co-founder @ GiveDirectly and Segovia
affiliate / fellow @ NBER, BREAD, J-PAL, CEGA
2013 Foreign Policy leading 100 "Global Thinker"
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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.
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? - Building State Capacity: Evidence from Biometric Smartcards in India (.bib). With Karthik Muralidharan and Sandip Sukhtankar. American Economic Review 106(1), 2016, pp. 2895-2929.
Does investing in biometric payments infrastructure enhance state capacity and performance? - Experimentation at Scale (.bib). Forthcoming, Journal of Economic Perspectives. With Karthik Muralidharan
Should program evaluations in development economics be "bigger"?
working papers
- Education and Knowledge Spillovers (.bib). Under revision.
What spillover mechanism is most consistent with reduced-form models, knowledge policy, and the data? - Managing Self-Confidence: Theory and Experimental Evidence (.bib). R&R. 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). Under revision.
Why isn't altruistic behavior more effective? - Pathways of Persuasion (.bib). Submitted. With Lucas Coffman.
How does persuasion work, and who is good at it? - General Equilibrium Effects of (Improving) Public Employment Programs (.bib). Submitted. With Karthik Muralidharan and Sandip Sukhtankar
How does offering large-scale public employment affect rural markets?
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 choose if we let them vote with their feet? - General Equilibrium Effects of Cash Transfers. With Johannes Haushofer, Ted Miguel and Michael Walker
What are the market impacts of an inflow of ~15% of local GDP? - Structuring Cash Transfers. With Anandi Mani, Sendhil Mullainathan and Anuj Shah
Can we use behavioral economics to design smarter transfers to the extreme poor? - Testing a Universal Basic Income. With Ahbijit Banerjee, Michael Faye, Alan Krueger and Tavneet Suri
What happens if you guarantee everyone in a community a basic income for over a decade? - eRations. With Karthik Muralidharan and Sandip Sukhtankar
Does biometric authentication help or hurt the delivery of subsidized commodities in Jharkhand? - Maternal Cash Transfers. With Karthik Muralidharan and Sandip Sukhtankar
Is a transfer to pregnant and nursing mothers an effective way to reduce child malnutrition in Jharkhand?