Blog

Come work with us at rice! We are currently hiring for three positions: Economics post-doctoral research scholar Field survey manager Research assistants Learn more at the jobs link at the top of the page....Read More..

Today's New York Times has an op-ed about India reminding us that our intuition isn't always right about what's going to help poor people. This important fact merits rehearsal. The article is, of course, imperfect: to fit into a newspaper...Read More..

Today, as I'm working on an extended abstract for a project about women's status and child health in India, I've been reviewing this wonderful 1996 essay written three UNICEF affiliates. I honestly can't remember if I've posted this before, but...Read More..

Here, the minute you mention to people that you aren’t feeling well, they ask, “did you take medicine?” Actually, the direct translation of the question would be: “did you eat medicine?” I’m not a huge fan of taking medication, so,...Read More..

Business Standard has published another op-ed, this one focused on incentive compatible policy solutions for open defecation: Getting what you pay for. We typically write here about open defecation in India, but it's important to be aware of suffering in...Read More..

I'm sure you've all been reading about the enormous power outage. Hundreds of millions of people rich enough to have electricity at all, but not so rich as to have their own generators (which is, in fact, interestingly common) lost...Read More..

Today Business Standard -- which calls itself India's leading business newspaper, something like an Indian Wall Street Journal -- published an op-ed about sanitation in India and the TSC. It's nice to see a financial newspaper taking the opportunity to...Read More..

Great news in today's Times of India: the NFHS -- India's version of the internationally standardized Demographic and Health Surveys -- is coming back from the near-dead four a fourth round (National health survey not nixed). This is the most...Read More..

This was a tough week. When I left Sitapur in the last days of March, I said good-bye to 21 women who I had been visiting weekly throughout February and March. Three were pregnant, and 18 had little babies, all...Read More..

Bihar is in the throes of a severe drought again—the third time in last four years, and so far, the shortfall in rains is worse this year than it was in 2009 and 2010. Rainfall is below normal in 36...Read More..

Yesterday I had the fun opportunity to present my sanitation research at LBSNAA, the training institute for Indian Administrative Service officers. We met with the 2010 class, almost finished with their two years of training. These folks will go on...Read More..

...a friend of mine, Anirvan Chowdhury, who works with Accountability Initiative in Delhi, sent this link which is related to Avinash's last post. Thanks, Anirvan! http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kochi/Pruned-mid-day-meal-scheme-for-students-is-egg-on-states-face/articleshow/14827670.cms...Read More..

There is a new wave of populism in South Asia—of giving free laptops or tablets to students. Government of Punjab in Pakistan was probably the first to launch a scheme to gift free Dell laptops to 110,000 meritorious college students...Read More..

I just added three new papers to our research. Two are about sanitation in India, in preparation for NCAER's upcoming India Policy Forum, where I will talk about the Total Sanitation Campaign. One, "Sanitation and open defecation explain international variation...Read More..

I just read a brand-new and very interesting paper by Janet Currie, Wanchuan Lin and Wei Zhang, entitled, “Patient Knowledge and Antibiotic Abuse: Evidence from an Audit Study in China.” The authors find that antibiotics are very often prescribed when...Read More..

Diane and I are glad to be back in India – where it is hot – and Avinash will be joining us in just a few days. I started the week in Seattle seeing old friends and making new friends...Read More..