Category: Uncategorized

• June 1, 2015

  Links I Like [5.15]

    Behavioral Economics and Development Economics Let Syrians Settle Detroit What a Beautiful Mind Left Behind – A tribute to John Nash Recent Links on the Economics of Hope: The Power of Hope is Real Hope for the world’s ultra-poor
• May 1, 2015

  Links I Like [4.15]

  Assorted links I liked from the month of April, 2015. How Democrats and Republicans Differ The Economics of Hope The Soil Paradox When Entrepreneurship Training Matters Most Yelp, for Refugees
• April 28, 2015

  “The Winners Write the History Books”

  My high school history teacher always said, “If I meet you in 30 years and you tell me you remember only one thing from my class, I want it to be that ‘the winners write the history books’”. Here is an interesting graphic recently shared by Chris Blattman and originally displayed in Bloomberg Business: This graphic…
• April 1, 2015

  Links I like [3.14]

  Some assorted links from the past month: The Professionalization of Development Volunteering Overcoming “The Resource Curse” in Africa “Not-so-reluctant entrepreneurs” and accompanying Working Paper India does Seinfeld Selected links (to papers) from Center for the Study of African Economies 2015 conferece Debunking the Myth of the Job-Stealing Immigrant with a strong candidate for quote of the year:…
• February 27, 2015

  The Impacts of Microfinance

  My last post highlighted seven randomized evaluations of microfinace programs from around the world. I’ll admit, you have to be a little wonky to read through even one of the papers completely. Luckily, Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) has created an easy to understand policy bulletin. [Read the entire brief here] Here are some highlights:…
• December 18, 2014

  Human Behavior for Economic Development

  There are three general sections in the part of the report, each covering a different aspect of the proposed framework for understanding the recent findings in human decision making. 1. Thinking Automatically Anyone who is has read or is familiar with Danny Kahneman’s book “Thinking Fast and Slow” will immediately understand this point. Human brains…
• November 25, 2014

  Unsettling Resettlement

  My research recently has been on the so-called secondary migration of refugees. I thought I’d share some informative maps I made on the impact of secondary migration on the dispersion of refugees across the United States. It is not too difficult to imagine the implications this has on US refugee assistance policy. The first map is…
• May 28, 2014

  A Behavioral Economics Approach to Development

  This is an exciting time to be applying behavioral economics to development practice and policy. In fact, much of what is discussed in this video is what I am applying to my work in Kenya with churches. This video explains why designing programs and policies is just as important, if not more important, than what…
• May 1, 2014

  Links I Like [4.14]

  1. What do development economists do? 2. Economists Aren’t All Bad Including the origins of the characterization “the dismal science”. 3. When Blind is Not Beautiful A response to that blistering post by the Boring Development blog about development field experiments not using double blind placebo methodology. 4. The Politics of Hunger: How Illusion and Greed Fan…
• November 8, 2013

  Shoes and Laces

  I recently wrote a guest blog post about the story of Sammy, one of the business owners I have had the pleasure of working with here in Kenya. I tend to dislike stories about development projects that simply focus on the story of one individual. I always wonder how this person compares to the rest…