Job Opening: Research Assistant

Summary:

The Development Research Institute is seeking a Research Assistant to support research activities on ongoing projects in development economics. Our ideal candidate is self-motivated and a problem solver; creative thinker; flexible and comfortable with technology; and is available to start immediately and work through the end of January 2016. The Research Assistant will get first hand experience on how academic research is conducted.

Responsibilities: data analysis, assist with online surveys, produce literature reviews

Required Qualifications:

Basic quantitative analysis, including experience with Stata Excellent attention to detail Ability to work independently

Preferred Qualifications:

Currently enrolled in an NYU graduate program Experience with Qualtrics is not necessary, but strongly preferred Experience with ArcGIS Preference will be given to applicants who could potentially extend the working period beyond January 2016. Preferred Education: BA in Economics; current Economics M.A. student

Salary/Hours:

Salary is $15- $20 per hour depending on skills and experience. Hours will be completed during the regular business day, at the DRI office (NYU campus, 14A Washington Mews). Twenty (20) hours per week, according to a regular, mutually-agreed-upon schedule. Start date is November 5, 2015.

To Apply: 

Please send a brief cover letter specifically addressing how you meet the above criteria along with your resume to Laura Trucco (trucco@nyu.edu) by October 30, 2015. The subject line of your email should read: “Last name, First name: DRI Research Assistant”. Benefits and salary are competitive. Location is Washington Mews, on the NYU campus.

About Our Organization:

The Development Research Institute (DRI) is devoted to rigorous, scholarly research on the economic development and growth of poor countries. An independent and non-partisan organization, DRI is led by NYU Professors William Easterly and Yaw Nyarko and is home to a growing team of researchers. DRI seeks to engage the academic world and the wider public about effective solutions to world poverty, expanding the number and diversity of serious commentators on the state of foreign aid and development. Our ultimate goal is to have a positive impact on the lives of the poor, who deserve the benefit of high-quality, clear-eyed, hard-headed economic research applied to the problems of world poverty. See http://nyudri.org/ and http://aidwatchers.com/.

NYU Development Research Institute announces the launch of The Greene Street Project

NYU’s Development Research Institute (DRI) is proud to announce the launch of its interactive website www.greenestreet.nyc. The “Greene Street Project” website, based on the academic paper, A Long History of a Short Block: Four Centuries of Development Surprises on a Single Stretch of a New York City Street, is a study of the historic development of the 486-feet strip of pavement, today known as Greene Street, between Houston and Prince Streets in the Soho neighborhood of Manhattan, New York. Today, the block is one of the richest in the city and the world.

The “Greene Street Project” includes an interactive online portal that allows users to trace the development trajectory of Greene Street over four centuries, offering:

• Easy to use annotated timeline interface, offering users a guided tour through hundreds of years of history of this block of New York City, aided by photographs, maps, newspaper articles, survey data, and more.
• An interactive “Then & Now” section, allowing users to compare and contrast pictures of particular sections of the block from as far back as 1933, to the present day.
• A detailed “Maps” section, which allows users to explore the block’s cartography across different eras.
• A “Data” section that gives users the chance to evaluate everything from the typical occupations of Greene Street residents from 1834-1881, to the evolving market value of Greene Street real estate over four centuries.

So what are you waiting for? Dive into the history of Greene Street, now!

Twitter Rudeness on The Paradox of Behavioral Economics

The behavioral economics pioneer Richard H. Thaler wrote a column in the New York Times yesterday, on how people can behave irrationally in a way that leads to not so great outcomes. The column gave examples of such problems and some suggested fixes. I posted a comment on Twitter that came across as a harsher and more dismissive critique of Professor Thaler than I intended:

Behavioral econ @R_Thaler says we are too dumb to fix our own mistakes but smart enough to fix everyone else's

I will try to blame the rudeness on the severe 140 character limit on Twitter, combined with bad judgment and orneriness. (But I think another  irrational bias is that we all tend to dismiss situational explanations for behavior like 140 character limits and to  believe that everything is intentional; plus I should be held responsible anyway.)

I put the longer and politer version of the intended (unoriginal) critique --the Paradox of Behavioral Economics -- into an email apology to Professor Thaler (which he graciously accepted):

What I meant was that any fix to irrational behavior would still have to be designed, approved, and implemented by other individuals who are also themselves subject to irrational biases. Sometimes the fix will be possible and a clear improvement, other times not so much.

Professor Thaler's brand new book Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics is getting great reviews. Hopefully it will lead to a discussion of the Paradox not constrained by 140 character limits. And I am also looking for behavioral insights into how to fix my own rudeness on Twitter.

