Why should a development NGO invest in the modern tools of impact evaluation? I’ve met with many Christian development NGOs who are eager to understand the real effects of their…
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A number of years ago on a flight from SFO to the East Coast I was seated next to a guy who told me he was returning home after doing…
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The 2021 Nobel Prize in Economics was given to David Card, Joshua Angrist, and Guido Imbens for their work in using observational data and natural experiments to help us understand…
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David Levine and Bruce Wydick Americans—and the world—should cheer the government’s news Friday to lift the pause on the distribution of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine. The decision will…
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(Written for Christianity Today’s Better Samaritan Blog 1/15/21, click here for link to CT’s online post.) What is the role of hope in escaping poverty? A quick glance at the…
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by Bruce Wydick and Kent Annan, appearing in Christianity Today online 10/23/20 Particularly in this time of global pandemic, we want to know how to care for our local and…
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This blog appeared as a guest post earlier this month for reopeningthechurch.com, sponsored by the Humanitarian Disaster Institute at Wheaton College and National Association of Evangelicals. Like many churches, the…
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Recently my coauthors and I finished a CEGA working paper for a research project that fell into the category of one of those “dying to know if this popular thing…
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The smartest administrators will not only plan for delivering education during the pandemic, but will develop capacities to meet the surge in demand for higher education when the pandemic fades.
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The only way to feel worse about the impacts of COVID-19 than talking to people in public health is to talk to people in business and economics. Macroeconomists often tell…
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Development practitioners and development economists have an interesting relationship. We talk about the same things, have many of the same interests, but don’t understand each other well. Practitioners sometimes see…
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Microcredit has arguably been through more ups and downs than virtually any modern poverty intervention. For decades up through the 1980s, the thought was that the poor would never repay…
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We as development economists are poverty “experts” in many respects. We are experts at talking and writing about poverty. We are experts at developing mathematical models that explain poverty. And…
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That Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer would eventually win the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences has never been the subject of much debate in the development…
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Part of growing in our engagement with the global and domestic poor is understanding the stage where we are currently along this road, and what our possible roles can be…
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This post is taken from a blog post for the Center for Effective Philanthropy and contains excerpts from my new book Shrewd Samaritan: Faith, Economics, and the Road to Loving our…
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(Excerpt from the introduction to the book–now available July 2019.) It’s been my experience that most people have a genuine desire to help the poor—including the poor in their communities…
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I returned from Guatemala on this week, helping lead a group of 25 people on a visit to the village where our non-profit organization Mayan Partners works in the western…
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A great number of life’s important questions are causal questions. Whether we are a parent trying to choose the best school for our child, a physician pondering the best approach…
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Beginning about four years ago, microcredit as an effective poverty intervention seemed dead, or at least on life support. Along with a couple of earlier studies, the six famous randomized…
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Recently I had the opportunity to take part in a webinar that discussed the status of microcredit, specifically whether or not researchers believe it works. To complement a piece on…
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In the next weeks and months, the United States and China will enter into a serious dialogue on trade. At stake is the Chinese economy, the protection of U.S.…
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It’s Giving Tuesday, a day that has become prominent enough in our culture to make us either give, feel guilty about not giving, or come up with a powerful, self-justifying…
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When giving talks to college students at different universities, I find that most students are looking to align their lives with a cause greater than themselves. Among these, many could…
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Why I Cannot (Fully) Embrace Effective Altruism
One of the most popular schools of thought in global ethics today is a movement called Effective Altruism. Founded on the work of Princeton philosopher Peter Singer, it draws heavily…
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