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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 bednets, toilets, fertilizer, weather insurance, and improved seed varieties. To make progress on these problems, we need to understand the sources of behavioral or structural barriers to new technology adoption, in order to devise policies and marketing strategies to address those barriers. This talk will highlight economic analysis and randomized-controlled-trial based field experimental methods applied in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa to make progress on these questions.

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.

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 showing that political attitudes toward immigration have never been more positive in US history, albeit more divided by political party. Textual analysis reveals that the partisan divide on immigration is not driven by economic considerations. Rather, the most polarized topics are crime on one side, and positive views of refugees on the other. The lecture will conclude with new insights on immigration and crime, and on refugees, throughout US history.