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Category: Impact Evaluation

Published April 5, 2011

Excellent Podcast on Microfinance

Some of the most popular posts on this blog after the one in which I make available my handouts on linear regression and on causality and the one in which I make available my handout on how to do well in econ courses are the series of posts I wrote at the beginning of the year on microfinance.

In that spirit, I wanted to link to this excellent Guardian podcast on microfinance, which popularizes the key issues in coming up with an answer to whether microfinance help reduce poverty. The podcast features host Madeleine Bunting, academics Ha-Joon Chang and David Roodman, as well as CARE International’s Ajaz Khan and SKS Microfinance founder Vikram Akula.

Published March 25, 2011

Chris Blattman on RCTs in Development Economics

Although I had seen the Glennerster and Kremer article in the Boston Review last week, I had saved it for later, as I was planning on reading it carefully so as to possibly assign it as an introductory reading in the development seminar I teach in the fall.

In a recent blog post, Chris Blattman has excellent thoughts on the article and on randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in general:

Continue readingChris Blattman on RCTs in Development Economics
Published March 8, 2011

Does Adaptation to Climate Change Provide Food Security?

That’s the title of a new paper by Di Falco et al. in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics (a previous, ungated version can be found here, but note that the two versions differ substantially):

“We examine the driving forces behind farm households’ decisions to adapt to climate change, and the impact of adaptation on farm households’ food productivity. We estimate a simultaneous equations model with endogenous switching to account for the heterogeneity in the decision to adapt or not, and for unobservable characteristics of farmers and their farm. Access to credit, extension and information are found to be the main drivers behind adaptation. We find that adaptation increases food productivity, that the farm households that did not adapt would benefit the most from adaptation.”

This is a very interesting research question and that the core result is interesting (and no, I was not a referee for this paper, nor do I know the authors.) From skimming the paper, however, I’m not sure the relationship between adaptation to climate change and productivity is causal. Because the remainder of this post is pretty technical, I am putting it under the fold.

Continue readingDoes Adaptation to Climate Change Provide Food Security?