associate professor of economics @ UC San Diego
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. 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?
• 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?