Dec 09, 2011

Living with the Gates Foundation

Describing the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as the world’s largest foundation is accurate but a substantial understatement. Its annual giving is more than six times larger than its closest “peer.” There are fewer than 100 US foundations that give more than $50 million annually. The Gates Foundation gives $50 million per week.

But it’s not just the amount of giving that distinguishes the foundation. As Ed Skloot puts it, the foundation “differs from the institutional norm in almost every way: in size, ambition, high-level connections, proactivity, long-term commitment, operational engagement, and public leadership.” The Gates Foundation is treading new ground, changing expectations and the policy environment of philanthropy by its very existence.

If you find these questions vital and interesting, I’d invite you to join a webinar on Living with the Gates Foundation, hosted by Stanford Social Innovation Review next week.

Aug 26, 2011

A Debate on the Role of Microcredit in Supporting Women and Girls

Jul 13, 2011

Bad News for Cynics and Optimists: An Extended Interview with Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo

Whenever I read one of Banerjee’s and Duflo’s papers or talk with them I walk away with the exhilaration that only comes from (as the economist’s would say) changing my priors—in other words, I learn something and look at the world in a new way. That’s why I was so excited to spend more than an hour talking with them this spring after Poor Economics came out. We’re publishing a transcript of that extended interview in parts because it runs to over 6000 words in its entirety. 

Over the course of the interview we discuss microcredit, microenterprise funding and growth, labor markets in developing and developed countries, the evidence for focusing on women and girls with aid programs, the debate over RCTs and how they think about their own impact on changing the world.

Jul 13, 2011

An Interview with Banerjee and Duflo, Part 4

Recently I had the opportunity to sit down with Banerjee and Duflo for an extended conversation about the small and big pictures that emerge from their research, their critics and their plan to change the world. In fact, the conversation was so extended that I’ve had to break it up into pieces. We’ll be publishing it in four parts over the next few weeks—the full interview will be available soon via Amazon Kindle.

In Part 4, we discuss Banerjee’s and Duflo’s theory of change, the bad news for optimists and cynics, whether taking responsibility away from the poor aligns with Amartya Sen’s Development as Freedom and the ongoing debate over the usefulness of RCTs.

Jun 29, 2011

An Interview with Banerjee and Duflo, Part 3

Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, co-founders of the Jameel Poverty Action Lab and co-authors of the recent book Poor Economics are at the heart of the movement to seek rigorous evidence about the lives of the poor and programs that aim to help them. As they write in Poor Economics, they believe that “we have to abandon the habit of reducing the poor to cartoon characters and take the time to really understand their lives, in all their complexity and richness.”

Recently I had the opportunity to sit down with Banerjee and Duflo for an extended conversation about the small and big pictures that emerge from their research, their critics and their plan to change the world. In fact, the conversation was so extended that I’ve had to break it up into pieces. We’ll be publishing it in four parts over the next few weeks—the full interview will be available soon via Amazon Kindle.

In Part 3, we discuss whether focusing on women and girls will yield better development results and the role of food subsidies and cash transfers in India.

Jun 20, 2011

An Interview with Banerjee and Duflo, Part 2

Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, co-founders of the Jameel Poverty Action Lab and co-authors of the recent book Poor Economics are at the heart of the movement to seek rigorous evidence about the lives of the poor and programs that aim to help them. As they write in Poor Economics, they believe that “we have to abandon the habit of reducing the poor to cartoon characters and take the time to really understand their lives, in all their complexity and richness.”

Recently I had the opportunity to sit down with Banerjee and Duflo for an extended conversation about the small and big pictures that emerge from their research, their critics and their plan to change the world. In fact, the conversation was so extended that I’ve had to break it up into pieces. We’ll be publishing it in four parts over the next few weeks—the full interview will be available soon via Amazon Kindle.

In Part 2, we discuss the state of microcredit, how we missed the obvious issues, and how to finance micro-entrepreneurs.

Jun 16, 2011

An Interview with Banerjee and Duflo, Part 1

Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, co-founders of the Jameel Poverty Action Lab and co-authors of the recent book Poor Economics are at the heart of the movement to seek rigorous evidence about the lives of the poor and programs that aim to help them. As they write in Poor Economics, they believe that “we have to abandon the habit of reducing the poor to cartoon characters and take the time to really understand their lives, in all their complexity and richness.”

Recently I had the opportunity to sit down with Banerjee and Duflo for an extended conversation about the small and big pictures that emerge from their research, their critics and their plan to change the world. In fact, the conversation was so extended that I’ve had to break it up into pieces. We’ll be publishing it in four parts over the next few weeks—the full interview will be available soon via Amazon Kindle.

In Part 1, we discuss poverty, microenterprises, franchising and labor markets.

Apr 26, 2011

Two New Books on Small Ways to Help the Poor: More Than Good Intentions and Poor Economics

Two new books from the world of development economics offer solid arguments for why all of us should care more about the small things than the big things: More Than Good Intentions, by Yale economist Dean Karlan and his co-writer Jacob Appel, and Poor Economics by MIT economists Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo.

Apr 26, 2011

Book Review: Poor Economics

Two new books from the world of development economics offer solid arguments for why all of us should care more about the small things than the big things: More than Good Intentions, by Yale economist Dean Karlan and his co-writer Jacob Appel, and Poor Economics by MIT economists Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo.

Apr 25, 2011

Thinking Small

The next time you’re urged to “think big,” give thinking small a try. The world will be better for it.