Join us for Dean Karlan, MBA '97, MPP '97, professor of economics at Yale University and president of innovations for Poverty Action, for his talk on "Pragmatic Optimism: Using Both Heart and Mind to Fight Poverty."
Event Details
Karlan is on the Board of Directors of the MIT Jameel Poverty Action Lab. As a social entrepreneur, he is Founder and President of stickK.com, a website that uses lessons from behavioral economics to help people reach personal goals, such as weight loss and smoking cessation, through commitment contracts. In 2011, Karlan co-authored More Than Good Intentions: How a New Economics is Helping to Solve Global Poverty.
Immediately following Karlan's talk, join us for hors d'oeuvres and beverages.
Speaker Profiles
Dean Karlan (Speaker)
Dean Karlan is a Professor of Economics at Yale University. Karlan is President of Innovations for Poverty Action, a non-profit organization that creates and evaluates solutions to social and development problems, and works to scale-up successful ideas through implementation and dissemination to policymakers, practitioners, investors and donors. Karlan is on the Board of Directors of the M.I.T. Jameel Poverty Action Lab. As a social entrepreneur, He is Founder and President of stickK.com, a website that uses lessons from behavioral economics to help people reach personal goals, such as weight loss and smoking cessation, through commitment contracts. In 2011, Karlan co-authored More Than Good Intentions: How a New Economics is Helping to Solve Global Poverty. Karlan received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, and was named an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow. His research focuses on microeconomic issues of financial decision-making, specifically employing experimental methodologies to examine what works, what does not, and why in interventions in microfinance, health, behavioral economics and charitable giving. In microfinance, he has studied credit impact, interest rate policy, savings product design, credit scoring policies, entrepreneurship training, and group versus individual liability. Karlan received a Ph.D. in Economics from M.I.T., an M.B.A. and an M.P.P. from the University of Chicago, and a B.A. in International Affairs from the University of Virginia. He can be followed on twitter @deankarlan, and blogs regularly on Freakonomics.
Questions
Erica Phillips
Assistant Director, Social Enterprise Initiative
773-834-5615