Mind the Shift is a video podcast done by Anders Bolling from Sweden. My episode in January 2024 was about labor mobility and titled the “The Poverty Fix Nobody Talks About.”
I did an interview with Lola Hierro of El Pais newspaper in Spain, published November 27, 2023 and here is Spanish and here is English translation (the interview itself was a bit in both).
I gave a speech at the Free Market Institute at Texas Tech on October 19, 2023 titled: “National Development Delivers and Kinky Development is just a Fetish.”
I was Episode 59 of the Charter Cities podcast series with Kurtis Lockhart on October 25, 2023.
I was interviewed for the Foreign Affairs podcast by Daniel Kurtz-Phelan on Immigration before Automation, April 20, 2023.
I did a podcast with Ideas Untrapped hosted by Tobi Lawson in Nigeria. The conversation was so full of good questions it was in two halves, titled Lant Pritchett on Everything, Part I on March 17, 2023 and Part II on March 24, 2023.
Shruti Rajagopalan at Ideas for India at the Mercatus Center at GMU interviewed me, which resulted in two podcasts. “Where did development economics go wrong?” on May 17, 2022 and “Reforming Development Economics” on June 9, 2022.
This is a video recording (with slides) of a keynote speech plus Q&A I gave at the 2nd SANEM (South Asian Economists) conference on June 17th 2021. Attached are the slides.
I did this interview with Ann Bernstein of the Center for Development and Enterprise (CDE) on May 27, 2021. There is also a text version here.
This is a video (with the slides) of a public lecture given at the Indian School of Public Policy on April 27th, 2021 entitled “State Capability: Dos, Do Nots, and Donuts” and attached are the slides.
I gave a similar presentation to the above on “Dos, Do Nots, and Donuts” to the Institute of Business Administration, Karachi, Pakistan, April 2nd, 2021.
I was on this GoodWillHunters (out of Australia) podcast episode 67 of March 1, 2020 (the introduction says I am a ‘rock star’ which in the interview I corrected to more like a minor folk singer).
This is a recording (without video) of a debate on RCTs at the Development Policy Centre at ANU as part of the Australasian Aid conference, Feb 17-19, 2020.
These are the slides for a keynote speech at the Australasian Aid Conference Feb 17, 2021 “Good Intentions, Great Policies, Crappy Outcomes: The Difficult Dynamics of Deals”
This is a video of a keynote speech I have at a conference for Effective States and Inclusive Development from Politics to Power conference at Manchester, UK September 9-11, 2019.
Podcast interview with Charles Kenny. December 3, 2018.
Vox Talk Podcast interview with Tim Phillips. November 30, 2019
Op-ed in DevEx on World Bank’s new HCI, October 22, 2018.
Russ Roberts EconTalk (May 22, 2017) on experiments, poverty, etc.
Russ Roberts EconTalk (2013) on education in poor countries.
Top of Mind with Julie Rose (9/12/17) on education.
Older Stuff
A 2007 New York Times magazine article global labor mobility.
Whatever else this site conveys, the most famous thing I have actually ever done was work with Sheryl Sandberg in her first job after her undergraduate degree at the World Bank in the front office with Larry Summers. She, graciously, refers to me as her “first boss” (and she mentions me in her book Lean In, which I suspect sold more copies in a week than everything I have written combined). Sheryl is still a friend.
The most famous thing I never wrote (but did write) is the infamous Summers Memo on the environment (longer article in the Harvard Magazine). A few minutes writing an ironic comment on a World Bank research report (that no one probably read or remembers) on behalf of my boss Larry Summers turned in a global media crisis, almost got him fired, created tough questions in his Senate hearings. Larry is still a friend, in spite of that memo.