The latest issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives contains a symposium on classic ideas in development: Doug Gollin on the Lewis model, Chang-Tai Hsieh and Ben Olken on the missing middle, Rafael La Porta and Andrei Shleifer on informality, and Aart Kraay and myself on do poverty traps exist?
Development Impact will be taking August off, so look for our next posts after Labor Day in September. Meanwhile you can follow me on twitter for links I find interesting in the interim.
- The behavioral economics guide 2014: 130 page comprehensive guide which includes discussion of basic concepts, discussion of journals and graduate programs, and then examples of how it is used in practice.
- In our latest Finance & PSD Impact note, Xavier Gine discusses results from an audit study in Mexico which looks at whether banks give customers the right information about financial products (spoiler alert, no). This study is also covered on the FAI blog.
- The Economist on Time and Punishment discusses new research that attempts to show a causal link from education to time preferences and criminal behavior later in life.
- Rachel Glennerster’s advice on choosing a career in policy vs academia
- Ok Cupid discusses the experiments they have run on users: “OkCupid doesn’t really know what it’s doing. Neither does any other website. It’s not like people have been building these things for very long, or you can go look up a blueprint or something. Most ideas are bad. Even good ideas could be better. Experiments are how you sort all this out.”
Development Impact will be taking August off, so look for our next posts after Labor Day in September. Meanwhile you can follow me on twitter for links I find interesting in the interim.
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