised tests no matter how we measure it. And I think that good cognitive skills are [a] really important ingredient of being able to jump to the technological frontier, and I think that good cognitive skills are an important part of running a good competent government. Those aren't the whole story, fortunately, China's decision to turn away from communism was one of the best decisions in all of human history; that mattered a lot for well over a billion people. But the fact that as far as we can tell, test scores, human capital as currently measured was pretty high in East Asia in the sixties and early seventies, that gave them a good solid launching pad for modern prosperity.Tobi: You've hinted I think on your Twitter feed, I'm not sure anymore, that economists know the causes of long-run prosperity. What's your explanation for that?Garett: We're really good at the proximate causes, the very nearest causes. These are simple things that come from the Solow growth model. Robert Solow, [the] Nobel Laureate, just helped us think about where do GDP come from and having a lot of machines per worker, having a way for people to use them productively is really crucial. Machines aren't your enemy, they are your friend. A lot of technology isn't your enemy, it's your friend. But when we try to look one step behind that, say, why do some nations wind up with a lot more productivity and lot more capital per worker than others, then there's more debate but a lot of people would jump just straight to something like institutions. Some places have great institutions, good competent governance, neutral rule of law, and that means the capital is willing to flow from around the world to good places. I would also add on human capital however measured - whether it's years of education or test scores are both very quite robust predictors. So economists know what works and the simplest version is one I said years ago which is, have pretty high test scores and don't be communist, and you're probably going to be rich. So if a country can find a way to raise its test scores through better run schools, through better public health, and it can avoid the massive mistake of totalitarian communism, then it's got a pretty good future ahead of it.Tobi: In your view why did you choose test scores, I mean, what's the best case for cognitive ability in human capital and long-run prosperity ahead of all these other proximate causes you mentioned like institutions or geography or industrial policy and all these other factors?Garett: The simplest version is just that it's what shows up in the data when I and others have run very serious horse races. So Eric Hanushek, professor at Stanford, leading education researcher, he's found that test scores whether you call them IQ or math and science scores are very astonishingly robust predictors of national prosperity and they really beat out years of education. There's a lot of emphasis on trying to raise measured use of education but the problem is that we know that there is schooling and then there's schooling. So if you just get a diploma but nobody ever taught you anything, the schooling didn't really make you more productive. Another reason though is because of the well-known finding from psychology research which is that skills predict kills. People who are above average in math tend to be above average in verbal stuff. People who are above average at vocabulary test tend to be better at solving three-dimensional puzzles, and so for reasons that are still poorly understood there is what I call a DaVinci effect and what others call a g-factor across mental skills. So running a modern economy at a high-level involves kind of a little bit of everything. It's a little bit of a smorgasbord, it's a little bit of a casserole. It's probably unlikely to be the case that there is going to be this one simple thing that solves all the problems. What you really want is something that is equivalent of a Swiss army knife, something that's a mediocre tool for everything rather than one tool for just one thing. And cognitive skills whether you called them IQ or g or whatever seem to be this version of sort of Swiss army knife where there's a little bit of everything. So people who do better on standardised tests tend to be a little bit more patient. Groups of folks who do better on standardised tests tend to be more cooperative, they're more likely to see the invincible hand and support market-friendly policies, they are more likely to be tolerant of others who are unlike them and these are all great things for a nation. So like I said, running a modern economy near the frontier of productivity involves a lot of little things - low corruption, competent governance, foresight, voters who understand the benefits of trade; the one thing that I can get us a lot of all those little things is higher cognitive skills.Tobi: You wrote a paper a few years ago which I like very much...Garett: Thank you.Tobi: O-ring sectors and Foolproof sectors. And if I understand your model correctly (and you're welcome to set me straight here)... so thinking about this paper and this model, if I am a high-skilled worker in Nigeria, for example, overall you're saying the returns to skill for my education and my skill level is marginal compared to a low-skilled worker. But if I move to the United States of America where obviously there are a lot more high-skilled workers than in Nigeria, the returns to my skill will still be marginal but then there's this huge gains at the national level between both countries that are pretty large, can you explain how that works?Garett: Yeah, so I'm building here on the work of Michael Kremer who just won the Nobel prize last year. He wrote a great paper about the O-ring theory of economic development. He said that a lot of economic tasks in modern economies, especially the richest economies, are kind of like building a space shuttle where if you make one mistake, even in a very complex process of launching a space shuttle, the space shuttle tend to blow up killing everyone on board. This is actually why the space shuttle challenger was destroyed because of the failure of an O-ring (basically a big piece of big rubber band) that was an important part of keeping the rocket safe. So one small failure can destroy the value of an entire product, of course, that's true with a lot of things that we value like smartphones, automobile transmissions, one broken link can destroy the whole thing. Thing is that economists without even realising it, we use another model, routinely, that's not O-ring often without thinking about it - we kind of assumed that workers of different skill levels can get to be mushed together and it's nice to have skilled workers, but maybe you can throw maybe two high-skilled workers and three low-skilled workers, maybe they are perfect substitutes for each other. You know, just throw more bodies at it and eventually the job will get done, there are certainly jobs like that. So part of what I did and really my contribution in this paper, the O-ring sector and the Foolproof sector, was to say 'what if some parts of the economy work like Michael Kremer's world where things like building a space shuttle or smartphone? Not if other things are like the way economists normally think about the world, the Foolproof sector - where if you throw enough people at it eventually the job will get done.' And I said 'what if workers have to decide which of these two sectors they are going to work in?' So let me think about you as an example... high-skilled worker, and you're trying to decide what sector you're going