David Leonhardt reports a clear winner:
I received dozens of diverse responses, but there was still a
runaway winner. The small group of economists who work at the Jameel
Poverty Action Lab at M.I.T., led by Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee, were mentioned far more often than anyone else.Ms.
Duflo, Mr. Banerjee and their colleagues have a simple, if radical,
goal. They want to overhaul development aid so that more of it is spent
on programs that actually make a difference. And they are trying to do
so in a way that skirts the long-running ideological debate between aid
groups and their critics.
I’m looking at the Lab’s “Incentives to Stay HIV Negative in Malawi” project; this seems like such an obvious program, I suspect somebody must have tried it before. Does anybody have any data from a prior attempt, or ideas on potential barriers? How about basline yearly infection rates among those who have recieved negative test results in the past year?
In an area where (presumably) potential partners usually can’t show results of negative HIV tests, the expected behavior adaptation would almost certainly be reduced sex or increased condom usage. I worry about the negative externalities of the first: lower birth rates among HIV-negative populations and sexual frustration, for example. Focusing on the second, if we assume that condom supplies remain relatively constant, wouldn’t this potentially increase infection rates (negative individuals pay more for condoms than positives, and use some of them in encounters with other negative individuals, while positives lack condoms for possible encounters with negatives) outside the study group? If this was implemented with a much larger group, say, an entire province, what would the long term consequences be?
It’s irritating that Leonhardt seems so desperate to discredit normal economics. Last year he got the Freakonomics stuff out there to knock standard econ, but got stung by the critique that it’s just cutesy games. So this year he goes out and argues that only controlled studies on textbook distribution, which has nothing much to do with econ proper, is the best work going.
There’s nothing wrong with doing experiments, especially if the work is generalizable, and there’s nothing wrong with applied policy work, but jeez. He should get over the intellecual incuriousity and math phobia already.
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