Search Results for “evidence” – Page 3

Max Weber and the (so-called) Protestant Work Ethic

It is about time I wrote about this topic on this blog. The Freakonomics podcast ran an episode last week entitled, “Is the Protestant Work Ethic Real?” The majority of the episode focused on research by Gharad Bryan, James Choi, and Dean Karlan evaluating the effects of a faith-based development program implemented by International Care…
Five Myths About Research on Violent Conflict

A forthcoming review article in a special issue of the Journal of Development Economics reviews the economics literature on violent conflict since the review of Blattman and Miguel (2010). If you do research in this area or teach development economics, the entire article is worth a read. Of more broad application, however, is the author’s listing…
My #NEUDC2018 Recap

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of attending the North East Universities Development Consortium (NEUDC) conference. I presented my paper on the impact of the Dodd-Frank Act in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and surrounding countries (working paper available here and presentation slides here). It was an excellent conference and a wonderful experience (not least…
Contract Farming and Causal Inference

I am excited to announce that Marc Bellemare and I have a new paper out in World Development. It is a review of the contract farming literature in developing countries. In the review we do three things. First, we briefly introduce the institution of contract farming in developing countries. Second, we review evidence from the literature…
Lotteries and Life Satisfaction – A Comment on the Cardinal Treatment of Ordinal Variables

A long standing belief, held by many, is that winning the lottery actually makes people miserable. This belief is backed up by existing research in psychology finding that lottery winners were no more satisfied with their life than people who did not win the lottery. New research suggests this belief might be wrong.
‘Conflict Minerals’ and the Dodd Frank Act – New Working Paper

Seemingly everyone knows about ‘conflict minerals’. They are probably in our phones and laptops—even some of our jewelry is made out of them. Almost everyone wants to make ‘conflict minerals’ a thing of the past. Despite having little to do with Wall Street financial reform, Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act implemented a reporting requirement…
The Impact of Christian Theology on Economic Outcomes

Religion, spiritual practices, and faith are easily observable factors in the daily lives of people almost anywhere in the world. This leads many to speculate and theorize about the role of religion in driving economic and social outcomes. Positive correlations abound between religiosity and a host of factors that may influence economic success. Correlation, however,…
How Much Does the Cardinal Treatment of Ordinal Variables Matter? – New Working Paper

Concepts such as subjective well-being, satisfaction, happiness, trust, measures of quality, and even standardized test scores are all measured using an ordinal variable. This means that we know the rank of the response categories (e.g. a respondent reporting being “very satisfied” indicates they are more satisfied than if they had reported being “satisfied”), but we…
Improving Refugee Resettlement Outcomes with Machine Learning and Big Data

We are in a time in history when the population of refugees and forced displaced people has perhaps never been larger. This, along with frustrating political stalemates regarding the root causes of humanitarian crises, suggests refugee resettlement as one salient way to reduce human suffering around the world. In the world’s top (3rd country) refugee…
The Effect of School Vouchers on Spiritual Practices

A new working paper, by Daniel Hungerman, Kevin Rinz, and Jay Frymark, entitled, “Beyond the Classroom: The Implications of School Vouchers for Church Finances“, was just released via the NBER working paper series. Although the paper still needs to be peer reviewed, I think it provides valuable insight. Here is the abstract (emphasis added):