2024 Annual DRI Conference

2024 DRI Annual Conference

Economics after Neoliberalism

Date: Monday, March 25, 2024

Time: 10:00am - 12:00pm Eastern Time (doors open at 9:30am)

Location: Eisner & Lubin Auditorium, Kimmel Center for University Life (4th Floor). 60 Washington Square S, New York, NY 10012

Overview:

What have been the successes and/or failures of economic reforms designed to give a greater role to markets (sometimes labeled "neoliberalism")? Examples are movements towards freer trade and decreased financial regulation. Do such policies lead to economic growth and poverty reduction, or do they lead to higher inequality, or possibly both? How do such policies affect interactions between nations (peaceful and otherwise)? How do they affect support for populist movements? Understanding this debate is more vital than ever at a time of great crisis today.

Program:

9:30am – 10:00am Doors open

10:00am – 10:10am Linda G. Mills, President of NYU, Introductory Remarks

10:10am – 10:40am Suresh Naidu to present on “Economics and Economists After Neoliberalism”

10:40am – 11:10am Lawrence Summers to present on “What is neoliberalism and is it really dead?”

11:10am – 11:30am William Easterly moderates a panel discussion with Lawrence Summers and Suresh Naidu

11:30am – 12:00pm Audience Q&A

Speakers:

Lawrence H. Summers

Lawrence Summers is the Charles W. Eliot University Professor and President Emeritus at Harvard University. He served as the 71st Secretary of the Treasury for President Clinton, the Director of the National Economic Council for President Obama and as Chief Economist of the World Bank.

Suresh Naidu

Suresh Naidu is Jack Wang and Echo Ren Professor of Economics and Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. He has a B.Math in Pure Mathematics from the University of Waterloo, a MA in economics from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley. He was a Harvard Academy fellow from 2008-2010, and has been at Columbia since 2010. He works on political economy and historical labor markets. He has interests in the economic effects of democracy and non-democracy, monopsony in labor markets, the economics of American slavery, guest worker migration, and labor unions and labor organizing. He is external faculty at the Santa Fe Institute, a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and co-director of the Columbia Center on Politic

[SAVE THE DATE] Converging to Convergence

Converging to Convergence

Date: Friday, November 12, 2021

Time: 3:00pm - 5:00pm Eastern Time

Is Development Economics a Good Investment? Evidence on scaling rate and social returns from USAID’s innovation fund

with Nobel Laureate Michael Kremer (Chicago)

Date: Wednesday, May 26, 2021

Time: 9:30 AM - 10:45 AM EDT

Abstract:

We develop a method to establish a lower bound on the benefit-cost ratio of development innovation funds by comparing the benefits of a subset of innovations which scaled to the cost of the entire portfolio. Applying the method to the early USAID Development Innovation Ventures portfolio suggests each dollar spent generated at least $17 in social benefits. Predictors of innovation scaling include low unit costs, distribution through existing large business or government, and rigorous A/B tests or Randomized Control Trials (RCTs) in collaboration with development economics researchers. A model accounting for these results suggests that funders seeking social returns can exploit arbitrage opportunities by investing in innovations for which expected social returns likely exceed private returns.

Speaker:

Michael Kremer directs the Development Innovation Lab at the University of Chicago, where he is a University Professor. He is the joint winner of Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (Economics Nobel Prize) 2019, for an “experimental approach to alleviating global poverty.” He is also a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a recipient of a Presidential Faculty Fellowship, and was a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. He is a co-founder of BREAD, the association of development economists. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University, and was the Gates Professor of Developing Societies in the Department of Economics at Harvard University from 2003 to 2020.

Other Speakers:

Arlie Petters, Provost, NYUAD (Introductory Remarks and Welcome)

Yaw Nyarko, Professor of Economics and Director, DevLab, NYUAD (Moderator)

Torsten Figueiredo Walter, Assistant Professor of Economics, NYUAD (Introductory Remarks)

Host:

The Development Laboratory for Research Methods in Economic Development (DevLab) is an interdisciplinary laboratory supported by the Division of Social Science at NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) to assist faculty and students from a variety of fields in their research work in Development. The DevLab serves as a focal point at NYUAD to create knowledge and training for faculty and students to pursue field work in Development. Researchers seeking guidance, information, or funding can tap into the resources of the lab for planning and executing projects. Students seeking best practices and training on implementing research based on field experiments, randomized control trials (RCTs), and non- experimental methods will find resources in the lab.

The DevLab is led by NYUAD faculty in economics, politics, social sciences, and more broadly computer science and the sciences. DevLab members share a deep experience conducting field work and research in Africa, Asia, the Gulf, and Latin America. The research topics explored by members of the lab include Agricultural and Commodities Markets, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Communications and Web Access, Development Economics, Economic Growth, Experimental Economics, Food Security, Human Capital, Labor Markets, Political Economy of Development, Public Health, Research Methods, and Social Networks. The DevLab draws on cross-campus resources and collaborations with its partners NYU Africa House, the Center for Technology and Economic Development (CTED), and the Development Research Institute (DRI).

This program is co-hosted with the NYU Abu Dhabi Institute.

