Philanthropy Action News and Commentary

IPA/CEGA Education Event: Does More Education Empower Women

2012-03-09T01:08:08-05:00

Michael Kremer from Harvard University presented in the second half of the morning on the results of a study he conducted to assess whether empowerment and political engagement increase for girls who stay in school longer.

IPA/CEGA Education Event: Findings on Computer-Aided Instruction

2012-03-06T20:43:46-05:00

IPA/CEGA Education Event: Affecting Student Learning

2012-03-05T17:06:51-05:00

This post summarizes findings from a group of studies in education that were presented on March 1, 2012 at a half day event hosted by Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) and the University of California’s Center for Evaluation for Global Action (CEGA). Please forgive any errors or omissions.

Excerpt from Interview with David McKenzie, Part II

2012-02-13T07:25:01-05:00

For my upcoming book, Experimental Conversations, I’m interviewing a variety of economists conducting field experiments on poverty interventions. Here’s the second excerpt from my interview with David McKenzie, an economist at the World Bank (and now prolific blogger at the World Bank’s Development Impact blog) who has been studying the dynamics of microenterprises. David’s goal is to better understand how profitable these firms are, why they don’t grow, and how we may be able to help put them onto a growth path.

Excerpt from Interview with David McKenzie, Part I

2012-02-08T17:14:12-05:00

More on the role of Women in Development

2012-01-04T19:23:18-05:00

I just found this review paper by Esther Duflo that surveys research on how economic development affects the status of women and how the changing status of women affects economic development.

For the record, my priors, as I hope are documented in the conversation with Barbara, are:
* If your goal is economic development, focusing on women is likely a sub-optimal strategy.
* Rapid economic development may have a greater impact on women’s empowerment than a strategy focused on economically empowering women.

I’m looking forward to having those priors challenged.

Living with the Gates Foundation

2011-12-09T04:48:39-05:00

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.

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

2011-08-26T21:37:39-05:00

An Interview with Banerjee and Duflo, Part 4

2011-07-13T15:35:29-05:00

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.

An Interview with Banerjee and Duflo, Part 3

2011-06-29T17:42:41-05:00

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.”

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.