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In their new book Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty, MIT Professors Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee ask questions like “Why do the poorest people in the Indian state of Maharashtra spend 7 percent of their food budget on sugar?” and “Does having lots of children actually make you poorer?” Meanwhile, poverty continues to cripple India and other developing countries, and debates persist on who constitutes the poor and how they may be helped. How can we hope to alleviate poverty on a large and sustainable scale? How can a better understanding of poverty reshape policies and business models to improve their impact?
http://asiasociety.org/calendars/poor-economics-understanding-desires-and-choices-poor-0
Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty (2011)
Emily Oster, Bryce Millett / India / 2010
From the abstract: "We
find that introducing a new ITES center results in a 5.7% increase in
number of children enrolled; these effects are extremely
Abhijit Banerjee, Selvan Kumar, Rohini Pande, Felix Su / India / 2010
From the abstract: "Do
informational de?cits on the part of voters sustain poor quality of
governance in low income countries? We provide experimental evidence on
the role of public disclosures on candidate quality and incumbent
performance in enhancing electoral accountability
Erica Field, Seema Jayachandran, Rohini Pande / India / 2010
The authors examine the
relationship between social restrictions and the ability to benefit from
a business training; specifically, how religious community and its
relative restrictions may impact women's benefits of the training
program. The more highly restricted women in the Hindu community
benefited from the training; the restricted women in the Muslim
community did not.
David Cutler, Winnie Fung, Michael Kremer, Monica Singhal and Tom Vogl / India / 2010
Exploiting variation in
malaria prevalence during India's eradication program, malaria exposure
as children has modest effects on consumption for prime age men.
Educational attainment is unaffected for men, and results are mixed for
women.
Robert Jensen / India / 2010
A randomized evaluation of
providing jobs in rural India: "we provided three years of recruiting
services to help young women in randomly selected Indian villages get
jobs in the business process outsourcing industry. Girls in treatment
villages were more likely to be in school and had greater measured BMI."
Scott Fulford / India / 2010
From the abstract: "Using
consistent consumption data that cover a much longer time period than
most studies, my empirical findings show that increased access to bank
branches in rural India increased consumption initially, but consumption
later fell, although the long term effect was still slightly positive."
Roland Fryer / USA / 2010
From the abstract: "This
paper describes a series of school-based randomized trials in over 250
urban schools designed to test the impact of ?nancial incentives on
student achievement. In stark contrast to simple economic models, our
results suggest that student incentives increase achievement when the
rewards are given for inputs to the educational production function, but
incentives tied to output are not effective."
Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo / India / 2010
From the abstract: "This
essay brings together some recent evidence which highlights some of the
difficulties that will have to be faced by any government that is
serious about improving health-care for the poor."
Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Rachel Glennerster and Dhruva Kothari / India / 2010
A field experiment in
rural India demonstrates that reliability of healthcare supply improves
immunization rates, but only modestly. "Small incentives have large
positive impacts on the uptake of immunisation services in resource poor
areas and are more cost effective than purely improving supply."
Abhijit Banerjee, Donald Green, Jennifer Green, Rohini Pande / India / 2009
From the abstract: "We
conducted field experiments in rural India to examine the responsiveness
of voter preferences to priming about the relevance of ethnicity and
politician quality for service delivery. We used vignette experiments to
examine how voter preferences vary with information about politician
quality. We nd strong evidence that ethnic preferences are malleable."
Rikhil Bhavani / India / 2009
The author examines a
natural experiment in India "in which randomly chosen seats in local
legislatures are set aside for women for one election at a time...The
data suggest that reservations work in part by introducing into politics
women who are able to win elections after reservations are withdrawn
and by allowing parties to learn that women can win elections."
Shawn Cole / India / 2009
From the abstract:
"Studying banks in India, [the author] find[s] that government-owned
bank lending tracks the electoral cycle, with agricultural credit
increasing by 5-10 percentage points in an election year. There is
signicant cross-sectional targeting, with large increases in districts
in which the election is particularly close."
Angus Deaton, Jean Dreze / India / 2009
Caloric intake has
declined in India. Some argue this is due to reduced physical activity
or improvements in the health environment. Yet anthropometric indicators
still indicate under-nourishment in the population.
Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Rachel Glennerster / India / 2009
From the abstract: "The
public Indian health care system is plagued by high staff absence, low
effort by providers, and limited use by potential beneficiaries who
prefer private alternatives. This artice reports the results of an
experiment carried out with a district administration and a
nongovernmental organization (NGO)." While nurses initially responded to
incentives, collusion between nurses and supervisors eventually muted
the impacts.
Seema Jayachandran, Ilyana Kuziemko / India / 2009
Erica Field, Rohini Pande / India / 2008
From the abstract: "In
this paper we use data from a field experiment which randomized client
assignment to a weekly or monthly repayment schedule and find no
significant effect of type of repayment schedule on client delinquency
or default. Our findings suggest that, among micro-finance clients who
are willing to borrow at either weekly or monthly repayment schedules, a
more flexible schedule can significantly lower transaction costs
without increasing client default."
Jishnu Das, Jeffrey Hammer and Kenneth Leonard / India, Indonesia, Tanzania, Paraguay / 2008
From the abstract: "This
paper provides an overview of recent work on quality measurement of
medical care and its correlates in four low and middle-income
countries-India, Indonesia, Tanzania, and Paraguay."
Tarun Khanna / China, India / 2007
An examination of
grass-roots business development and its effects of a macro scope on
economic growth, both at the national and international levels.
Abhijit Banerjee, Rohini Pande / India / 2007
From the abstract: "This
paper examines how increased voter ethnicization, defined as a greater
preference for the party representing one's ethnic group, aspects
politician quality."
Jishnu Das, Jeffrey Hammer / India / 2007
From the abstract: "The
quality of medical care received by patients varies for two reasons:
differences in doctors' competence or differences in doctors' practice.
Using medical vignettes, we evaluated competence for a sample of doctors
in Delhi. One month later, we observed the same doctors in their
practice."
Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo / Global / 2007
From the abstract: "This
paper uses survey data from 13 countries to document the economic lives
of the poor (those living on less than $2 dollar per day per capita at
purchasing power parity ) or the extremely poor (those living on less
than $1 dollar per day)."
Pratham / India / 2005
An overview of the Indian education system by Pratham, an NGO based in Mumbai.
Jeffrey Sachs / Global / 2005
Foreign aid targeted at
known development issues - for example, health concerns - would empower
the poor to defend the rule of law in areas of corruption.