to work in. Well, one of the great ideas in economics is that you're going to go to where the pay is highest, ignoring all the other complications for your life, and so really the net message is that there's always going to be some combination of workers balancing between the two sectors. So if low-skilled workers are superabundant and high-skilled workers are scarce, just about all of us are going to be taking on these foolproof tasks where perfection, exact precision is not crucial. And if high-skilled workers are really abundant, most of us will be working on O-ring type tasks but there will always be some of us, sort of, in-between. This helps explain why the capital goods, hi-tech goods are made in just a few places in the world and in particular, they're usually made in places where the workers are really really expensive. You would think that firms will try to find the cheapest workers possible for any task but instead hi-tech manufacturing, especially cutting-edge hi-tech manufacturing, tends to happen in countries that are pretty high wage. The only thing that can explain this, if people are rational, is that it must be critical, it must be crucial to have high-skilled workers working on those tasks. So one of the lessons of this is that lower-skilled workers can find something really useful to do in a high wage country because if they come to a high wage country, they are competing against a lot of other high-skill workers, so all they have to do is be an okay substitute for that high-skilled worker in some tasks, maybe it's mowing lawns, maybe it's doing routine legal work and all of a sudden those workers can earn a lot more than they would in their home country. So the O-ring-Foolproof paper is in a way an important message for the value of low-skilled workers in high wage countries, but it also helps explain why cutting edge, frontier technology innovation only happens in the highest skilled countries where workers are super expensive.Tobi: The national returns to skill, how does it work with these two sectors?Garett: Well, there is an element of, sometimes, the real world is more complicated than the model, and that's, of course, true here. I have to say that I suspect there is a critical mass element to high-skilled workers. For instance, if I can bring a million of Japan's best engineers to a lower-skilled country, a million of them could run a lot of fantastic factories, be great workers and end up giving a lot of great employment opportunities to lower-skilled folks, so there is this element of...outside the model of... a critical mass element. But the O-ring-Foolproof story is a reminder that high-skilled workers who are in relatively low-skilled countries are often going to be, like, unable to make use of their full potential. Being able to have an O-ring sector of your own to go work in is really where the magic happens of economic prosperity. The greatest things that are happening and the way that economic frontiers are being built is in these O-ring sectors, and, to me, it's a reminder that this is a case for the brain drain. A case that the brain drain actually helps the world as a whole. Brain drain issues are complicated and there are lots of forces pushing both ways but I want to emphasise that there is this positive element to the brain drain which is getting high-skilled workers into countries that can make great use of high-skilled workers really helps the whole world. Has Michael Clemens has pointed out, one benefit of that is that migrants who go from low-skilled to high-skilled countries send back a lot of remittances and those remittances are super valuable. I'd like to emphasise another point, which is getting those high-skilled workers from low average-skilled countries to higher average-skilled countries means that they can contribute to the growth of ideas which makes the global pie bigger.Tobi: You sort of preempted where I was going with that. There was also this essay by Michael Clemens and I think Justin Sandefur about this brain drain issue where they sort of asserted that another element to the brain drain issue that the incentive to migrate and earn more in high wage countries leads to more production of high-skilled workers even in low-wage countries. So Nigeria exports a lot of doctors to the UK, it means a lot more students would want to be doctors so that they can migrate to the UK or wherever where they can earn a lot more than they would in their home countries. Now, here is my question: isn't there a sort of negative effect to this in that their home countries get stuck in the poverty trap... a lot of these high-growth sectors never gets built and some of these countries just depend on remittances which can be pretty tricky?Garett: Yeah. This is a hard problem. Another problem with the brain drain is that it means that the government which really needs a lot of high-skilled workers to basically run competent bureaucracies and manage difficult technical questions, a lot of those folks are gone. They've gone to move to other countries where they can earn a lot more. So I don't want to pretend that the brain drain issues are simple to resolve. But I think that the point you're making, I tend to think of it as less of a problem because people are very reluctant to move. There's a lot of evidence that people are reluctant to move from their home country and they need a really big wage premium. So if things were even sort of mediocre, if there were some moderately hi-tech positions in the home country, you would have very high rates of retention. I think that's pretty clear from the evidence from the fact that people are very reluctant to move. If they can find any excuse to stay, they stay. That's speaking a little informally but I think the data backs that up. Also though, there is this element of where the threat of exit does make home countries behave a little better. The fact that some people might leave does make a home country government say: well, we want to make ourselves more inviting. If we think about what's happened in China (to give an extreme example) over the last few decades, there's been a lot of brain drain from China as Chinese graduates, high-skilled workers often, have moved to many different countries across Asia and across Europe and North America, and one of the reasons that the Chinese government wants to be somewhat open, somewhat...wants to be unlike its totalitarian past and more like [its] authoritarian present is because they want to feel like they can come back. So the threat of exit does discipline national governments in an important way that we shouldn't forget. Brain drain means it's harder to build these hi-tech sectors that you're pointing out, but a brain drain also gives those home country governments a better incentive to behave well. I think of this as a sort of Tiebout voting with your feet story which economies should always be open to, that people voting with their feet sends a very powerful message to governments and informal and formal evidence, I think, backs up that. Tobi: Can national IQ be deliberately raised on a scale that matters? I know you talked about nutrition in hive mind. Also, I look at things like assortative mating and other things but can it really happen on a scale that moves the needle on national prosperity?Garett: This is a great question. I feel like one reason I wrote Hive Mind was to get more people thinking about the very question you asked. Like, my comparative advantage is what does IQ cause rather than what causes IQ? But I believe the Flynn Effect is real. I believe [it is], at least, substantially