A child has a fever. Her father rushes to his community’s clinic, his daughter in his arms. He waits. A nurse asks him questions and examines his child. She gives him advice and perhaps a…

I was at a conference a couple of years ago and a senior colleague, one who I deeply respect, summarized the conversation as: “our labor data are crap.”   I think he meant that we have a general…

In a 2009 paper, David McKenzie and coauthors Chris Woodruff and Suresh de Mel find that giving cash grants to male entrepreneurs in Sri Lanka has a positive and significant return, while giving…

A few of the many evaluation results on text messaging interventions 

You are feeling not so well.   You go to the doctor.   She is a good doctor.   She runs some tests, tells you nothing is wrong with you and you leave, ready to get back to work.   Why are you so…

One of my favorite papers to present is my paper on improving management in India, in part because we have wonderful photos to illustrate what bad management looks like and what improved practices…

So this past week I was in Ghana following up on some of the projects I am working on there with one of my colleagues.   We were designing an agricultural impact evaluation with some of our…