INDONESIA (DENPASAR) COURSE, June 23-27, 2008

This five-day course will be held from June 23rd to June 27th, 2008, in Denpasar, Indonesia. The course will be led by faculty affiliated with the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, and will focus on how to measure scientifically the effectiveness of development programs. Targeted at academics, government officials, researchers, graduate students and practitioners, this highly interactive course will be held in English and will provide a thorough understanding of randomized evaluations and a step by step guide for conducting program evaluations.

The course is sponsored by the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Jakarta, the World Bank, and JPAL.

Application Procedure
The number of seats in the course is limited – Indonesians nationals and residents will have preference. Participants will be chosen through a competitive application process. The deadline for submission of application is 31st March, 2008.

All applicants must send:

• Application form
• Personal statement of interest in the course (no more than 500 words, in English)
• Curriculum vitae (CV)
• Writing sample (English or Bahasa Indonesia, 1-5 pages)
• One letter of recommendation

Please send all materials by email to indonesia-course@povertyactionlab.org. Please send all materials (except letter of recommendation) in a single email. Letters of recommendation should be sent electronically by recommenders to the same email address.

Incomplete or late application forms will not be considered. Selected participants will be informed individually through e-mail or telephone by 16th May, 2008.

Please visit www.povertyactionlab.org/indonesia for more information about J-PAL’s work in Indonesia.

Key concepts to be covered in the course include:

• Why and when is a rigorous evaluation of social impact needed?
• What are the common pitfalls of evaluations and why do randomized evaluations avoid these pitfalls?
• What are the key components for designing a good randomized evaluation?
• Alternative techniques for incorporating randomization into project design.
• How do you determine the appropriate sample size, measure outcomes and manage data?
• How to guard against threats that may undermine the integrity of the results?
• Significance and proper techniques of statistical analysis.
• How to maximize policy impact and test external validity.

In addition to lectures, there will be group work and hands-on exercises designed to reinforce the concepts covered, and each group will develop a full proposal for a real evaluation.

There is no course fee for the course, and JPAL will cover hotel and food expenses for all participants during the course. However, course participants will be solely responsible for the expense of traveling to Bali and no claim for travel reimbursement will be entertained by J-PAL.

Teaching Faculty:
The teaching faculty are all leading international scholars in development economics:

Abhijit Banerjee is the Ford Foundation Professor of Economics at MIT and co-Director of the Poverty Action Lab. His areas of research are development economics, the economics of financial markets and the macroeconomics of developing countries.

Esther Duflo is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at MIT and co-Director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab. Her areas of research include household behavior, educational choice and returns to education, policy evaluation, decentralization and microfinance.

Pascaline Dupas is Assistant Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College. Her research focuses on health and education in developing countries, notably in Kenya. She founded TAMTAM Africa, a non-profit organization which provides insecticide treated nets to pregnant women through rural pre-natal clinics.

Rema Hanna is Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Economics at Wagner School of Public Service at New York University. Her work focuses on the provision and the impact of public services to the poor in South East Asian countries including Indonesia.

Dean Karlan is Assistant Professor of Economics at Yale University. His research interests include poverty issues in developing countries and in particular financial innovations aimed at the poor. He is involved in several randomized evaluations of financial innovations Programs in South Africa, Latin American and the Philippines.

Seema Jayachandran is Assistant Professor of Economics at Stanford University and her research interest focuses on Labor Economics and Political Economy. Her recent papers focus on life expectancy and human capital investments in Sri Lanka.