bio

Paul Niehaus is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at UC San Diego as well as a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Junior Affiliate at the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD), an Affiliate of the Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), and an Affiliate at the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA). His research deals with program implementation in developing countries and with learning. He is also co-founder and president of the nonprofit GiveDirectly. In 2013 Foreign Policy named him one of its leading 100 "Global Thinkers."

publications

• Filtered Social Learning (.bib). Journal of Political Economy 119 (4), 2011, pp. 686-720.
  Do decentralized exchanges of knowledge lead to efficient aggregate learning?
• Political Aid Cycles (.bib). American Economic Review 102 (7), 2012, pp. 3516-30. With Michael Faye.
  Do donors use foreign aid (ODA) to influence elections in developing countries?
• Targeting with Agents (.bib). American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 5 (1), 2013, pp. 206-238. With Antonia Attanassova, Mariane Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan.
  How should a social planner design targeting rules when he knows the implementing agents are corrupt?
• Corruption Dynamics: the Golden Goose Effect (.bib). American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 5 (4), 2013, pp. 230-69. With Sandip Sukhtankar.
  Do corrupt agents respond to dynamic incentives as predicted by the Becker-Stigler theory? Winner, Best Paper Prize (2014), AEJ: Economic Policy
• The Marginal Rate of Corruption in Public Programs (.bib). Journal of Public Economics 104, 2013, pp. 52-64. With Sandip Sukhtankar.
  How should policy-makers determine the optimal size of "leaky" public programs?

working papers

• Education and Knowledge Spillovers (.bib).
  What spillover mechanism is most consistent with reduced-form models, knowledge policy, and the data?
• Managing Self-Confidence: Theory and Experimental Evidence (.bib). Submitted. With Markus Mobius, Muriel Niederle and Tanya Rosenblat.
  Do people bias their learning behavior to protect their own self-image? (experimental instructions)
• A Theory of Good Intentions (.bib). Submitted.
  Why isn't altruistic behavior more effective?
• Building State Capacity: Evidence from Biometric Smartcards in India (.bib). With Karthik Muralidharan and Sandip Sukhtankar. Submitted.
  Does investing in biometrically authenticated payments enhance state capacity and performance?
• Pathways of Persuasion (.bib). With Lucas Coffman.
  How does persuasion work, and who is good at it?

work in progress

• Social Learning and Consumer Demand. With Markus Mobius and Tanya Rosenblat
  How do peers in a social network affect demand for new products?
• Policy Evaluation by Revealed Preference. With Karthik Muralidharan and Sandip Sukhtankar
  What mode of public service delivery do beneficiaries prefer?
• Smartcards: General Equilibrium Effects. With Karthik Muralidharan and Sandip Sukhtankar
  How do large-scale welfare reforms affect rural economies more broadly?