M.I.T. professor talks poop

Impoverished farmers say they’ve had issues paying for fertilizer, but Esther Duflo says that… Impoverished farmers say they’ve had issues paying for fertilizer, but Esther Duflo says that sometimes that’s a load of crap. ‘We are impulsive in the present, but are rational when considering the future,’ said Duflo, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, at a lecture in Alumni Hall Friday afternoon. ‘But when tomorrow becomes today, we are back to our impulsive selves.’ Duflo said that procrastination behavior is common everywhere and is related to the human tendency to be present-biased. She also said that many people in developed countries feel distanced from the poverty problem. Because people feel they have no expertise on the issue, they feel that they can do nothing to help it. To solve this dilemma, in partnership with a nongovernmental organization, Duflo has helped to offer the Savings and Fertilizer Initiative, a free delivery program for farmers who purchased fertilizer right after harvest. Duflo also conducted experiments with mandated representation in foreign countries, which is an important issue to her. Duflo’s experiments are primarily based in low-income countries. She conducts her experiments just as a scientist would in a lab: with a control group to see whether a program is effective. Her hour-long lecture was called ‘Experiments, Science, and the Fight Against Poverty.’ Currently, there are more than 100 ongoing or finished projects in the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab. A network of researchers like Duflo carry out their work in randomly chosen locations. The World Bank and other international organizations have started supporting these randomized evaluations. Duflo said she believes that by focusing on creative experimentation, we do not abandon the goal to reduce poverty significantly one day. ‘I would like to practice economics as a true human science, a science of the human being in all its imperfection and complexities and a human science humble and condemned to error,’ she said. Duflo addressed the role of an economist and how it needs to change in some respects. ‘It is not possible to identify how to end poverty by just comparing the historical experiences of countries,’ she said. It’s often hard to separate cause and effect, she added. She presented the question, ‘Is malaria correlated with poverty?’ and then said that the answer was hard to define, because maybe countries with poor institutions can’t fight malaria while wealthier countries can. ‘This does not mean that social science has no place in solving the problem, but there must be a more modest objective,’ said Duflo. She suggested that social science could help find the answers to these sorts of questions by imposing ‘creative experimentation.’ ‘Social policy needs, and often lacks, imagination. Researchers and policymakers are prisoners of the ambition to do too much. Solve the entire problem at once,’ she said. Duflo has been rigorously working on an experiment about the problem of farmers being able to obtain fertilizer in low-income countries. Farmers say they wish to have fertilizer, but don’t have the money to buy fertilizer by the time it comes around.