The IWD Edition
1. The OGs: I can't think about who influences me without beginning with Esther Duflo, Erica Field, Rohini Pande, Tavneet Suri (special links to two new papers that would have been in the faiV in a normal week--on the impact of digital credit in Kenya, and UBI in developing countries) and Rachel Glennerster.
2. New Views on Microcredit: Because I'm framing this around research that has influenced me and appeared in the faiV, I've organized these into topical buckets that make sense to me. But keep in mind, that may not be the only thing these economists work on. Cynthia Kinnan and Emily Breza have dug into the Spandana RCT to understand heterogeneity of results, and to used the AP repayment crisis and fallout to understand the general equilibrium effects of microcredit. Natalia Rigol with some of the OGs above followed up on the differential returns to capital between men and women from earlier studies finding the differences are largely due to intrahousehold allocation, not gender; she's also looked into how to better target microcredit to high-ability borrowers. Gisella Kagy and Morgan Hardy uncoverbarriers that women-owned microenterprises face. Rachael Meager creatively usesstatistical techniques to better understand heterogeneity in microcredit impact results. Isabelle Guerin provides insight on why microcredit can go wrong.
3. Savings: I will confess that I have a lot of questions about the savings literature. But that's mainly because of the work of these economists. Pascaline Dupas, of course. Silvia Prina tests encouraging savings in Nepal, while Lore Vandewalle tries to build savings habits in India. Jessica Goldberg runs very creative experiments to understand how savings affects decisions. Simone Schaner studies intrahousehold choices around savings.
4. Related Development Topics: I feel a special burden here to point out the non-comprehensiveness of this item. These are economists whose work comes to mind often as I try to puzzle through evidence. Dina Pomeranz could have been in the savings items above, but she also does lots of interesting things on taxation in developing countries. Seema Jayachandran on cash transfers and changing behavior via payments. Pam Jakiela's work on intrahousehold bargaining and on occupational choices. Oriana Bandiera's work on labor markets.
5. US Household and Micro- Finance: A different kind of caveat here. These are women I work with closely who aren't economists, but whose work is important to understanding household and microfinance in the United States. Joyce Klein is the expert on US microfinance in practice as far as I'm concerned. Ida Rademacher,Joanna Smith-Ramani, Genevieve Melford and Katherine McKay are doing great work delving into US household finance, particularly through the Expanding Prosperity Impact Collaborative on topics like income volatility and consumer debt.
From Tatyana Derugina, via Annette Brown. Though in my experience the trend line is similar to publishing in every other domain I've been a part of.
