Today (25.11.2019), TINT is organizing a little event about the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics (see the poster below). For those who are unable to attend, I prepared a quick reading list that contains some articles about the 2019 Prize as well as some critical perspectives about the work of Nobel Laureates. Of course, this is not an exhaustive literature list. Nevertheless, I hope it is useful.
First, the documents that you can find on the Nobel Prize website. They give a very good overview of the work of Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer:
- Research to help the world’s poor (Popular Science Background)
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences - Understanding Development and Poverty Alleviation (Scientific Background)
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Second, Esther Duflo’s Richard T. Elly Lecture is a must read:
- The Economist as Plumber – Esther Duflo
American Economic Reviewvol. 107, no. 5, May 2017, pp. 1-26.
You can also watch this.
- And now, some critical perspectives:
- Randomization in the tropics revisited:a theme and eleven variations
Angus Deaton - Impoverished economics? Unpacking the economics Nobel Prize.
Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven - Impoverished economics? A critical assessment of the new gold standard
Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven, 2020, World Development, 127. - What randomisation can and cannot do: the 2019 Nobel Prize
Kevin Bryan – A Fine Theorem - Economics’ Biggest Success Story Is a Cautionary Tale
Sanjay G. Reddy - Alleviating poverty with experimental research: The 2019 Nobel laureates
Oriana Bandiera - Nobel Laureates Aim Too Low on Global Poverty
David Henderson
Finally, some critical perspectives on RCTs and “poor economics”, published prior to the announcement of the 2019 Nobel Prize.
- The New Development Economics: We Shall Experiment, But How Shall We Learn? Dani Rodrik, 2008. in What Works in Development?: Thinking Big and Thinking Small edited by Jessica Cohen and William Easterly, pp. 24 – 47
- The poverty of poor economics
Grieve Chelwa - Why positive thinking will not get you out of poverty
Farwa Sial and Carolina Alves - Limitations of randomised controlled trials
Angus Deaton and Nancy Cartwright - Buzzwords and tortuous impact studies won’t fix a broken aid system
The Guardian - Nudging or Fudging: The World Development Report 2015
Ben Fine, Deborah Johnston, Ana C. Santos, Elisa Van Waeyenberge - Fighting Poverty One Experiment at a Time: A Review of Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo’s “Poor Economics:”
Ravallion, M., Journal of Economic Literature, 50(1), 103-114, 2012 - Randomise This! On Poor Economics
Sanjay G. Reddy - Why Randomized Controlled Trials need to include Human Agency
Naila Kabeer - Evidence, policy, and politics
Jean Dreze
(This is from a special issue of Social Science and Medicine. See below.) - Special Issue / Social Science & Medicine: Randomized Controlled Trials and Evidence-based Policy: A Multidisciplinary Dialogue
- All that Glitters is not Gold. The Political Economy of Randomized Evaluations in Development
Florent Bédécarrats, Isabelle Guérin, François Roubaud - Poor economics: a radical rethinking of the way to fight global poverty (Book Review)
A. Haroon Akram-Lodhi - Esther Duflo on “women’s empowerment and economic development”: a must-read for feminist economists?
Naila Kabeer - Special Issue / The European Journal of Development Research
Of course there is more, but I hope this is useful for a start.
N. Emrah AYDINONAT 