August 20, 2010
Commentary
The future of development economics is random
Chris Blattman notes that this Summer’s edition of the Journal of Economic Perspectives is focused on development economics. What he doesn’t note is that the articles are heavily focused upon the role of randomized controlled trials within development economics, taking perspectives that are both positive and constructively critical.
August 5, 2010
Commentary
The impact of evaluation
Alanna Sheikh started a bit of a debate last week on the limitations of impact evaluations. She cites Andrew Natsios (a former USAID administrator)
August 4, 2010
Finally...the results from the Red Lobster study are in!
At IPA we often sell organizations on the idea of doing randomized testing by pointing out that corporations do it all the time, and they wouldn't pay for the evaluations if it weren't useful to them. In the Washington Post today Steven Pearlstein has an interesting piece with examples of randomized trials from the business world. Capital One and Google I knew about but Pearlstein digs deeper, pulling up results from Kraft, Family Dollar stores, and even Red Lobster restaurants:
July 27, 2010
Microfinance done different: SafeSave
Over at the Financial Access Initiative, Jonathan Bauchet has an interesting post up on a very different kind of microfinance called SafeSave. Here’s Bauchet:
July 22, 2010
Commentary
Design with Intent
Boing Boing covers the release of Dan Lockton's Design with Intent Toolkit: 101 Patterns for Influencing Behaviour Through Design. It's not about development per se, but the the applications to good product design and marketing are limitless and reference familiar ideas from behavioral economics, e.g. defaults and framing.
