Authors@Google: Dean Karlan and Jacob Appel

Authors@Google present Dean Karlan and Jacob Appel: "More Than Good Intentions: How a New Economics Is Helping to Solve Global Poverty."

In their new book, Dean Karlan and Jacob Appel discuss how to solve one of the most important questions in aid economics: how do you figure out where to spend your dollars in order to get the best results? Too often aid money is allocated by hope, by guesswork, or [in the worst cases] by corruption. How can donors tell if their money is doing as much good as it can...or even if it's doing more harm than good?

Dean will join us on Friday, April 29th to talk about getting empirical data on aid results, on using psychology to help people help themselves, and how Innovations for Poverty Action are helping other aid organizations do their good works.

Dean Karlan is Professor of Economics at Yale University and President and Founder of Innovations for Poverty Action. He is a graduate of the University of Chicago's Harris Graduate School of Public Policy and Graduate School of Business and received his Ph.D in 2002 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), and the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, Dean is also a research fellow at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab and the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development. His research focuses on microeconomic issues of public policies and poverty. Much of his work uses behavioral economics insights and approaches to examine economic and policy issues relevant to developing countries as well as to domestic charitable fundraising and political participation.