Daily Archives: April 15, 2014

Quick random hits

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1. As usual, great career advice for those in the academy from Chris Blattman.

2. Boring Development asks some interesting questions re RCTs, and questions the internal validity assumption many of them trumpet. Which raises the question, if RCTs are cannot guarantee internal validity can results so obtained be useful for policy development? My general response here is that not all RCTs are useful for policy development. The obvious incentives to publish clearly skew the design and implementation of studies in a way that makes only a fraction of them useful for policymakers (the IRB process notwithstanding). But all things considered, randomistas have probably made the world a better place.

3. An unfolding case in Guinea could drastically change what is permissible in the process of acquiring concessions from dubious governments. Benny Steinmetz of BSGR bought the Simandou concession in late 2008 during the last days of the administration of ailing dictator Lansana Conte (allegedly with the help of Mr. Conte’s fourth wife). According to FT, BSGR spent a mere $160m for the rights to mine in Simandou. Less than two years later, the company sold 51% of its rights to the Brazilian mining giant Vale for $2.5 billion, $500m of which was in cash. Last week a government committee investigating the Conte-BSGR deal found evidence of corruption and recommended that BSGR and Vale be stripped of their rights to Simandou. If the ruling sticks, lots of contracts in several resource rich states in Africa will become open for legal review thereby drastically lowering the costs of renegotiation (even for the dictators who singed them).

Evidence of aid effectiveness may reduce charitable giving for some

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Ever wondered why so many charitable campaigns often lack contextual information on their aid recipients? Well, it turns out charitable groups might just be responding to some of their contributors’ need for as little information as possible, the result of which are the often simplistic silly campaigns to help starving people in nameless war-torn countries in the developing world.

According to Karlan and Wood in a paper on donor responses to information on aid effectiveness (it is a direct mail experiment):

We test how donors respond to new information about a charity’s effectiveness. Freedom from Hunger implemented a test of its direct marketing solicitations, varying letters by whether they include a discussion of their program’s impact as measured by scientific research. The base script, used for both treatment and control, included a standard qualitative story about an individual beneficiary. Adding scientific impact information has no effect on whether someone donates, or how much, in the full sample. However, we find that amongst recent prior donors (those we posit more likely to open the mail and thus notice the treatment), large prior donors increase the likelihood of giving in response to information on aid effectiveness, whereas small prior donors decrease their giving. We motivate the analysis and experiment with a theoretical model that highlights two predictions. First, larger gift amounts, holding education and income constant, is a proxy for altruism giving (as it is associated with giving more to fewer charities) versus warm glow giving (giving less to more charities). Second, those motivated by altruism will respond positively to appeals based on evidence, whereas those motivated by warm glow may respond negatively to appeals based on evidence as it turns off the emotional trigger for giving, or highlights uncertainty in aid effectiveness.

They also add that:

Our finding that smaller prior donors respond to information on charitable effectiveness by donating less frequently and in smaller amounts is consistent with other research showing that emotional impulses for giving shut down in the presence of analytical information. Indeed, controlled laboratory experiments have produced insights that suggest that emotionally triggered generosity may be dampened by appeals that include statistical or deliberative information. For example, people donate less to feed a malnourished child when statistics that put this child in the larger context of famine in Africa are mentioned. 

H/T Marginal Revolution.