- Does shaming people to pay taxes work? Yes according to an experiment in the U.S., but only if they don’t owe too much. (h/t @dinapomeranz)
- Chris Blattman offers his take on “Does Economics have an Africa problem?” – is it just me, or is is this whole debate a bit too Africa-centric? Economics has at least as much a Middle East problem, or Eastern Europe problem, or East Asia problem – in my view more if we compare the amount of research activity devoted to these other regions.
- Sana Rafiq discusses how behavioral biases affect our survey questions on the Let’s Talk Development blog, in the context of trying to replicate some of Sendhil Mullainathan’s scarcity work: when asking whether people would travel across town to get a bargain, “There is no guarantee that the product will still be there once I go across town. It’s very likely that the product is gone by the time I get there.” Of course! By assuming the availability of the product, we had let our own implicit biases, based on our mental models, influence the design of the question.”
- Heather Lanthorn discusses how to think about the risks of piloting for stakeholders on the People, Spaces, Deliberation blog: “By evidence-informed design, the global fund gave “no assurance to continue [the AMFm] in the long-term,” in order to ensure that the evaluation of the pilot would shape their decisions. At the national level, this uncertainty proved troubling, as many local stakeholders felt it posed national, organizational, and personal risks for policy goals and reputations”.
- The impact of innovation grants in the US – “receiving an early-stage “Phase 1” grant of just $150,000 approximately doubles the probability that a firm will subsequently receive venture capital (VC) funding. Recipients of Phase 1 grants produce more patents, are more likely to commercialize their technologies, and are more likely to exit via IPO or acquisition.”
- And a twitter highlight of the week:
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