- “In order to combat global poverty, we must identify the most effective forms of action. This year’s Laureates have shown how the problem of global poverty can be tackled by breaking it down into a number of smaller – but more precise – questions at individual or group levels. They then answer each of these using a specially designed field experiment. Over just twenty years, this approach has
completely reshaped research in the field known as development economics. This new research is now delivering a steady flow of concrete results, helping to alleviate the problems of global poverty.”
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A simple primer on the work that Duflo, Benerjee and Kremer have won the Nobel Prize for.
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.. - “The first general comment is the idea of randomisation is hardly anything new for researchers who have studied or followed Indian development. The Planning Commission started something called Programme Evaluation Studies way back in 1954 which more or less studied the same thing. Agriculturists — both practitioners and researchers — have also used similar techniques of RCT to see what agricultural intervention worked.In my own research on banking history, I saw how Syndicate Bank started programmes on agricultural and rural development based on near similar ideas of randomisation. To be fair, the 2019 laureates have advanced these ideas using techniques from sampling, statistics, and econometrics to draw finer inferences.”
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Amol Agarwal over at Moneycontrol points out a more nuanced understanding of both this year’s Nobel Prize as well as the Nobel Prize for Economics in general. Well worth reading!
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.. - The NYT profile on this year’s Nobel Prize.
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.. - “The significance of what Angrist and Pischke termed the “credibility revolution in empirical economics” can be seen in the John Bates Clark Medal awards given to researchers who participated in that revolution. Between 1995 and 2015, of the fourteen Clark Medal winners, by my estimate at least seven (Card, Levitt, Duflo, Finkelstein, Chetty, Gentzkow, and Fryer) are known for their empirical work using research designs intended to avoid the problems that Leamer highlighted with the multiple-regression approach.”
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Mostly for those truly interested in economics, but Arnold Kling points out how more people should know about Ed Leamer.
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.. - Heavily, heavily recommended: this is the longer version of the first link above, again by the Nobel Prize committee itself.
EconForEverybody 
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