Ken Bank's recent post "Social Mobile and the Missing Metrics" really started my wheels turning. Among many other things, it started me thinking about how we could be smarter in implementation so as to facilitate true impact evaluation.

 

I’m taking a class on bridging research and policy with Rohini Pande and Sendhil Mullainathan this semester.  Each week we have to answer discussion questions related to our readings, and last week mine was chosen to share with the class.  I figure that’s a pretty good sign it’s worth sharing with the world at large as well. 

In addition to the technical challenges with creating a global poverty count as outlined in my post below, there are also conceptual issues with poverty counts that I would be remiss to not include.  

First is the simple idea of a head count, as defined by those above or below a defined consumption level.  People's lives are not significantly different just below or just above that line, and yet those above are excluded from our numbers.  Small changes to the line can lead to big changes in t...

Measuring global poverty levels is hard, so hard the actual numbers might be of limited use. According to Angus Deaton, the godfather of poverty measurement, "it seems impossible to make statements about changes in world poverty when the ground underneath one's feet is changing in this way."  I thought it would be helpful to illuminate why.  

Dani Rodrik's teaching forms the basis for how I approach industrial policy - namely that governments should intervene where markets fail, and implement policies that target those failures.  This principle also forms the basis for an issue I have with how he approaches policies to promote economic growth through innovation.

This post is  a follow up to yesterday's about an article in this week's Economist that discusses the work of one of my professors, Ricardo Hausmann.  Though there are important caveats I think people need to understand (see my post), the work has tremendous value in helping us understand how the structure of economies evolve.  The real problem comes when Hausmann partners with Dani Rodrik and Charles Sable to translate his findings into policy prescriptions.  Somehow, something has gone terr...

There's an article in this week's economist about Ricardo Hausmann's product space.  I'm happy to see it getting mainstream attention.  It's incredibly important work, and it just makes intuitive sense.  But before we start using it for policy decisions, we should be aware of some of the major caveats.

To summarize, what Hausmann and Hildago did was create a mapping of products across the global economy, defining proximity by looking at the probability of a country having a comparative advanta...

Generally, I argue that access to more information via technology is good for development. Access to information (e.g. prices) improves market efficiency.  Communication flows fostered by the Internet strengthen democracy.  With this information, people are empowered to debate the direction they want their societies to move in.  I've read my Amartya Sen, after all.

Damon Horowitz, the CTO of Aardvark, is one of the smartest people you'll ever meet.  And one of the most interesting too.  After getting is master's in computer science at the MIT Media Lab and diving deep into artificial intelligence, he took his career for a left turn and got a PhD in philosophy from Stanford.  

A couple weeks ago he gave fascinating and thought provoking talk at the TEDx event in San Francisco about the boundary between machines and people.  He has a lot of interesting th...