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Seminar at the University of Georgia on April 8

On Wednesday, April 8, I will be giving a talk in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Georgia.

The title of my talk is “Was Sandmo Right? Experimental Evidence on Producer Attitudes to Price Uncertainty,” and this will be an occasion for me to talk about a research project I am currently conducting with my PhD student Yu Na Lee and my frequent coauthor David Just.

If you are in Athens, GA and have an interest in applied economics, feel free to come by. The talk will be at 3:30 in 104 Conner Hall.

A Useful Overview of Food and Nutrition Programs in the US

A new NBER working paper book chapter (ungated version here) by Hoynes and Schanzenbach:

This chapter provides an overview of the patchwork of U.S. food and nutrition programs, with detailed discussions of SNAP (formerly the Food Stamp Program), WIC, and the school breakfast and lunch programs. Building on Currie’s (2003) review, we document the history and goals of the programs, and describe the current program rules. We also provide program statistics and how participation and costs have changed over time. The programs vary along how “in-kind” the benefits are, and we describe economic frameworks through which each can be analyzed. We then review the recent research on each program, focusing on studies that employ techniques that can isolate causal impacts. We conclude by highlighting gaps in current knowledge and promising areas for future research.

The Economist Takes on Development Bloat and the SDGs

This week’s issue of the Economist has three articles about development bloat (see here for my 2014 article in Foreign Affairs on the topic; see here for the blog post that led to Foreign Affairs asking me for said article on the topic). The first is a leader (i.e., editorial) titled “The 169 Commandments”:

 Moses brought ten commandments down from Mount Sinai. If only the UN’s proposed list of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were as concise. The SDGs are supposed to set out how to improve the lives of the poor in emerging countries, and how to steer money and government policy towards areas where they can do the most good. But the efforts of the SDG drafting committees are so sprawling and misconceived that the entire enterprise is being set up to fail. That would be not just a wasted opportunity, but also a betrayal of the world’s poorest people. …

Their supporters justify the proliferation by saying the SDGs are more ambitious than their predecessors: they extend to things such as urbanisation, infrastructure and climate change. The argument is that cutting poverty is not a simple matter. It is rooted in a whole system of inequality and injustice, meaning that you need lots of targets to improve governance, encourage transparency, reduce inequality and so on.

There is truth in that argument, but the SDGs are still a mess. Every lobby group has pitched in for its own special interest. The targets include calls for sustainable tourism and a “global partnership for sustainable development complemented by multi-stakeholder partnerships”, whatever that means.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, this should sound familiar.

The other two articles are more in depth, and are titled “Unsustainable Goals,” and “The Good, the Bad, and the Hideous.” All three are essential reading if you have any interest in big-picture international development.