real. The Flynn Effect is as you know, but your listeners may not, is the longtime rise intelligence scores that's been documented around the world. Public health interventions, people getting healthier and living longer lives, I think that obviously is increasing people's cognitive skills (like, the public health element has just got to be real). I'm less confident but I'm still fairly confident that good education raises cognitive skills big enough to move the needle. And the third one is this broadly cultural story which is really Flynn, I want to attribute this to Flynn himself. My colleague Tyler Cowen and I talked about this in our podcast back in January when I was on Conversations with Tyler - IQs in East Germany rose at least five points, maybe much more, in the decade or so after the end of communism. I think there are these cultural influences on intelligence that are not just teaching to the tests, there is something about a modern open society that I think challenges the mind and makes it work better in a wide variety of settings. So I want to stick with those three right now that public health interventions are first order, good broad-based education is suggestively very important but I can't say conclusively, and then third; there is more evidence I have to say for this big cultural effect - that when your country becomes more like Popperian open society, more [a] mixture of capitalist and loosely democratic, people seem to use their brains in different ways on a regular basis that shows up on the IQ tests. Tobi: Why and I'm sure you must have experienced this maybe in discussing your work or maybe on social media and in other ways. Why is intelligence still a taboo subject so to speak? When I sit with my friends and we talk about development and I bring up Hive Mind...and people bellyache about 'oh, we can't do this or that' and you mildly suggest that 'hey guys, have you considered that our national IQ is pretty low and maybe, maybe that's why we can't get some of these things done.' There's a natural push back that you get. Why is intelligent still such a taboo subject?Garett: I think part of it is because people assume that when you're talking about intelligence you're talking about something that is supposedly a hundred percent or nearly a hundred percent genetic and something that is essential to a person in some very deep way. So I think it's very essentialist as an explanation. I think that's a mistake, I think the evidence does not support that position. And here's a test of it, because instead of using the word "intelligence", use the word "national test scores" and you talk about how education can raise test scores in an important way, then people get much less defensive about it. People are much more open to these very same ideas, the very same channels. So I think a big part of it is that intelligence sounds like something that is intrinsic to a person, unchangeable, nearly immutable and so any ascription of causation to that is personal. So I think discussing it in a Flynnian way, the way that James Flynn has, which is very evidence-based (and) where we think of intelligence as being something like an intermediate outcome... it's not the deep root cause of everything, it's an intermediate outcome that in turn is caused by other stuff. I think that opens people up to thinking about how people's minds create the economy we live in. I'd much rather talk about how our minds create the world around us than talk about what some deep, supposedly essential thing called an IQ score. Of course, the history of the misuse of IQ test is important. The mistakes and evils that have occurred in the name of intelligence research are important. But there are many other things that have been used in evil ways in the past and we cut them slack, and democracy will be, of course, one of those. But I think something about intelligence makes people think it's intrinsic, it's basically immutable and so you're telling people to despair. And if there's one thing to think about when thinking about human cognitive skills is we shouldn't think about despair, we should think about trying to find ways to improve all of the nations in the world not just the lucky few.Tobi: That's interesting. Tell us about what you're working on right now what's your next big project.Garett: I'm on sabbatical and finishing up right now and I'm writing my third book in what I call my Singapore trilogy. And that's going to be a book really about the deep roots literature which I'd mentioned earlier. I'm interested in why the past is prologue. Hive Mind is a book, in a way, about the short-run. About almost proximate causes. 10% Less Democracy is a book about the rich countries. My third book is going to be a book about the whole world and a book about persistence. A book about why the more things change, the more they stay the same. So, again, this is going to draw on the deep roots literature, it's going to draw on the late Alberto Alesina's work on cultural persistence - how migrants carry their attitudes from their home country to the country they move to to a large degree. It's been a lot of fun to write this book because it's so data-driven and it's based on a lot of research that is very influential within economics and not influential at all outside economics and my job is to change that.Tobi: You've been an advocate so speak of high-skilled migration.Garett: Uh-huh.Tobi: How does your argument square with people like Bryan Caplan and who call for open borders, I mean, just let them come?Garett: So Caplan's comic book where I make an appearance on open borders, that's a great fun read I think people should look at that and give his ideas careful attention. I like to remind people that institutions do not just create themselves ex nihilo. That they are actually created by people and I just really want people to think about that a lot. High-skilled immigration means bringing in more informed voters and low-skilled immigration means, 'well, we really need to put a lot of effort into educating those folks' and hope that they support great institutions that will keep the country rich for a very long time. Fortunately, there is a lot of evidence that even the most optimistic supporters of open borders tend to emphasise that high-skilled immigrants have a lot of positive externalities, it's easy to make that case, and less skilled immigrants have... they are more like a wash, there is probably a plus in the short to medium run but closer to a wash than with high-skilled immigration. So I want people to think hard about where good institutions come from and if people coming to your country are going to support better institutions, that should be great news. And if people [who] come to your country are likely to tear it down, you have a little bit more concern. Caplan addresses this in his book in a number of ways with his keyhole solutions. But I think the next 20 to 30 years of both academic research and historical experience will let us know which way low-skilled immigration is going to shape the government of rich countries. Tobi: Charter Cities. Are you optimistic, are you a fan? How best to think about it from a skill and immigration perspective?Garett: Yes, so, Charter Cities which is an idea that's often associated with the Nobel Laureate Paul Romer. The idea that countries should create small little areas within there that are governed by another country's rules. A country that's well-governed, frontier. So say a poor country could say 'hey, we're going to let Singapore run a small part of our country or let Singaporean