## MIT Poverty Fighters — Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo

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### Overview
- J-PAL (Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab) founded in 2003 to develop an evidence-driven approach to fighting poverty.
- Cofounders: Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo (with Sendhil Mullainathan as an early contributor).
- J-PAL renamed in 2005 to honor the father of Mohammed Jameel.
- J-PAL has carried out more than 1,000 randomized controlled trials in more than 80 countries.
- Programs verified by J-PAL’s methods have been scaled up to reach more than 400 million people.
- J-PAL has awarded $63 million in grants to fund new research since its founding in 2003.

### J-PAL’s methodology: randomized controlled trials (RCTs)
- Core approach: break large problems into manageable pieces and test specific interventions using randomized assignments to treatment and control groups.
- RCT features described:
  - Random creation of comparable groups so other factors do not influence outcomes.
  - Possibility of multiple groups to compare alternative solutions.
- RCTs apply methods long used in medicine and agriculture to development economics.

### Organizational scale and resources
- Staff composition and reach:
  - About 400 research, policy, education, and training professionals at headquarters and regional centers.
  - Regional centers in North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.
  - An additional 200 researchers oversee projects executed by about 1,000 contractors.
- Funding and backers:
  - Supported by Mohammed Jameel’s family foundation, large private donors, and advanced economy development agencies.
  - Donor-funded organization with a global network of affiliated researchers.

### Selected case findings and impact
- Clean cookstoves (Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves case study):
  - Global Alliance was a $400 million initiative launched in 2010 aimed at replacing open-fire cooking used by 3 billion of the world’s poorest people.
  - Indoor air pollution kills 2 million people a year.
  - J-PAL researchers followed about 2,500 households in 44 villages in Odisha and found millions of stoves built in India were largely abandoned after four years.
  - Reasons identified: new stoves needed more attention, broke down and weren’t repaired, took longer to cook food, and couldn’t be moved outdoors because of chimneys.
- Indonesia’s Rice for the Poor (Raskin):
  - Program size: $1.5 billion-a-year, intended to distribute 15 kg of rice a month to the poorest households at a fifth of the market price.
  - Problems: community leaders tampered with pricing/allowances/qualifying criteria; eligible households ended up receiving a third of what they were entitled to at a cost 40 percent higher than it should have been.
  - Intervention: information-bearing “social protection cards” tested via randomized tests.
  - Results and scale-up: within a year the government issued about 15 million cards and bundled two other cash-transfer programs into the project, adding up to more than $4 billion.
- Environmental regulation enforcement (Gujarat textile plants):
  - RCT changed rules for assigning auditors and found enforcement improved when inspectors were not paid by those they audited.
- Energy-efficiency and climate-related findings:
  - Field studies in Mexico, Wisconsin, and Michigan showed residential energy-efficiency technologies often don’t deliver promised savings.
  - Low uptake of measures like appliance updates, retrofitting, and weatherproofing; when adopted, efficiency gains are usually offset by higher consumption.
  - India: small farms given consulting and loans produced more and earned more but did not save energy.

### Limitations, critiques, and challenges
- External validity and “transportation” problem:
  - Results may be highly context-specific; what works in one place (e.g., malaria interventions in Kenya) may be irrelevant elsewhere (e.g., Brazil).
  - Angus Deaton’s critique: demonstrating that a treatment works in one situation is weak evidence it will work the same way elsewhere; RCTs refuse to use the structural context needed to generalize.
- Aggregation from micro to macro:
  - Concern that many small, specific interventions may not add up to large macroeconomic improvements.
  - Duflo’s 2016 IMF lecture emphasized how some micro interventions can have significant macro effects but acknowledged the challenge of scaling insights.

### Bridging research and policy
- J-PAL’s strategy to move from research to policy:
  - Make evidence accessible to policymakers and validate findings in different contexts.
  - Monitor implementation to incorporate reality checks back into policy design.
- Role of leadership:
  - Iqbal Dhaliwal (Executive Director) hired in 2009 to help translate research into policy action.
- Communication and synthesis:
  - Duflo and Banerjee’s books (Poor Economics; Good Economics for Hard Times) synthesize trial evidence into narratives to inform broader debates on migration, labor, trade, and public trust in economics.

### COVID-19 response and future directions
- Operational adjustments as of mid-March:
  - Pulled staff from fieldwork, increased phone surveys, and offered financing for rapid research on cash transfers, digital identification, and government practice innovations.
- Emphasis on administrative data:
  - Pandemic underscored the importance of accurate, timely statistics and using government administrative data to improve decision-making faster and cheaper than some field work.
- Dhaliwal’s outlook:
  - Post–COVID-19 world likely to reassess the role and value of governments, leading to better public management and greater appreciation for social protection.
  - Crisis highlights the need to invest in government capacity for emergency actions like quick emergency cash transfers.
  - Pandemic seen as a foretaste of climate crisis dynamics: once a tipping point is hit, significant damage and death are hard to avoid; immediate collective action matters.

### Key numeric facts and dates
- 3 billion: number of people using open-fire cooking targeted by Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves.
- $400 million: size of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves initiative.
- 2 million people a year: deaths from indoor air pollution cited.
- 2,500 households in 44 villages: sample followed in Odisha cookstove study.
- Four years: period after which many stoves were largely abandoned.
- 17-year history: duration of J-PAL at time of article.
- More than 1,000 randomized controlled trials in more than 80 countries.
- More than 400 million people: number reached by programs verified via J-PAL methods.
- 2019: year Banerjee, Duflo, and Michael Kremer were awarded the Nobel Prize in economics.
- 2003: founding year of the Poverty Action Lab.
- 2005: year the Lab was renamed J-PAL.
- About 400: number of J-PAL staff (research, policy, education, training professionals).
- Additional 200 researchers and about 1,000 contractors executing projects.
- $63 million: total grants awarded to fund new research since 2003.
- $1.5 billion-a-year: size of Indonesia’s Raskin program.
- 15 kg: intended monthly rice allotment per household under Raskin.
- A fifth of the market price: targeted subsidized price for Raskin rice.
- Eligible households received a third of what they were entitled to and at a cost 40 percent higher than it should have been.
- About 15 million: number of social protection cards issued within a year after the RCT-informed intervention.
- More than $4 billion: total after bundling two other cash-transfer programs into the project.
- Esther Duflo described as a 47-year-old French economist.
- Abhijit Banerjee born in Mumbai in 1961.
- Banerjee supervised Duflo’s PhD in 1999; they married in 2015.
- Iqbal Dhaliwal was hired 11 years ago (from the article’s publication context).
- Mid-March: time when J-PAL adjusted operations due to COVID-19.

*Finance & Development — “MIT’s J-PAL: Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo,” June 2020.*

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_Source: https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/fandd/article/2020/june/mit-poverty-fighters-abhijit-banerjee-and-esther-duflo.pdf_