How Not to Teach Children about Poverty

Meet Shameela, 5, a stateless child from a Thai refugee camp. Shameela’s battered shack has holes in the roof and walls. She has to share an outdoor bathroom with 100 other people. Shameela is crying while a photographer takes her portrait.

Meet Harrison, 8, who lives with his parents in a New Jersey mansion with a marble staircase. He has his own bedroom with a flat screen television. Harrison’s clothes are neat and his smile is calm.

Shameela and Harrison, along with 54 other kids and teenagers around the world, are part of a beautiful glow-in-the-dark photobook called Where Children Sleep. To make it, photographer James Mollison traveled around the world to take snapshots of children and places they call their bedrooms.

Mollison has a cosmopolitan background — he was born in Kenya, grew up in the UK, and is now based in Venice. Book reviews mention this fact as if to suggest how broad-minded and fit for the job it made him. “To begin with, I called the project ‘Bedrooms,’” says Mollison in the book’s foreword, “but I soon realized that my own experience of having a ‘bedroom’ simply doesn’t apply to so many kids.”

The photographer embarked on the project trying to avoid clichés: “From the start, I didn’t want it just to be about ‘needy children’ in the developing world, but rather something more inclusive, about children from all types of situations.” Yet half of his images are of deprived children from developing countries, and another quarter are of well-to-do Western kids who in comparison look unallowably privileged.

The poverty and inequality landscape is not what it was, and certainly not what it is often believed to be. Most of the world’s poor now live in middle-income countries. The United States is now almost as unequal as Brazil. Yet in Mollison’s collection four out of five Brazilian kids reside either in favelas or on the street, while nine out of eleven American kids enjoy expensive hobbies, New York City penthouses, or marble-staired castles. In Nepal, one can’t deny that income statistics are dire: 25% of the population lives below the national poverty line (about $15 a month). Yet Mollison’s sample selection distorts this image further — five out of his eight Nepalese models are abjectly poor.

Each photo on its own tells a deep, complicated, and often hopeful story. Shameela is the first girl in her family to go to school. Preena, a young Nepalese housemaid, sends remittances to support her family in the village. Sherap goes to a Tibetan monastery school and admires his teacher. But when all the photographs are put together into a 120-page book, the story changes.

Mollison says he wants his book to help kids learn about poverty and inequality, “and perhaps start to figure out how, in their own lives, they may respond.” Yet unintentionally, the misguided and often harmful stereotype that some of us can and should fix the lives of others is passed on from our generation to the next.

This photobook can enrich a child’s worldview. It will familiarize children with ethnic conflict, public health issues, cultural prejudices, and more. But to educate kids about inequality and poverty – ideally before they spend their gap year and thousands of airfare dollars on a questionable voluntourism stint – you might need to find other didactic material.

Just a few words

It's been 238 years, and we have been fighting to realize these words ever since.

Many around the world now see these words as universal and not specific to any nation, race, or culture

These are words for which people risk their lives.

All of us who care about these words will never give up until they apply to everyone.

Then and Now: Migrant Labor Edition

On the left is one of photographer and muckraker Jacob Riis' most famous photos, "Five Cents a Spot," taken with newly-developed flash photography technology in 1888. At the end of the 1800s and beginning of the 1900s, immigration to the US spiked, and millions of laborers from Russia, Germany, Italy, and Ireland arrived to take jobs in New York City's expanding manufacturing sector.

On the right is a photo from yesterday’s New York Times, showing migrant workers who built New York University’s Abu Dhabi campus. According to the Times, many of the workers, who come from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal, must surrender their passports, and a year’s wages as a “recruitment fee,” to the contractors who employ them. The laborers work 6-7 days a week, 11-12 hours a day, for about $3,000 a year. Instead of the right to protest their working conditions and negotiate higher wages, they face harassment, beatings and deportation from Abu Dhabi’s police force. Regarding NYU's involvement, the Times reported:

Facing criticism for venturing into a country where dissent is not tolerated and labor can resemble indentured servitude, N.Y.U. in 2009 issued a “statement of labor values” that it said would guarantee fair treatment of workers. But interviews by The New York Times with dozens of workers who built N.Y.U.’s recently completed campus found that conditions on the project were often starkly different from the ideal. … Told of the laborers’ complaints, officials said they could not vouch for the treatment of individual construction workers, since they are not employees of the university but rather of companies that work as contractors or subcontractors for the government agency overseeing the project. Those companies are contractually obligated to follow the statement of labor values.