legislation or Singaporean case law hold sway in this part of our country. I tend to think that the biggest barrier to charter cities as the revenge of democracy. It's very hard to avoid what voters want. I would like to believe that countries with great institutions could franchise their institutions to other poor countries, but the problem is that institutions are created by people and we need to figure out why the institutions are weak in the first country (the country that's starting the charter city). There's a pretty good chance you're going to get a revenge of democracy there and a reversion to the old ways. Some of my GMU colleagues and I have joked that Singapore should franchise it's government to a lot of countries the way McDonald's franchises it's operating model. It would be great if we could do this but it's hard to avoid the norms of democracy especially when, as I note in 10% Less Democracy, some degree of democracy is really important to have. So Charter Cities being in tension with democracy, that's the real problem we have in making Charter Cities durable. I think the solution is to have moderate Charter Cities. Countries where, say, Singaporean law or Japanese law or South Korean law is the default but the local voters can overrule it with a two-thirds vote. Something like that might be much more durable than a full charter city solution. Starting with the default of some rich country's rules but let the local voters overturn it piece by piece and build that change into the original set of rules so that people don't feel like this is out of their control. Tobi: I'm going to ask you a very specific question. So, say, I win the election in Nigeria and I ask you 'hey, Garett, my country is going to be 300 million people in 2050, what are the policies that we can embark upon right now that can get us to a middle-income country over that time period', what would be your advice?Garett: I think my biggest piece of advice would be: find a way to become a credible, attractive place for massive amounts of high-skill immigration. How do I get five million people from China, a million and [a] half people from South Korea, two million people from America to move to Nigeria? Some of those folks will, perhaps, be people of Nigerian descent, people whose ancestors are Nigerian and who want to come back. Some of those folks will be folks who just saw that there is going to be some great tax deals, some great tax incentives to move back. I think people are policy and becoming an attractive place for high-skilled immigration like Singapore is a great way to make your country richer.Tobi: Thank you very much. I've been speaking with Economist Garett Jones and it's wonderful to have you Garett.Garett: It's been great talking with you, Tobi. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.ideasuntrapped.com/subscribe

Joana Naritomi é economista da London School of Economics, na Inglaterra. A Joana é uma economista formada na UFRJ, com mestrado pela PUC-Rio e fez seu doutorado em Economia Política e Economia na Escola de Governo de Harvard, onde trabalhou com nomes como Raj Chetty, Alberto Alesina e o prêmio nobel Michael Kremer. Sua pesquisa foi publicada nos importantes periódicos de economia, como o American Economic Review e o Journal of Economic History. Joana é uma das jovens estrelas da pesquisa acadêmica em Economia Pública e Economia do Desenvolvimento. Principais artigos citados:* Consumers as Tax Auditors (2019), AER* Institutional Development and Colonial Heritage within Brazil (2012). Journal of Economic History (com R. Soares e J. Assunção)* Welfare Programs and Formal Labor Markets in Middle-Income Countries: Evidence from Conditional Cash Transfer in Brazil (2020). Working Paper. (com F. Gerard e J. Silva)De outros autores:* Who Becomes an Inventor in America? The Importance of Exposure to Innovation (2020). QJE. (A. Bell, R. Chetty, X. Jaravel, N. Petkova, J. van Reenen)* Efeitos econômicos do Programa Bolsa Família: uma análise comparativa das transferências sociais (2013). Capítulo de livro. (M. Neri, F. Vaz e P. Souza)* Power and Prosperity (1999) (Mancur Olson)

About Esther DufloEsther Duflo is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics in the Department of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a co-founder and co-director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). In her research, she seeks to understand the economic lives of the poor, with the aim to help design and evaluate social policies. She has worked on health, education, financial inclusion, environment and governance.Professor Esther Duflo's first degrees were in history and economics from Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris. She subsequently received a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT in 1999. Duflo has received numerous academic honours and prizes including 2019 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (with co-Laureates Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer), the Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences (2015), the A.SK Social Science Award (2015), Infosys Prize (2014), the David N. Kershaw Award (2011), a John Bates Clark Medal (2010), and a MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship (2009).  With Abhijit Banerjee, she wrote Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty, which won the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award in 2011 and has been translated into more than 17 languages, and the recently released Good Economics for Hard Times.Duflo is the editor of the American Economic Review, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.For further reading about Esther Duflo and her work visit the Poverty Action Lab.To view Esther's comments at the Fiduciary Investors Series click hereAbout Amanda WhiteAmanda White is responsible for the content across all Conexus Financial's institutional media and events. In addition to being the editor of Top1000funds.com, she is responsible for directing the global bi-annual Fiduciary Investors Symposium which challenges global investors on investment best practice and aims to place the responsibilities of investors in wider societal, and political contexts.  She holds a Bachelor of Economics and a Masters of Art in Journalism and has been an investment journalist for more than 25 years. She is currently a fellow in the Finance Leaders Fellowship at the Aspen Institute. The two-year program seeks to develop the next generation of responsible, community-spirited leaders in the global finance industry. What is the Fiduciary Investors series?The COVID-19 global health and economic crisis has highlighted the need for leadership and capital to be urgently targeted towards the vulnerabilities in the global economy.Through conversations with academics and asset owners, the Fiduciary Investors Podcast Series is a forward looking examination of the changing dynamics in the global economy, what a sustainable recovery looks like and how investors are positioning their portfolios.The much-loved events, the Fiduciary Investors Symposiums, act as an advocate for fiduciary capitalism and the power of asset owners to change the nature of the investment industry, including addressing principal/agent and fee problems, stabilising financial markets, and directing capital for the betterment of society and the environment. Like the event series, the podcast series, tackles the challenges long-term investors face in an environment of disruption,  and asks investors to think differently about how they make decisions and allocate capital.

