I spent a few days with Dean on my internship- a few random recollections. We briefly discussed EA and he was enthusiastic about it- my sense was that he had a “that’s a cool thing you kids are doing” vibe.
Unrelated, he also said he’d never spent more than $10 on a t-shirt (I was impressed), so if you’re lucky enough to be able to work with him, you should probably have your “frugal EA” hats on- no invites to the Bahamas/ our latest castle.
Also unrelated, my colleague asked him why IPA didn’t consider more systemic level changes to trade policy, aid policy, growth interventions etc. vs. the more micro economic randomisation IPA does. He said: “I believe in the division of labour” and explained that he thought we needed better systemic change in the aid sector, but that wasn’t the IPA model. So perhaps he’ll be quite ambitious at USAID, and not just all about better data/ micro stuff.
The year I founded Yale EA, our group met with Dean (who taught there at the time) to get ideas for what we might work on. So he’s been aware of EA for a long time.
(He was also a grader for my undergraduate thesis, which was explicitly influenced by EA.)
He’s not really involved in the community that I know of. But in a more important sense, his entire life has been spent practicing EA, and I’m excited to see what he does in his new position!
Wonderful news!
I spent a few days with Dean on my internship- a few random recollections. We briefly discussed EA and he was enthusiastic about it- my sense was that he had a “that’s a cool thing you kids are doing” vibe.
Unrelated, he also said he’d never spent more than $10 on a t-shirt (I was impressed), so if you’re lucky enough to be able to work with him, you should probably have your “frugal EA” hats on- no invites to the Bahamas/ our latest castle.
Also unrelated, my colleague asked him why IPA didn’t consider more systemic level changes to trade policy, aid policy, growth interventions etc. vs. the more micro economic randomisation IPA does. He said: “I believe in the division of labour” and explained that he thought we needed better systemic change in the aid sector, but that wasn’t the IPA model. So perhaps he’ll be quite ambitious at USAID, and not just all about better data/ micro stuff.
The year I founded Yale EA, our group met with Dean (who taught there at the time) to get ideas for what we might work on. So he’s been aware of EA for a long time.
(He was also a grader for my undergraduate thesis, which was explicitly influenced by EA.)
He’s not really involved in the community that I know of. But in a more important sense, his entire life has been spent practicing EA, and I’m excited to see what he does in his new position!
He was the northwestern ea staff/professor sponsor for the duration of my time there (this doesn’t mean that much though).