When Riis’ book How the Other Half Lives came out in 1890, its frank depictions of poverty in the midst of New York City shocked middle class Americans. Riis—an immigrant himself—believed that exposing the harsh working and living conditions of the newest and poorest New Yorkers would help push along the Progressive movement for safer workplaces and workers' rights. Luckily for many subsequent generations of New Yorkers, he was right.

--

Collage Photo Credits: Left: Jacob A. Riis Collection, Museum of the City of New York; Right: Credit Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times.

Announcement of NOT speaking at the World Bank main Preston Auditorium, 12-2 pm Tuesday March 18

UPDATE: Monday March 17, 2014 5:08pm World Bank responds (see end of this post) WARNING: the contents of this message are for private entertainment purposes only. Any unauthorized duplication of this message to score cheap points is strictly prohibited.

Email from World Bank, January 27:

I am writing to you in reference to a recent publication: "The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor" by William Easterly. As part of our high priority events, we'd like to invite the author for a book signing event…  

The events program has hosted internationally renowned speakers including:  Amartya Sen, Angus Deaton…Christy Turlington … as well as numerous Heads of States and Nobel Laureates. 

Email from World Bank, February 5:

I am happy to confirm the event on March 18 from 12-2pm.

Could you please also send me a copy of the book, so we can provide it to a potential moderator.

Email from World Bank, February 6:

We are delighted and look forward to a great and exciting event on March 18. The event will be inside the main Preston auditorium (1818 H Street NW). 

Would it also be possible to send me a galley of the book? 

Email from World Bank, February 13:

Thank you very much for arranging the World Bank book event with Professor Easterly on "The Tyranny of Experts" for March 18, we very much appreciate it. We would like to convey our sincerest apologies though as we have inadvertently overbooked ourselves and have overlapping events that day. Given the large number of high-profile events our very small team is handling, we overlooked and provided you with this date prematurely. We will shortly come back to you with new dates so we may find a mutually suitable one.

February 27 In response to inquiry about rescheduling, World Bank emails back that they hope to work together again at some point in the future.

March 17 World Bank response: Asked to comment on this post last Friday, David Theis, Chief of Media Relations at the World Bank responded with this statement at 5pm, Monday March 17 (a snow day in DC):

"I have confirmed that we indeed had a double booking, so apologies for the scheduling mix-up. We would be more than happy to have you at the Bank and will be in touch to find a date. Sorry for the inconvenience."

The Numbers that Drive Policy

"Evidence-based policies" are in vogue. But how do you synthesize the evidence base? People often engage in "vote counting": reading the literature and consciously or subconsciously summing up the number of findings for a positive effect, a negative effect, or no effect for a particular program. The group with the greatest number wins.

Unfortunately, vote counting is not an ideal method to synthesize the evidence. The biggest problem is that some "no effect" papers were unlikely to find an effect even if there was one. Many studies in development use too small of a sample to be likely to find an effect, so the fact that their results are insignificant is not actually all that informative.

An alternative technique, meta-analysis, can aggregate many insignificant findings and sometimes transform them into a jointly significant result. It also allows flexibility in weighting studies differently, since all studies are not equal.

In most of the cases in which vote counting and meta-analysis diverge, vote counting reports an insignificant result and meta-analysis reports a significant positive result. For example, both conditional and unconditional cash transfer programs often had several "no effect" results -- "cash transfers don't work!" These types of programs have effects on a very broad range of outcomes, but because some or all of them are only tangentially related to the intervention, it's harder to see an effect in any one study. But if you aggregate the insignificant results on labour force participation, grade promotion or test scores through meta-analysis then they become significant -- "cash transfers work!"

The error of overstating the strength of "no effect" results through vote counting is all the worse given that "no effect" does not really mean no effect. The common misconception is that failure to reject the null hypothesis of no effect means we have accepted the null hypothesis of no effect, but that is simply untrue. Absence of a positive finding becomes a finding of absent effect, but this is not what the test says. Perhaps with a bit more data the result would become significant.

How big is this problem? Preliminary analysis of a database I have assembled of development studies, through a group called AidGrade, suggests that the meta-analysis results for a particular intervention-outcome combination diverge from the results that would have been obtained using vote counting about a third of the time. Vote counting actually gives very similar results as to what one would get by just looking at a single paper selected at random from the entire literature; not a great foundation on which to base policy recommendations. If we want to use rigorous evidence, we have to be rigorous about how we use rigorous evidence.

Read More & Discuss

Is the World Bank in chaos?

(Following post is authored by Eva Vivalt, Post-Doc at the Development Research Institute) The World Bank recently surprised applicants to its 2014 Young Professionals (YP) Program with the news that the YP program is cancelled for this year.  I have been unable to find any public announcement on this strange development.

