The Back At It Edition
1. Looking Ahead: I've been pretty haphazard in announcing some important new things at FAI that are going to affect the faiV, in part directly and in part because they drive how I spend my time and what I pay attention to. First, we've received a three year grant from the Mastercard Impact Fund in collaboration with the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth to focus on Household Financial Security and on Small and Medium Enterprises. We'll be doing some original research internationally and in the US that I'm pretty excited about. But I'm most excited about two aspects of the new grant: 1) It allows us to think about issues globally without silos about developing countries or developed countries, US or non-US (and if you read the faiV regularly you know taking that perspective is one of my soapboxes, see Great Convergence below), and 2) an explicit part of our goals is to better connect research, policy and practice through what we're calling "learning communities" (and being at the nexus of research, policy and practice has always been our goal for FAI, and I where I think our greatest value lies). If you're focused on one of those topics and would like to be part of a learning community, please do reach out.
At FAI, we've also recently received support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to follow-up on and replicate research on facilitating urban-to-rural digital remittances in South Asia. The original study, in Bangladesh, found that encouraging migrants from rural villages to Dhaka to use mobile money for remittances to their home village had substantial positive impacts on consumption and savings for both senders and receivers. We'll be following up with the subjects of the original study and trying to determine to what extent similar gains are possible in other locations. It hits squarely on some important but neglected questions on migration as a household financial security strategy.
The Gates Foundation is also supporting the faiV directly, specifically to help us increase coverage from developing country researchers and other under-represented minorities, and to expand readership outside of the US/UK. In that regard, I'd definitely like your help in 2020. Would you recommend the faiV to colleagues in other countries? And when you see research from those outside the existing development economics industrial complex that deserves more attention, please do send it my way.
2. Looking Back/In Memoriam: We start the 2020s without one of the most important and influential individuals in the modern fight against extreme poverty: Sir Fasle Abed, founder of BRAC. When I do think about it, I'm flummoxed that Sir Abed was not much, much more famous than he is. He seems to fit in a category with, say, Norman Borlaug--people who profoundly changed the lives of countless people living in extreme poverty but who is nearly anonymous. Although perhaps the better analogs for Sir Abed are Sakichi and Kiichiro Toyoda, the father and son who founded Toyota and laid the groundwork for what is now known as lean manufacturing. Unlike Borlaug whose work is easier to tie directly to millions of people avoiding starvation, the Toyodas created an institution that fundamentally changed an industry (and perceptions of an entire country), and is for all intents and purposes universally respected as a key leader and innovator in its field.
BRAC is not only arguably the largest NGO in the world, but it's deep commitment to research and innovation is as unique and path-breaking as Toyota's has been to eliminating waste and improving quality. BRAC is probably most known for pioneering and documenting Oral Rehydration Therapy, and for inventing the "graduation"/Targeting the Ultra-Poor program, and for being one of the largest microfinance institutions in the world. But there are innumerable other rigorous research collaborations. Here are just a few papers from the last year based on collaborations with BRAC: 1) a women's empowerment program in Uganda, and a similar program in Sierra Leone, 2) a community health promoter program, 3) delivering microcredit to women in a mobile money account that they individually own, and 4) agricultural extension and malaria reduction. Honestly, is there any organization in the world that can compete with a publication record like that? Are there any other NGOs that have started their own universities?
But the thing that is most impressive to me about Sir Abed is that there is little doubt that BRAC will continue as it has without him. That is the ultimate mark of long-term impact. If you'd like to part of that, BRAC is hiring researchers.
3. Looking Back/Looking Ahead: I have a vested interest in saying that the most important change in development economics in the first two decades of this millennium is the rapid growth of experimental research though now I have the advantage of Nobel affirmation of that contention. Before closing the door on the Nobel-inspired reflections on the RCT "movement", and providing a window to the on-going debates and issues, World Development has a special issue with more than 50 short pieces on nearly every perspective on the topic imaginable. Of special note are Jonathan's piece on the microcredit RCTs, David McKenzie on power calculations and poverty (and David's thoughts on which of the 50+ made an impression on him), Heidi McGowan's "editor's-eye view", Sarah Baird, Joan Hamory Hicks and Owen Ozier on the research that grew from Worms, Rukmini Banerji and Madhav Chavan on the researcher/implementer partnership, Davis and Mobarak on scaling, Dillon, Karlan, Udry and Zinman on the data generation process, Vivian Hoffman and Alan de Brauw on RCTs and agricultural economics, Cyrus Samii on more reasons for experimentation, and of course, Ravallion on limitations.
If you're interested in a different look at the future, the Development Impact Blog's annual series on posts on new job market papers is a great way to get a sense of what questions and methods are capturing the best and brightest's attention, and to get a sense of some young economists to follow for the next decade. There are 16 of them, which is less than 50, but more than I can usefully link to. My quick highlights: challenges with energy technology adoption in Kenya by Susanna Berkouwer, and agricultural technology adoption in Uganda by Benedetta Lerva. Here's transit infrastructure and informality by Roman David Zarate, and the impact of failed infrastructure projects on mortality by Antonella Bancalari.
4. Great Convergence/Corrupted Economy: Certainly one of the things I'm going to continue to be paying attention to in the new year is the overall theme of the Great Convergence and the corrupted economy in the United States. For those who haven't been following along, the argument in brief is this: the economy faced by the lower 40% of the US income distribution has more in common with developing countries than it does with the economy faced by the upper 60 percent--and that one of the chief problems in that commonality is a broken system that limits opportunity and mobility.
To illustrate, here's a story about Willets Point, Queens, long a haven for migrants and how it is changing in ways that are closing off opportunities. Read this and try to find ways it would be different if the setting was Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Cape Town or Kuala Lumpur. Here's a story about the broken American health care system that, Anne Case and Angus Deaton argue, is imposing a shadow $8000 per year tax on every American, while delivering very poor quality especially to those who don't have the kinds of jobs that allow them to work the system. And then consider that Congress can't even pass a law to impose basic fairness in pricing practices in health care because a small handful of very wealthy specialty doctors simply have too much money to let it happen.
Or for other evidence on how the world is converging here's a story on how a bastion of liberal democracy has so quickly turned into a seemingly intolerant, illiberal autocracy. Extra points if you figured out which country the piece is about before clicking.
5. Financial Diaries: As with the importance of experiments in development economics, I also have a vested in highlighting financial diaries. Here's a report from the American Enterprise Institute on the value of ethnographic research in shaping public policy, with a number of specific mentions of the US Financial Diaries.
But we are not the only people doing diaries or seeing a lot of value in them. FHI360 has been using diaries to better understand the vulnerable groups they serve. Here's a post on what they've learned about the benefits and challenges of diaries (which align well with my experience), and here's a post about how they've been able to use the findings from the diaries they've conducted.
Graphic of the Week
This one was so good, I decided to leave it in for another week. Or I'm out of time and out of rhythm.
Fixing algorithms is easier than fixing people. Mostly.
