Richard Palmer-Jones
Biographic Data
| ID | 6324677 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Richard Palmer-Jones |
| GIVEN NAMES | Richard |
| FAMILY NAME | Palmer-Jones |
| SIGNATURE | PALMER-JONES R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of East Anglia |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 21 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 15 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Colonial Legacies, Ethnicity and Fertility Decline in Kenya
All You Need is Cable TV
Robert Jensen and Emily Oster find that arrival of cable TV in rural India reduces women's tolerance of spousal violence, son preference and fertility, and increases women's autonomy, and school enrolment. These results are mostly replicated using their data and code. However, cable TV does not affect uneducated women. Theoretically informed index construction reduces the tolerance of violence effect, and weakens that on autonomy. We have statist…
Micro-Finance, Women’s Empowerment and Fertility Decline in Bangladesh
As Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen has argued “[Bangladesh’s development achievements have] important lessons for other countries across the globe, [in particular a focus on] reducing gender inequality”. A major avenue through which this emphasis has been manifest lies, according to this narrative, in enhancements to women’s agency for instrumental and intrinsic reasons particularly through innovations in family planning and microfinance. The “Ban…
Things you Wanted to Know about Bias in Evaluations but Never Dared to Think
The thrust for evidence?based policymaking has paid little attention to problems of bias. Statistical evidence is more fragile than generally understood, and false positives are all too likely given the incentives of policymakers and academic and professional evaluators. Well?known cognitive biases make bias likely for not dissimilar reasons in qualitative and mixed methods evaluations. What we term delinquent organisational isomorphism promotes …
On the Colonial Origins of Agricultural Development in India
Banerjee and Iyer find that districts which the British assigned to landlord revenue systems systematically underperform districts with non-landlord based revenue systems in agricultural performance, after the onset of the Green Revolution in the mid-1960s. Based on colonial documents, archival research and the work of historians, we correct a mis-interpretation of the land revenue system in Central Provinces, which BI characterise as landlord ba…
Three ‘Rs’ of Econometrics
Development economics has become increasingly quantified in recent years, reflecting the aspirations of economists to practise hard science. We argue that standard applied econometric methodology lacks one key feature of the claim of science to be scientific, namely replication as part of independent confirmation of findings. Replication plays a large role in understanding the confidence we can place in the quantitative studies on which much poli…
Improving the quality of development research
As the emphasis on evidence-based policymaking in international development increases, so too should the attention paid to the quality of the research on which this evidence is based. One way to encourage this is by archiving research data to enable reanalysis, but this requirement is often ignored or resisted by development researchers. Similarly, ambivalent feelings are expressed about revisits to former research sites to conduct further resear…
Replication of quantitative work in development studies
There is a growing demand for replications of authoritative works in development studies, which reflects recent trends in other social sciences as well as challenges to important quantitative works in development studies where replications have made contested contributions to understanding. At the same time, there is a strong trend within development towards adoption of medical models of evidence-based policy to find out what policies and interve…
High Noon for Microfinance Impact Evaluations
Recently, microfinance has come under increasing criticism raising questions of the validity of iconic studies which have justified it, such as Pitt and Khandker. Chemin applied propensity score matching to the Pitt and Khandker data, finding different impacts, but does not disaggregate by gender of borrower. We first replicate Chemin and extend his analysis in two ways. We test the robustness of propensity score matching results to selection on …
Response to Chemin and to Pitt
We reply to the discussion and criticisms of Matthieu Chemin (MC) and Mark Pitt (MP) to our paper ((Duvendack and Palmer-Jones (DPJ)) (all this issue). MC clarifies many issues which now make replication pure probable (but not yet achieved), and MP identifies a number of problems with DPJ (some of which are shared with Chemin, 2008). Chemin (2008) made at least one crucial undocumented and unrealistic assumption, and did not document many of his …
Literacy Sharing, Assortative Mating, or What? Labour Market Advantages and Proximate Illiteracy Revisited
This paper explores the relationship between household literacy and the labour market outcomes of illiterate household members which Basu, Narayan and Ravallion (2002 Basu, K., Narayan, A. and Ravallion, M. 2002. Is literacy shared within households? Theory and evidence from Bangladesh. Labour Economics, 8(6): 649–665. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) report using Household Income and Expenditure data from Bangladesh. BNR attrib…
Surplus Labour, Social Structure and Rural to Urban Migration
What has luck got to do with it? A regional analysis of poverty and agricultural growth in rural India
This article explores the role of agro-ecological factors associated with agricultural growth and poverty outcomes in India. Using a new operationalisation of agro-ecological factors and incorporating within-State variations in poverty and other variables we show that agricultural growth and poverty reduction appear to depend on underlying agro-ecological conditions which are favourable to the spread of irrigation and hence agricultural developme…
Agricultural growth, poverty reduction and agro-ecological zones in India
Work intensity, gender and sustainable development
Work intensity, gender and sustainable development
Surplus Labour, Social Structure and Rural to Urban Migration
Improving the quality of development research
As the emphasis on evidence-based policymaking in international development increases, so too should the attention paid to the quality of the research on which this evidence is based. One way to encourage this is by archiving research data to enable reanalysis, but this requirement is often ignored or resisted by development researchers. Similarly, ambivalent feelings are expressed about revisits to former research sites to conduct further resear…
Things you Wanted to Know about Bias in Evaluations but Never Dared to Think