The World Bank's website calls the program, which just celebrated its 50th anniversary, "the preeminent program preparing global development leaders", and it is the main entry-point for professional staff. The sudden cancelling of the recruitment scheme after it had already solicited two rounds of application materials (at a painful cost in time and effort to the applicants) could suggest some combination of unprofessionalism and organizational disarray.

Asked for comment, David Theis, Chief of Media at the World Bank, provided the following rationale:

 The World Bank Group is currently undergoing a major restructuring -- the first in a generation -- to better align the entire organization to achieve its ambitious goals of ending extreme poverty by 2030 and boosting shared prosperity, particularly for the lowest 40 percent in developing countries. Because of the institutional changes underway, which are expected to continue into the next fiscal year, the Bank Group has decided to postpone the recruitment of the 2014 Young Professional cohort until 2015, when the program will re-open.

The restructuring of the bank into 14 "Global Practices" is indeed a major shift. However, the YP program continued during previous restructurings, including the large ones in 1997 and 1987.

Jim Kim has committed to cutting $400 million over the next three years, and several divisions are in a hiring freeze. The cutbacks have been cited as a reason for the program's suspension, though it is likely only one part of the story since the savings from cancelling one year of the YP program are small.

The head of the YP program left a few months ago, so it’s possible with less internal support, the program foundered. Even some senior management were surprised by the program’s temporary suspension. The YP program has a venerable history as a vehicle to recruit future leaders at the Bank. Its cancellation is a shock to those who follow the institution.

Favorite book of a lifetime

(in the category: nonfiction but not in my own field) I recently re-read a book that I first read almost 30 years ago, which I have remembered ever since as perhaps the best book I ever read.

Re-reading after 30 years is a severe test. Many other books that the younger me liked have failed this test -- either because they are dated or because I've changed.

This book passed the test. The only blemish was a bad but short section on economics in the 20th century.

The book is a marvelously readable account of the history of discovery, both geographic and scientific.

The book is The Discoverers, by Daniel Boorstin, the Librarian of Congress from 1975 to 1987, first published in 1983.

"This story is also about you": Letter from an aid-financed jail

UPDATE 12:10pm 5/7/2013: The reference on Twitter to "Hollywood celebrity..." is an experiment in fake link bait described at the end of this post.

This is a letter just released from Eskinder Nega, a peaceful blogger and democracy activist serving an 18-year sentence in Kaliti jail in Addis Ababa, courtesy of the Ethiopian government supported by World Bank, US, and UK aid:

Individuals can be penalised, made to suffer (oh, how I miss my child) and even killed. But democracy is a destiny of humanity which can not be averted. It can be delayed but not defeated.

...I accept my fate, even embrace it as serendipitous. I sleep in peace, even if only in the company of lice, behind bars. The same could not be said of my incarcerator though they sleep in warm beds, next to their wives, in their home.

Why should the rest of the world care? Horace said it best: mutate nomine de te tabula narratur. "Change only the name and this story is also about you." Where ever justice suffers our common humanity suffers, too.

I will live to see the light at the end of the tunnel. It may or may not be a long wait. Whichever way events may go, I shall persevere.

UPDATE 12:10 pm 5/7/2013 "BREAKING: Hollywood celebrity charged with embezzling funds from global poverty NGO" This is a fake story that links you to this true story on Eskinder Nega.

The experiment is about why do we care about some misuses of aid an awful lot, but aid misused to finance violations of rights of brave individuals in poor countries is not amongst them?

The Revolt of the Pitied

Magatte Wade, Senegalese-American entrepreneur,  in the Guardian:

a young woman asked, "For the Americans on the panel, how do you deal with being a person of privilege while working in global development?" My eyes lit up with fury as she directed her question specifically at the white Americans on the panel. I let them answer, then smiled and added with a wink: "I am an American, you know, and also a person of privilege." She instantly understood what I meant.

Her question assumed that those of us in developing nations are to be pitied. I know as a Senegalese that her attitude is precisely what disgusts us about many who work at NGOs.

For many of those who "care" about Africans, we are objects through which they express their own "caring".

I replied to the young woman, "If you see us as human beings, there is nothing to deal with. We like to eat good food, we love to talk and laugh with our family and friends. We wonder about the world, and why so often bad is rewarded rather than good."

The Real America and the Ideal of the Fourth of July

America is a multi-national nation where there is currently much polarized debate as to who or what is the "Real America."

Perhaps the key to understanding America is that it's a nation defined, not by ethnic attributes of the citizens, but by the ideal of July 4th-- an ideal that all are created equal, with unalienable rights to liberty (yesterday's post).

35 Words

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

The Development of Freedom since 1776 has been about including more and more men and women in that word "all".