A Alexandra Meira volta para o Café com Empreender 360, mas desta vez para falar sobre o livro 'Economia da Pobreza - Repensar a Pobreza e as Formas de Acabar com Ela' dos autores Abhijit V. Banerjee e Esther Duflo. Também sobre a iniciativa dos autores, em conjunto com Michael Kremer que fez com que ganhassem o prêmio Nobel de Economia 2019.

Analysis, a spoken word poet who hails from Baltimore, MD, is a lover of justice and human rights. This focus shines through all he does, be it public speaking, his work as a rad bookseller, minister, and educator, his poetry performances across the Mid-Atlantic and New England, or when he is hosting Red Emma's Mother Earth Poetry Vibe. Hear him read from his chapbook, Somewhere Through the Haze, and speak to a range of experiences including youthful conservatism, anti-Apartheid work in Southern Africa, revolutionary Christianity, and his passion for progressive activism. In the All the News We Can Handle segment, Wendy Sheridan, Mary McGinley, and Robin Renée discuss the sudden U.S. withdrawal of troops from Syria, the Nobel Prize in Economics given to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer for their experimental approach toward poverty alleviation, and the passing of Essie Mae Washington-Williams. Some very unexpected personal news also came up in the last week: Mary's husband Alan suffered a stroke. A fund has been started to help defray enormous medical bills. Please help if you can. Wendy introduces the new Geekscape segment and true to geek form, she begins with a discussion of Star Trek. Its early credo of "infinite diversity in infinite combinations" is the jumping off point. A longer version of this conversation will be available at no cost on the Leftscape Patreon page. At the top of the show, the co-hosts chat about days to celebrate or recognize including National Mole Day (October 23rd. Think chemistry, not small mammal.), National Food Day, United Nations Day (October 24th), Frankenstein Day (October 25th), National Financial Crime Fighter Day and Pumpkin Day (October 26th), Black Cat Day (October 27th), National Chocolate Day (October 28th), and National Cat Day, Oatmeal Day, Hermit Day, and World Stroke Day (October 29th). Birthdays mentions this week go to Ang Lee, Pelé, Martin Luther King III, Drake, Katy Perry, Pablo Picasso, Hillary Clinton, Seth MacFarlane, John Cleese, Bill Gates, Frank Ocean, Julia Roberts, and Bob Ross. Things to do: Please help Mary and Alan in any way you can: Medical Support for Actor/Ventriloquist Alan Semok Connect with Analysis on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and ArtistEcard Read Somewhere Through the Haze by Analysis Visit Red Emma's Mother Earth Poetry Vibe, hosted by Analysis (1st Saturdays in February, May, August, and November) Read The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander Listen to "Sticks and Stones," the latest episode of On the Media on freedom of speech and American exceptionalism. Order or download This. by Robin Renée Attend the Philcon conference on science fiction, fantasy, and horror and look for Wendy! Learn about Star Trek's "Far Beyond the Stars" and watch it on Netflix. Watch "Bob Ross vs. Pablo Picasso - Epic Rap Battles of History" httpss://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGN5xaQkFk0 Featured image of Analysis by Turtleberry Press

Nesta edição, Victor Candido acompanha Caio Augusto, Daniele Chiavenato e Paulo André com os seguintes temas: NOBEL 2019: Economia experimental é a área premiada com Michael Kremer, Abhijit Banerjee e Esther Duflo DÓLAR FUGINDO: nona semana consecutiva de fluxo líquido negativo da moeda americana no Brasil DESEMPREGO INVOLUNTÁRIO ZERO: político brasileiro propõe medida para garantir empregos na canetada Não se esqueça: nosso conteúdo não acaba por aqui. Mais análises (e memes) no site: www.terracoeconomico.com.br Trilha: Bensound 

Contro la povertà, un metodo da Nobel. E' il metodo scientifico mutuato dalla medicina e applicato all'economia ad aver fatto vincere l'ambito premio a tre economisti del Mit e di Harvard Esther Duflo, Abhijit Banerjee e Michael Kremer. Duflo, 46 anni, è la premio Nobel più giovane in assoluto. “Gli economisti – sostiene la professoressa franco-americana - sono un po' come degli idraulici, hanno il compito di riparare le tubature bucate dalle politiche pubbliche”. Memos ha ospitato Emiliano Brancaccio, economista all'università del Sannio, autore di “Il discorso del potere” (il Saggiatore, 2019). Brancaccio ha commentato i Nobel per l'economia di quest'anno e una nostra intervista a Esther Duflo, realizzata nel 2011 in occasione della presentazione a Milano di un suo libro. Chiude la puntata di oggi Loredana Taddei, tra le fondatrici di “Se non ora quando”, ex responsabile nazionale politiche femminili della Cgil.