41st BREAD Virtual Conference on Development Economics →

May 6, 7, and 8, 2021

Hosted by New York University’s Development Research Institute

Co-sponsored by NYU’s C.V. Starr Center for Applied Economics

Scientific committee: Siwan Anderson (UBC), Rajeev Dehejia (NYU, Chair), Oeindrila Dube (Chicago), Rohini Pande (Yale), Debraj Ray (NYU), Martin Rotemberg (NYU) and Maria Micaela Sviatschi (Princeton).

The conference will take place virtually. Please register to attend the live event.

All times are in Eastern Daylight Time.

For any queries, email dri@nyu.edu.

Thursday, 6 May 2021: Day 1

Chairs: Martin Rotemberg and Maria Micaela Sviatschi

10:30am – 12:10pm Session 1

• Erika Deserranno, Stefano Cario, Philipp Kastrau, Gianmarco Leon-Ciliotta; Financial Incentives in Multi-layered Organizations: An Experiment in the Public Sector

• Diana Moreira; Santiago Pérez; Civil Service Reform and Organizational Practices: Evidence from the Pendleton Act

• Sangyoon Park; Zhaoneng Yuan; Hongsong Zhang; Technology Training, Buyer-Supplier Linkage, and Quality Upgrading in an Agricultural Supply Chain

• Wendy Wong; Optimal Monitoring and Bureaucrat Adjustments

12:10pm -1:10pm: BREAK

1:10pm – 2:30pm Session 2

• Francesco Agostinelli, Ciro Avitabile, Matteo Bobba; Enhancing Human Capital at Scale

• Julieta Caunedo; Namrata Kala; Haimeng Zhang; Economies of Density and Congestion in Capital Rental Markets

• Michael Olabisi; Alexander Persaud; Are the Poor Missing Out on Bulk Discounts for Food? Evidence from Tanzania

2:40pm – 3:40pm Session 3

• Teresa Molina; Joaquim Vidiella-Martin; Conditional Cash Transfers and Labor Market Conditions

• Onur Altindag; Stephen D. O'Connell; Unconditional cash-based assistance to the poor: What do at-scale programs achieve?

• Arlen Guarin; Juliana Londoño-Vélez; Christian Posso; Reparations as Development: Evidence from the Victims of the Colombian Armed Conflict

Recording of Day 1:

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Friday, 7 May 2021: Day 2

10:30am – 11:30am Session 1 Chair: Rohini Pande

Shaoda Wang; David Y. Yang; The Political Economy of Policy Experimentations in China

11:30am – 12:30pm Session 2 Chair: Martin Rotemberg

Simon Franklin; Clement Imbert; Girum Abebe; Carolina Mejia-Mantilla Urban Public Works in Spatial Equilibrium: Experimental Evidence from Ethiopia

12:30pm – 1:30pm BREAK

1:30pm – 2:30pm Session 3 Chair: Maria Micela Sviatschi

Abhijit Banerjee; Rema Hanna; Benjamin A. Olken; Elan Satriawan; Sudarno Sumarto; Food vs. Food Stamps: Evidence from an At-Scale Experiment in Indonesia

Recording of Day 2:

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Saturday, 8 May 2021: Day 3

10:30am – 11:30am Session 1 Chair: Debraj Ray

Achyuta Adhvaryu; Jean-Francois Gauthier; Anant Nyshadham; Jorge Tamayo; Absenteeism, Productivity, and Relational Contracts Inside the Firm

11:30am – 12:30pm Session 2 Chair: Siwan Anderson

Zach Y. Brown; Eduardo Montero; Carlos Schmidt-Padilla; Maria Micaela Sviatschi; Market Structure and Extortion: Evidence from 50,000 Extortion Payments

12:30pm – 1:30pm BREAK

1:30pm – 2:30pm Session 3 Chair: Jonathan Morduch

Nina Buchmann; Pascaline Dupas; Roberta Ziparo; Investment Decisions with Endogenous Budget Share Allocations Inside the Household

Recording of Day 3:

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Call for Papers: 41st BREAD Virtual Conference 2021 →

The Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD) is pleased to announce the forty-first Conference on Development Economics. The conference is organized by New York University, but will be held virtually on Zoom. We invite submissions from interested researchers on any topic within the area of development economics. The conference will be from May 6-8, 2021.

2019 DRI Annual Conference Announced - November 7th

Join DRI on November 7th for our 2019 Annual Conference focused on the theme “From Local to Global: The External Validity Challenge of Experiments.”

Event Overview:

In recent decades, the use of experimental and quasi-experimental methods has become widespread across a range of fields in economics, such as labor, education, health, and especially development. The emphasis on experimental and quasi-experimental methods was driven by an attempt to generate internally valid results, i.e., accurate estimates of the impact of the policy of interest in the time and place the experiment was implemented. But the now global scale of experiments points to the central question of external validity: to what extent and how can we generalize the knowledge generated by experiments beyond the setting of the experiment to other contexts?

Speakers:

• Susan Athey, Stanford University

• Sylvain Chassang, New York University

• Rajeev Dehejia, New York University

• Michael Kremer, Harvard University

• Rohini Pande, Yale University

• Cyrus Samii, New York University

DRI's Helen Epstein in NY Review of Books

With elections in Uganda taking place next month, DRI's visiting scholar, Helen Epstein, looks at how foreign aid has undermined the country's democratic function. Read the article in the New York Review of Books here.