Those of you who knew my father well know that he was in many ways a great man, and more importantly, a very good man. He was also an excellent…
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Is My NGO Having a Positive Impact?
I enjoy helping NGOs with designing ways to carry out impact evaluations within the context of their normal operations. David Evans of the World Bank and I wrote a piece for…
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Why Is ISIS So Bad?
Some undergraduate students from Harvard asked me to write an article for a symposium on behavioral economics they were publishing in their undergraduate economics journal, the Harvard Economics Review. I…
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Taking the Cell Phone Challenge
What is the most precious personal possession of a college student today? Clearly for millennials, the thing they would hate to part with most is their cell phone. A recent…
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5 Poverty Busters You Should Know
Because Their Work is Making a Difference Article in Christianity Today, December 29, 2015 As a development economist, people sometimes ask me, “What can I do to really make an…
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Microfinance on the Margin
New blogs and articles in the public online press have brought increasing attention to the results of the six randomized trials on microfinance presented in the January 2015 issue of the…
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True Grit in the Face of Poverty
Reflections on Hope and Oaxaca (Extended version of piece appearing in Christianity Today, December 2015 print issue) This year we moved to a small village in Oaxaca for six months to…
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A Christian Development Economist
What is a Christian Development Economist Good For? Transcript of Keynote Talk Given at the Association of Christian Economists (ACE) Meeting, January 2015 Thank you for allowing me to speak…
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Spank or Treat
How Game Theory Can Transform Your Kid’s Halloween Candy from Your Worst Enemy to Your New Best Friend As a parent, you will dread these days after Halloween. That stash…
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What Bad Backs Can Teach Us About Development Work
As a development economist I naturally spend a lot of time thinking about issues related to economic development. I also have a chronic bad back, and unfortunately spend a lot…
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Syria: Child Sponsorship in Reverse
A colleague of mine sent me an email recently, remarking that what is transpiring in countries like Syria, Iraq, Afganistan, Sudan, and Somalia was like child sponsorship in reverse. It is…
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What Secular Academics Can Learn from the Faith-Based Development Community
The more I am involved in practitioner and academic development work, the more I have become aware of a great divide separating the secular and faith-based international development communities. In not…
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What’s Missing in Vox’s Negative TOMS Piece
Last Thursday, Vox ran a story highlighting our randomized trial with TOMS Shoes subtly titled “Buying TOMS Shoes is a Terrible Way to Help People.” In the piece the author,…
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The Flaw In Fair Trade
The new July 2015 issue of the Review of Economics and Statistics contains the most rigorous academic study to date on the impact of fair trade coffee. Not only does the article…
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Economists Discover Holistic Development
And 5 Reasons Why It’s Likely More Effective Although it has been a guiding principle of many development practitioners for some time, economists have begun to discover holistic development. While NGOs…
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What a Beautiful Mind Left Behind
(San Francisco Chronicle Op-Ed, May 28, 2015) The death of John Nash and his wife Alicia from a tragic automobile accident in New Jersey last weekend stunned those of us…
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Trust, Poverty, and Mexico
Trust, Poverty, and Mexico (Christianity Today 5/22/15) What are the most important qualities of a society that allow economic prosperity to take root? A lust for learning and knowledge? A blistering work…
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The Economics of Hope
Why do so many development interventions fail to demonstrate positive impacts? Even one of the most hopeful ideas, such as microfinance, has…
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The Impact of TOMS Shoes
TOMS Shoes is one of the most well-known “double bottom line” companies, where generally the two bottom lines include both profit and social impact. For every pair of TOMS Shoes…
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Wheels of Fortune
Two years ago a man named Ron Rice called me on the phone and said his friend Ayuba Burki Gufwan was in San Francisco and wanted to meet me in…
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Welcome to the Golden Age of Charity
Book review of Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDun’s A Path Appears. Appearing in Christianity Today, February 25, 2015. Thanks to innovations in accountability, poverty-fighting efforts are flourishing like never before. The global…
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A Migration Story that Made Me Think
Life in Oaxaca: A First-Hand Story that Impacted my Feelings on U.S. Immigration My wife and two young daughters and I are living in an indigenous village in Oaxaca during…
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12 New Papers for Development Practitioners
Academic papers can be both obscure and intimidating for development practitioners and others whose interests are rooted in practical, everyday issues, especially academic papers written by economists. Trying to stay…
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The Behavioral Economics of ISIS
Excerpt from a forthcoming article in the Harvard Economics Review, the on-line student economics magazine of Harvard College. The beheading of 21 Egyptian Christians and the kidnapping of 250 Assyrian Christians are latest act…
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A Letter to My Evangelical Friends about Donald Trump
This article also published in the Huffington Post, March 31, 2016. Updated 10-31-16. You identify as an evangelical Christian, and you support Donald Trump to be our next president. A recent Pew…
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