《商界 · 早知道》每周一到周五早8点半，我们为您奉上最新鲜的商业资讯。看更多精彩资讯和优质文章，敬请关注商界和商界公众号。【中国粮食安全白皮书：吃饱饭不求人！中国实现谷物基本自给】14日，国务院新闻办公室发表《中国的粮食安全》白皮书，这是继1996年后，中国政府发表的第二部粮食白皮书。白皮书指出，中国人口占世界的近1/5，粮食产量约占世界的1/4。目前，中国人均粮食占有量达到470公斤左右，高于世界平均水平。 2019年诺贝尔经济学奖研究大大提高了应对全球贫困的能力。在短短的二十年中，他们基于实验的新方法改变了发展经济学，如今已成为一个蓬勃发展的研究领域： 【2019年诺贝尔经济学奖公布】据诺贝尔奖官网消息，瑞典斯德哥尔摩当地时间14日中午，2019年诺贝尔经济学奖揭晓，获奖者阿比吉特·巴纳吉（Abhijit Banerjee）、埃丝特·迪弗洛（Esther Duflo）和迈克尔·克雷默（Michael Kremer），以表彰他们“在减轻全球贫困方面的实验性做法”。（证券时报） 【中国演出行业协会：网络主播不需持证上岗】中国演出行业协会官方微博10月14日发布通知称，近日，网络上出现了多条关于“网络主播持证上岗”的信息，引起行业从业者和社会大众的误解。为正视听，特此向社会大众郑重声明如下： 目前，网络表演（直播）领域没有统一的职业认证体系，不存在从业准入门槛或“持证上岗”的情况。请广大网络直播从业者对各类培训、考试信息理性判断，避免上当受骗，蒙受经济损失。（@中国演出行业协会） 【国内53家主要网络直播和视频平台上线“青少年模式”】近日，国家网信办继续深入推进青少年网络防沉迷工作，统筹指导六间房、花椒直播等24家网络直播平台，搜狐视频、百度视频等9家网络视频平台统一上线“青少年模式”。在该模式下关闭站内搜索、弹幕评论、内容分享、私信聊天、拍摄发布、充值打赏等功能，仅推荐适合青少年观看的内容，确保“青少年模式”下的内容池更健康更有益。（中国网信网） 【深陷ETC指标抢夺战的银行职员开始争夺下沉市场了】眼下各大银行的ETC大战正在成为一场胶着的拉锯战：有价值的潜在客户已挖掘殆尽，寻找新的客户并非易事，然而指标任务依旧沉重。各大银行推广ETC的动机也从争夺市场转向了抢夺指标。 如今很多银行职员跑到远离高速的乡村去“开拓下沉市场”，同时，许多没有远途行驶需要的车辆也成为了各大行狩猎的目标，比如驾校的训练车等。依靠活跃的有效客户来完成既定的任务目标几乎是不可能的。（21世纪经济报道） 【大闸蟹价格跳水那…可以敞开吃了？】近日，饿了么、盒马鲜生联合发布的报告显示，大闸蟹外卖客单价同比去年下降9.3%，阳澄湖大闸蟹更是下跌31.6％。盒马生鲜普通大闸蟹的价格也较往年下降达15%。继小龙虾价格跳水后，大闸蟹价格也跳水。 【中国男性博主攻占美妆市场：男性博主展现出非同一般的观众缘】在美容美妆领域，男性博主展现出非同一般的观众缘。数据显示，中国某短视频平台上，电商美妆类博主已超过600万，美妆视频日均播放量超过6亿次。在抖音、快手、哔哩哔哩三大平台上，男性美妆博主占比超过二成。（环球时报） 【“走路就能赚钱”，趣步APP涉嫌传销、非法集资被查】在众多打着“走路赚钱”旗号的手机软件当中，“趣步”这款APP可谓异军突起，今年初还一度登上了某手机应用平台市场生活类下载量第一的位置。 简单来说，用户可以用步数在“趣步”上换购商品甚至提取现金，而且要求不算高，只要每天走够4000步，每月至少就能赚200元，而且上不封顶。近日，“趣步”却因涉嫌传销、非法集资、金融诈骗等违法行为被长沙市工商部门立案调查。（中国之声） 【敢给李嘉诚接盘的人出现了！】近日，李嘉诚旗下的长实集团被曝已将旗下大连市西岗项目出让给融创中国，交易价超过40亿元。长实集团随后确认该项目出售的消息属实，并称该项目约在半年前达成了协议出售，四个多月前签约落实。 【贾跃亭正式申请个人破产重组，目前债务净额约为20亿美金】10月14日，贾跃亭债务处理小组方面发布声明称，贾跃亭已于美国当地时间10月13日根据美国相关法律第11章主动申请个人破产重组，这将成为解决贾跃亭个人余下债务并保障债权人利益的最佳方案。Faraday Future表示，此举将彻底解决其在国内的债务问题，不会影响FF公司正常运营，对公司的股权融资和未来IPO将带来积极的帮助。（36氪） 很多并购案在资本层面的运作是迅速的，但在之后的整合中却遭遇各类问题，物美和麦德龙未来打算如何在供应链、体系、服务等方面进行对接和整合？ 