Secrets of Effective Giving
Published in Christianity Today, 11/27/2017 Ryan Loofbourrow is a homelessness guru, a recognized leader in the urban poverty field. He is also my brother-in-law. During the holidays, we have been…
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Review of Randomistas: How Radical Researchers Changed Our World
Written for the World Bank Impact Blog, May 21, 2018 It isn’t hard to understand why Andrew Leigh would write a book on randomized controlled trials. A kind of modern…
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The Behavioral Economics of Police Stops
by José Gutierrez, Police Officer, Oakland, CA Police Department and Bruce Wydick, Professor of Economics, University of San Francisco Stephon Clark. Michael Brown. Freddie Gray. Alton Sterling. Keith Scott. Compliments…
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The Statistical Case Against the NRA and America’s Relationship with Guns
The most recent school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas, warrants an update of a post I wrote recently about the statistical case against the arguments put forth by the National…
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For Black History Month: A Review of Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a novel that I’d heard about since elementary school, but never read until now. February is Black History Month, and I thought I would contribute by…
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New Year’s Resolutions for Development Practitioners and Researchers
Another cycle around the sun and here we are again, the season of New Year’s resolutions, the time when we resolve not to do the stuff we were disappointed that…
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Cash With No Strings Attached?
This Story Appears in Christianity Today, December 2017 (Print Edition) One year, instead of buying my dad the usual unattractive necktie for Christmas, we bought him a goat. He loved…
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What We Are Learning about Goals, Aspirations, and Development
For the past several years, a number of co-authors and I have been working on a series of projects that have explored the relationship between the psychology of poverty and…
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On Domestic Poverty and the Family
Earlier this month I was invited to speak at a retreat led by the Archbishop of San Francisco for the board of Catholic Charities. They asked me to talk on…
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Millennials, Commitment, and Strategic Bridge-Burning
Appearing in Christianity Today Online: September 25, 2017 Our pastor recently preached a sermon on strategic bridge-burning. Well, he didn’t really call it that, but that’s what it was about. …
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Calfornia’s New Industrial Policy: Tesla
Pulling away ever farther from the federal government Washington, California seems to be developing its own strategic industrial policy. This one is not only designed to create jobs in its…
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What Trump Could Learn from the Golden State Warriors
Op-Ed in the San Francisco Chronicle, June 15, 2017 As the travails of President Trump have dominated the headlines, so has the jubilant season of the Golden State Warriors filled…
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Review of At Home in Exile by Russell Jeung
It’s not often that a book comes along that is delightfully written, hilariously funny, and at the same time may change your life. But At Home in Exile (Zondervan) by Russell…
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On Fake News, Narrative, Science, and Truth
Fake news and the demise of truth is one of the leading news stories of 2017. The front cover of Time magazine last month asked: Is Truth Dead? Recently the value…
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How Does Hope Work?
Does hope need to be based in reality for it to help facilitate movements out of poverty? Recently my co-authors and I (Travis Lybbert and Irvin Rojas at UC Davis)…
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Using Children’s Drawings in Program and Policy Evaluation
I want to devote this post to a new tool that I have begun to use with colleagues in program and policy evaluation, the digital coding of children’s drawings. An…
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The Behavioral Economics of Why Hyperopic People Like Me Prefer Gift Cards over Cash
Consider the following scenario: The Christmas deadline is quickly expiring, and even by your own poor standards, you have displayed an impressive level of procrastination in Christmas shopping for your…
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Online Giving on #GivingTuesday
#Giving Tuesday has to be one of the coolest “day” ideas in recent memory, but as the day ticks away, the question remains where to give? Because there are only…
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Trump’s Reckless Economics & Why His Presidency Could Cost You Your Job
(From the Huffington Post, October 27, 2016) In the barrage of issues surrounding the personal character of Donald J. Trump — his derision of ethnic and religious minorities, his public mocking…
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Review of Kent Anann’s Slow Kingdom Coming and Three Classic Works on Poverty
(Published in Christianity Today Online October 25, 2016) The Parable of the Good Samaritan is so well-known to Christians that we often forget that it was given in response to…
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Three New Papers on Psychology and Development Economics
I’ve had the pleasure of attending a couple of excellent conferences focused on poverty traps in the last few months–their causes, consequences, and possible cures. The first of these, The…
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Review of Richard Thaler’s Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics
The notion that human beings behave “rationally” in pursuit of objectives such as utility and profit has formed the bedrock of economic theory for well over a century. For many…
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San Francisco: The Hardest City to be Poor (or Middle Class)
(Originally appearing in the Huffington Post 7/19/2016) In front of the glowing new offices of Twitter on the edge of the Tenderloin, I watch the programmer step over the soiled,…
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Diagnosis and Development Impact
[Note for non-economist readers of Across Two Worlds, the following post may induce drowsiness and probably should not be ingested while driving a motor vehicle or operating heavy machinery.] In…
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Myths About Immigrants and Why We Believe Them
From the San Francisco Chronicle, Online July 13, Print July 15, 2018 The Trump administration repeatedly makes two claims to justify its crackdown on immigrants and their families: 1) Immigrants…
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