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Improving Global Education: Evidence, Cost-Effectiveness, and Political Economy Talk by: Karthik Muralidharan Tata Chancellor’s Professor of Economics, University of California, San Diego followed by an informal conversation with: Anna Harvey SSRC President Event Recording    About the Lecture Solutions to many of today’s key development challenges hinge not on creating new technologies and solutions, but in understanding why the poor do not adopt seemingly beneficial technologies that already exist. Throughout the developing world, there are countless examples of technologies that appear to be welfare enhancing but are adopted by the poor at very low rates. Examples span health, finance, …

Encouraging Technology Adoption in Agrarian Societies Talk by: Mushfiq Mobarak Professor of Economics, Yale University followed by an informal conversation with: Anna Harvey SSRC President Event Recording  About the Lecture Solutions to many of today’s key development challenges hinge not on creating new technologies and solutions, but in understanding why the poor do not adopt seemingly beneficial technologies that already exist. Throughout the developing world, there are countless examples of technologies that appear to be welfare enhancing but are adopted by the poor at very low rates. Examples span health, finance, and agriculture sectors, and include cleaner cook-stoves, anti-malarial …

What are the Long-Run and Inter-Generational Impacts of Child Health Investments in East Africa? Talk by: Edward Miguel Oxfam Professor of Environmental and Resource Economics, University of California, Berkeley followed by an informal conversation with: Anna Harvey SSRC President Event Recording About the Lecture It has been challenging to establish how health investments in childhood affect individuals’ life trajectories, especially in low- and middle-income regions of the world, due to pervasive data limitations. This talk discusses a new project that leverages recent methodological innovations in development economics and a unique dataset tracking thousands of Kenyans over two decades (the Kenya …

Discrimination in Hiring: Why Do Firms Vary So Much in Whom They Hire? Talk by: Conrad Miller Assistant Professor of Economics, University of California, Berkeley followed by an informal conversation with: Anna Harvey SSRC President Event Recording About the Lecture US employers are segregated by race, which likely contributes to racial inequalities in earnings. While the composition of an employer’s workforce is shaped by powerful social and economic forces, it is not inevitable. This talk reviews recent evidence from around the world on how policy can influence the demographic composition of an employer’s workforce. About Conrad Miller Conrad Miller is …

Health Care as Social Insurance: The Role of Medicaid in Improving US Health Talk by: Laura Wherry Assistant Professor of Economics and Public Service, New York University followed by an informal conversation with: Anna Harvey SSRC President Event Recording About the Lecture Expanded access to healthcare in the United States through the nation’s public health insurance program, Medicaid, has led to meaningful–and measurable–improvements in people’s health. Insurance expansions that have targeted pregnant women, children, and adults have all had important short- and longer-term effects on health, and this talk will discuss some of those outcomes and the ways that researchers …

Streets of Gold: America’s Untold Story of Immigrant Success Talk by: Leah Boustan Professor of Economics, Princeton University followed by an informal conversation with: Anna Harvey SSRC President Event Recording About the Lecture Immigrants to the US today move up the economic ladder and engage in cultural assimilation at the same pace as immigrants during the Ellis Island generation. What’s more, the children of immigrants experience rapid social mobility, even if their parents hailed from poor countries. So, why are prospects for immigration reform so dim? This stalemate is more surprising in light of new evidence from the Congressional Record …