【麦德龙中国总裁康德：物美控股后，不翻牌、不裁员、不降薪】距离物美拟控股麦德龙中国业务事件宣布仅3天，10月14日麦德龙中国总裁康德（Claude Sarrailh）向所有的总部员工解释此番交易事件以及后续的工作安排。 康德表示，物美控股后，麦德龙中国的管理层和员工架构不变，不会裁员，不会降薪，门店保持麦德龙品牌不变，未来依旧会以麦德龙品牌在中国发展新店。与物美的整合还需进一步细化和商议，但一定会加码数字化运作。（一财） 【马云捐赠1亿元用于研究及保护西溪湿地】马云公益基金会宣布向杭州市余杭区慈善总会捐赠1亿元人民币，用于西溪湿地的生态环境研究及保护。马云在捐赠仪式上表示：“今天的签约只是我们的第一步。我们会请世界顶级生态专家一起参与，将西溪湿地打造得像纽约中央公园一样。”公开资料显示，西溪湿地在2009年7月7日被录入国际重要湿地名录，与西湖、西泠并称杭州“三西”。（腾讯科技） 国际消息：【WTO正式支持美国对欧盟商品征收关税】据外媒报道，WTO正式支持美国对欧盟商品征收关税。此前美国政府称，欧洲对空客的补贴在过去几十年里对美国经济造成了巨大损害。上周，法国财政部长布鲁诺·勒梅尔(BrunoLe Maire)警告称，如果美国的关税在周五生效，欧洲将“别无选择，只能采取措施”。（第一财经） 【2020年起威尼斯将向游客收进城税2022年需预约进城】日前，意大利威尼斯市议会再次考量修正收取游客进城税的法案，并形成最新决议。新法案决定，2020年7月1日起，将对进入威尼斯市区游客征收进城税，并计划从2022年起，实施游客预约进入威尼斯景区。 报道称，威尼斯游客进城税将采用渐进式收费标准，按照每天的游客人数建立一套游客量化管理系统，然后根据游客的疏密程度，收取每人3欧元至10欧元的进城费。（中国新闻网）以上就是今天《商界早知道》的全部内容啦，如果觉得我们的内容不错，欢迎分享给你的好友。看更多精彩资讯和优质文章，敬请关注商界和商界微信公号。每周一到周五，《商界早知道》与你不见不散。

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《商界 · 早知道》每周一到周五早8点半，我们为您奉上最新鲜的商业资讯。看更多精彩资讯和优质文章，敬请关注商界和商界公众号。【中国粮食安全白皮书：吃饱饭不求人！中国实现谷物基本自给】14日，国务院新闻办公室发表《中国的粮食安全》白皮书，这是继1996年后，中国政府发表的第二部粮食白皮书。白皮书指出，中国人口占世界的近1/5，粮食产量约占世界的1/4。目前，中国人均粮食占有量达到470公斤左右，高于世界平均水平。 2019年诺贝尔经济学奖研究大大提高了应对全球贫困的能力。在短短的二十年中，他们基于实验的新方法改变了发展经济学，如今已成为一个蓬勃发展的研究领域： 【2019年诺贝尔经济学奖公布】据诺贝尔奖官网消息，瑞典斯德哥尔摩当地时间14日中午，2019年诺贝尔经济学奖揭晓，获奖者阿比吉特·巴纳吉（Abhijit Banerjee）、埃丝特·迪弗洛（Esther Duflo）和迈克尔·克雷默（Michael Kremer），以表彰他们“在减轻全球贫困方面的实验性做法”。（证券时报） 【中国演出行业协会：网络主播不需持证上岗】中国演出行业协会官方微博10月14日发布通知称，近日，网络上出现了多条关于“网络主播持证上岗”的信息，引起行业从业者和社会大众的误解。为正视听，特此向社会大众郑重声明如下： 目前，网络表演（直播）领域没有统一的职业认证体系，不存在从业准入门槛或“持证上岗”的情况。请广大网络直播从业者对各类培训、考试信息理性判断，避免上当受骗，蒙受经济损失。（@中国演出行业协会） 【国内53家主要网络直播和视频平台上线“青少年模式”】近日，国家网信办继续深入推进青少年网络防沉迷工作，统筹指导六间房、花椒直播等24家网络直播平台，搜狐视频、百度视频等9家网络视频平台统一上线“青少年模式”。在该模式下关闭站内搜索、弹幕评论、内容分享、私信聊天、拍摄发布、充值打赏等功能，仅推荐适合青少年观看的内容，确保“青少年模式”下的内容池更健康更有益。（中国网信网） 【深陷ETC指标抢夺战的银行职员开始争夺下沉市场了】眼下各大银行的ETC大战正在成为一场胶着的拉锯战：有价值的潜在客户已挖掘殆尽，寻找新的客户并非易事，然而指标任务依旧沉重。