Guggenheim Fellowship Awarded to Dean Karlan
Economics Professor Dean Karlan has been named a 2016 Guggenheim Fellow from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. During his year-long fellowship, Karlan will focus on research to understand the relationship between psychosocial interventions (cognitive behavioral therapy in Ghana; religious teachings through church in the Philippines) and economic interventions (grants, training, coaching and access to savings) to increase income sustainably for those in extreme poverty.
Karlan’s research is devoted to microeconomic issues of poverty in developing countries. In an effort to improve social policies and financial inclusion for the poor, his research typically employs experimental methodologies to examine what works, what does not, and why related to interventions in microfinance, health, behavioral economics and charitable giving. Other research initiatives include global financial inclusion, small and medium enterprise in developing countries, and social safety net programs for the ultra-poor in developing countries. In global microfinance, he has studied credit impact, interest rate policy, savings impact and product design, social capital, credit scoring, entrepreneurship training, and contract structure, while in the United States, he focuses on household finance and behavioral health.
In line with his research, Karlan is a social entrepreneur who has founded two non-profit organizations, Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) and ImpactMatters. IPA and ImpactMatters assist other non-profit organizations aimed at helping the poor, by strengthening effectiveness in their programs and policies. IPA’s main goal is to design and implement randomized evaluations to measure the effectiveness of programs and policies aimed at helping the poor, while ImpactMatters looks to help non-profits improve their programs and operations through impact audits, and assess if the organizations are using sound judgment with their resources.
Besides leading the boards of IPA and ImpactMatters, he also sits on the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of the M.I.T. Jameel Poverty Action Lab. He has authored and co-authored several papers and books on policy addressing poverty, including More Than Good Intentions: How a New Economics is Helping to Solve Global Poverty. He has a forthcoming book with Princeton University Press, Failing in the Field: What We Can Learn When Field Research Goes Wrong, and is finalizing another book for release, The Goldilocks Challenge, about how socially-minded organizations can manage pressure for more data from stakeholders, while still adhering to important principles of credibility, actionability, responsibility, and transportability.
Among his achievements, Karlan received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from the National Science Foundation, was named an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow, and received a Distinguished Alumni Award for Public Service from the University of Chicago Booth Graduate School of Business and Distinguished Alumni Award from the Duke University Talent Identification Program.