Esther Duflo and the Experimental Revolution in Social Science
The New York Times Economix blog reports:
Esther Duflo, a development economist at M.I.T., has been awarded the John Bates Clark Medal. The award is given to “that American economist under the age of 40 who is judged to have made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge.”
Professor Duflo, 37, helped found the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, whose affiliates do randomized experiments in poor countries to help determine what types of aid and anti-poverty programs actually work.
This award has been a pretty good indicator of where the leading work in economics is headed, as twelve of the last 31 Bates Medal winners have gone on to win the Nobel Prize.
I think that this is another straw in the wind signaling the transformation of the quantitative social sciences into somewhat more experimental disciplines. I referenced Duflo obliquely in a prior post on this topic, and presented at a conference at M.I.T. last year that she attended which highlighted how rapidly the technique of randomized experimentation is spreading. I think that this transformation of at least parts of social science is likely to create academic disciplines that are simulataneously more accurate and more hospitable to limited government and political liberty. I’ll have a lot more to say about why I believe this to be true in the future.
Wish I could talk to you face to face about these issues, Jim. I’m in a field that is alternatively described as in the humanities, in the social sciences, squarely between the two, or moving from the humanities to the social sciences. Personally, I am in the process of being credentialed as a quantitative scholar in my field, but I have very complicated feelings towards issues of epistemology, truth claims and knowledge generation.
— Freddie · Apr 26, 07:46 PM · #
Freddie,
Just email me. In the interests of not getting scraped into a bunch of spammer accounts, it’s a google account jim.manzi.nro.
Best,
Jim
— Jim Manzi · Apr 26, 07:56 PM · #
it would be a testimony to the breadth of her thought if she’s able to both further quantitative research hospitable to limited government ends and promote a qualitative leftish/liberal outlook in the columns she gets published in the French newspaper “Libération”.
(she’s French – and a “normalienne”, to boot)
— JC Brown · Apr 27, 05:51 AM · #
JC Brown:
I agree; or at least it would be a testimony to the (relative) independence of the experimental method to the ideological predispositions of the experimenter.
Best,
Jim
— Jim Manzi · Apr 27, 02:45 PM · #
Count me as curious to read your future posts Jim, ‘cause right now it seems as if you are suggesting that Chemistry and Physics are more supportive of limitted government an political liberty than Music or English.
— tony comstock · May 2, 07:22 PM · #
very good!I like it.
— ed hardy t shirts · May 4, 06:58 AM · #