各大银行推广ETC的动机也从争夺市场转向了抢夺指标。 如今很多银行职员跑到远离高速的乡村去“开拓下沉市场”，同时，许多没有远途行驶需要的车辆也成为了各大行狩猎的目标，比如驾校的训练车等。依靠活跃的有效客户来完成既定的任务目标几乎是不可能的。（21世纪经济报道） 【大闸蟹价格跳水那…可以敞开吃了？】近日，饿了么、盒马鲜生联合发布的报告显示，大闸蟹外卖客单价同比去年下降9.3%，阳澄湖大闸蟹更是下跌31.6％。盒马生鲜普通大闸蟹的价格也较往年下降达15%。继小龙虾价格跳水后，大闸蟹价格也跳水。 【中国男性博主攻占美妆市场：男性博主展现出非同一般的观众缘】在美容美妆领域，男性博主展现出非同一般的观众缘。数据显示，中国某短视频平台上，电商美妆类博主已超过600万，美妆视频日均播放量超过6亿次。在抖音、快手、哔哩哔哩三大平台上，男性美妆博主占比超过二成。（环球时报） 【“走路就能赚钱”，趣步APP涉嫌传销、非法集资被查】在众多打着“走路赚钱”旗号的手机软件当中，“趣步”这款APP可谓异军突起，今年初还一度登上了某手机应用平台市场生活类下载量第一的位置。 简单来说，用户可以用步数在“趣步”上换购商品甚至提取现金，而且要求不算高，只要每天走够4000步，每月至少就能赚200元，而且上不封顶。近日，“趣步”却因涉嫌传销、非法集资、金融诈骗等违法行为被长沙市工商部门立案调查。（中国之声） 【敢给李嘉诚接盘的人出现了！】近日，李嘉诚旗下的长实集团被曝已将旗下大连市西岗项目出让给融创中国，交易价超过40亿元。长实集团随后确认该项目出售的消息属实，并称该项目约在半年前达成了协议出售，四个多月前签约落实。 【贾跃亭正式申请个人破产重组，目前债务净额约为20亿美金】10月14日，贾跃亭债务处理小组方面发布声明称，贾跃亭已于美国当地时间10月13日根据美国相关法律第11章主动申请个人破产重组，这将成为解决贾跃亭个人余下债务并保障债权人利益的最佳方案。Faraday Future表示，此举将彻底解决其在国内的债务问题，不会影响FF公司正常运营，对公司的股权融资和未来IPO将带来积极的帮助。（36氪） 很多并购案在资本层面的运作是迅速的，但在之后的整合中却遭遇各类问题，物美和麦德龙未来打算如何在供应链、体系、服务等方面进行对接和整合？ 【麦德龙中国总裁康德：物美控股后，不翻牌、不裁员、不降薪】距离物美拟控股麦德龙中国业务事件宣布仅3天，10月14日麦德龙中国总裁康德（Claude Sarrailh）向所有的总部员工解释此番交易事件以及后续的工作安排。 康德表示，物美控股后，麦德龙中国的管理层和员工架构不变，不会裁员，不会降薪，门店保持麦德龙品牌不变，未来依旧会以麦德龙品牌在中国发展新店。与物美的整合还需进一步细化和商议，但一定会加码数字化运作。（一财） 【马云捐赠1亿元用于研究及保护西溪湿地】马云公益基金会宣布向杭州市余杭区慈善总会捐赠1亿元人民币，用于西溪湿地的生态环境研究及保护。马云在捐赠仪式上表示：“今天的签约只是我们的第一步。我们会请世界顶级生态专家一起参与，将西溪湿地打造得像纽约中央公园一样。”公开资料显示，西溪湿地在2009年7月7日被录入国际重要湿地名录，与西湖、西泠并称杭州“三西”。（腾讯科技） 国际消息：【WTO正式支持美国对欧盟商品征收关税】据外媒报道，WTO正式支持美国对欧盟商品征收关税。此前美国政府称，欧洲对空客的补贴在过去几十年里对美国经济造成了巨大损害。上周，法国财政部长布鲁诺·勒梅尔(BrunoLe Maire)警告称，如果美国的关税在周五生效，欧洲将“别无选择，只能采取措施”。（第一财经） 【2020年起威尼斯将向游客收进城税2022年需预约进城】日前，意大利威尼斯市议会再次考量修正收取游客进城税的法案，并形成最新决议。新法案决定，2020年7月1日起，将对进入威尼斯市区游客征收进城税，并计划从2022年起，实施游客预约进入威尼斯景区。 报道称，威尼斯游客进城税将采用渐进式收费标准，按照每天的游客人数建立一套游客量化管理系统，然后根据游客的疏密程度，收取每人3欧元至10欧元的进城费。（中国新闻网）以上就是今天《商界早知道》的全部内容啦，如果觉得我们的内容不错，欢迎分享给你的好友。看更多精彩资讯和优质文章，敬请关注商界和商界微信公号。每周一到周五，《商界早知道》与你不见不散。

Source: Effective Altruism Global (original video).