Week of January 10, 2020

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.