{"items": [{"author": "Frederic", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/833403151282?comment_id=833405790992", "anchor": "fb-833405790992", "service": "fb", "text": "\"Our new charity, BribeWell, is dedicated to purchasing the services of key functionaries in order to enable communications and public health policies to be rolled out rapidly\".", "timestamp": "1482330506"}, {"author": "Alice", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/833403151282?comment_id=833405790992&reply_comment_id=833451140112", "anchor": "fb-833405790992_833451140112", "service": "fb", "text": "→ It's called \"lobbying\"", "timestamp": "1482347094"}, {"author": "Frederic", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/833403151282?comment_id=833405790992&reply_comment_id=833471035242", "anchor": "fb-833405790992_833471035242", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I think lobbying is less efficient.", "timestamp": "1482352871"}, {"author": "Josh", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/833403151282?comment_id=833431684102", "anchor": "fb-833431684102", "service": "fb", "text": "There's a big reason GiveDirectly provides so much more than the small bump this does... big amounts of money are found to often be transformative with long-term impact, while small amounts usually result in someone treating themselves to an additional coffee, or something.
So I don't find this comparison compelling at all, because one in a high percentage of cases is shown to matter long-term, and the other is shown not to.", "timestamp": "1482340338"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/833403151282?comment_id=833431684102&reply_comment_id=833436674102", "anchor": "fb-833431684102_833436674102", "service": "fb", "text": "→ \"provides so much more than the small bump this does\"
An average log-consumption increase of 0.012 (~1%) doesn't mean everyone in the sample got 1% more money; many people probably ignored M-Pesa while other people used it more heavily. A 1% increase is also not that small.
\"while small amounts usually result in someone treating themselves to an additional coffee, or something\"
We have data on how people used M-Pesa; we don't have to speculate about coffee: http://www.jefftk.com/suri2014.pdf That paper shows that a major effect is making it easier risk-share by lowering the transaction costs. The kinds of shocks that this blunts the impact of (job loss, illness) are ones that could plausibly make someone permanently poorer.", "timestamp": "1482342525"}, {"author": "Josh", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/833403151282?comment_id=833431684102&reply_comment_id=833440526382", "anchor": "fb-833431684102_833440526382", "service": "fb", "text": "→ \"That paper shows that a major effect is making it easier risk-share by lowering the transaction costs.\"
The paper updates me strongly toward M-Pesa having a greater effect than I would have anticipated. Very cool (and to me surprising) that it's having that much of an effect insulating against shocks.
I would say my original point stands, however, that the comparative long-term impact on livelihoods is at best of uncertain comparison, and there's reason to believe GiveDirectly's is much more, so the $500M to GiveDirectly should not be take literally.", "timestamp": "1482344103"}, {"author": "David Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/833403151282?comment_id=833496449312", "anchor": "fb-833496449312", "service": "fb", "text": "Aren't you undercounting in the same way we initially did at home?
I'm not sure how many of the areas without it in 2010 got it before 2014. To the extent that they did, this is the annual benefit in 2014 of getting it earlier sometime in the past, not the benefit of having it vs. not having it.
So the benefit of getting it 1 year earlier extends past that 1 year (and may be larger than this during that year).", "timestamp": "1482360462"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/833403151282?comment_id=835455183992", "anchor": "fb-835455183992", "service": "fb", "text": "Tavneet Suri, corresponding author of the paper I'm drawing on here, responded to my question about the interpretation of cell 1 in table 1. In this post I interpreted it as the effect of having an M-Pesa agent within 1km, but it's actually the effect of having one additional M-Pesa agent within 1km. Since the average number of M-Pesa agents within 1km was ~9, naively we'd expect this to mean the effect of M-Pesa is 9x what I estimated above. But since the first M-Pesa agent is probably much more valuable than the tenth, and their sample mostly didn't include this no-access-to-access transition, the true effect is probably more than 9x. On the other hand, this is kind of big, maybe implausibly so. Instead of a ~1% increase, we're talking about more like 20%. Could M-Pesa really have made Kenya that much richer?
(I've updated the post)", "timestamp": "1483281261"}]}