The thrust for evidence?based policymaking has paid little attention to problems of bias. Statistical evidence is more fragile than generally understood, and false positives are all too likely given the incentives of policymakers and academic and professional evaluators. Well?known cognitive biases make bias likely for not dissimilar reasons in qualitative and mixed methods evaluations. What we term delinquent organisational isomorphism promotes …
Replication of quantitative work in development studies
There is a growing demand for replications of authoritative works in development studies, which reflects recent trends in other social sciences as well as challenges to important quantitative works in development studies where replications have made contested contributions to understanding. At the same time, there is a strong trend within development towards adoption of medical models of evidence-based policy to find out what policies and interve…
Agricultural growth, poverty reduction and agro-ecological zones in India
Work intensity, gender and sustainable development
What has luck got to do with it? A regional analysis of poverty and agricultural growth in rural India
This article explores the role of agro-ecological factors associated with agricultural growth and poverty outcomes in India. Using a new operationalisation of agro-ecological factors and incorporating within-State variations in poverty and other variables we show that agricultural growth and poverty reduction appear to depend on underlying agro-ecological conditions which are favourable to the spread of irrigation and hence agricultural developme…
Agricultural growth, poverty reduction and agro-ecological zones in India
Surplus Labour, Social Structure and Rural to Urban Migration
Literacy Sharing, Assortative Mating, or What? Labour Market Advantages and Proximate Illiteracy Revisited
This paper explores the relationship between household literacy and the labour market outcomes of illiterate household members which Basu, Narayan and Ravallion (2002 Basu, K., Narayan, A. and Ravallion, M. 2002. Is literacy shared within households? Theory and evidence from Bangladesh. Labour Economics, 8(6): 649–665. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) report using Household Income and Expenditure data from Bangladesh. BNR attrib…
High Noon for Microfinance Impact Evaluations
Recently, microfinance has come under increasing criticism raising questions of the validity of iconic studies which have justified it, such as Pitt and Khandker. Chemin applied propensity score matching to the Pitt and Khandker data, finding different impacts, but does not disaggregate by gender of borrower. We first replicate Chemin and extend his analysis in two ways. We test the robustness of propensity score matching results to selection on …
Response to Chemin and to Pitt
We reply to the discussion and criticisms of Matthieu Chemin (MC) and Mark Pitt (MP) to our paper ((Duvendack and Palmer-Jones (DPJ)) (all this issue). MC clarifies many issues which now make replication pure probable (but not yet achieved), and MP identifies a number of problems with DPJ (some of which are shared with Chemin, 2008). Chemin (2008) made at least one crucial undocumented and unrealistic assumption, and did not document many of his …
On the Colonial Origins of Agricultural Development in India
Banerjee and Iyer find that districts which the British assigned to landlord revenue systems systematically underperform districts with non-landlord based revenue systems in agricultural performance, after the onset of the Green Revolution in the mid-1960s. Based on colonial documents, archival research and the work of historians, we correct a mis-interpretation of the land revenue system in Central Provinces, which BI characterise as landlord ba…
Three ‘Rs’ of Econometrics
Development economics has become increasingly quantified in recent years, reflecting the aspirations of economists to practise hard science. We argue that standard applied econometric methodology lacks one key feature of the claim of science to be scientific, namely replication as part of independent confirmation of findings. Replication plays a large role in understanding the confidence we can place in the quantitative studies on which much poli…
Improving the quality of development research
As the emphasis on evidence-based policymaking in international development increases, so too should the attention paid to the quality of the research on which this evidence is based. One way to encourage this is by archiving research data to enable reanalysis, but this requirement is often ignored or resisted by development researchers. Similarly, ambivalent feelings are expressed about revisits to former research sites to conduct further resear…
Replication of quantitative work in development studies
There is a growing demand for replications of authoritative works in development studies, which reflects recent trends in other social sciences as well as challenges to important quantitative works in development studies where replications have made contested contributions to understanding. At the same time, there is a strong trend within development towards adoption of medical models of evidence-based policy to find out what policies and interve…
Things you Wanted to Know about Bias in Evaluations but Never Dared to Think
The thrust for evidence?based policymaking has paid little attention to problems of bias. Statistical evidence is more fragile than generally understood, and false positives are all too likely given the incentives of policymakers and academic and professional evaluators. Well?known cognitive biases make bias likely for not dissimilar reasons in qualitative and mixed methods evaluations. What we term delinquent organisational isomorphism promotes …
Micro-Finance, Women’s Empowerment and Fertility Decline in Bangladesh
As Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen has argued “[Bangladesh’s development achievements have] important lessons for other countries across the globe, [in particular a focus on] reducing gender inequality”. A major avenue through which this emphasis has been manifest lies, according to this narrative, in enhancements to women’s agency for instrumental and intrinsic reasons particularly through innovations in family planning and microfinance. The “Ban…
All You Need is Cable TV
Robert Jensen and Emily Oster find that arrival of cable TV in rural India reduces women's tolerance of spousal violence, son preference and fertility, and increases women's autonomy, and school enrolment. These results are mostly replicated using their data and code. However, cable TV does not affect uneducated women. Theoretically informed index construction reduces the tolerance of violence effect, and weakens that on autonomy. We have statist…
Colonial Legacies, Ethnicity and Fertility Decline in Kenya
Economics (14 works) · Political science (13 works) · Economic growth (8 works) · Microfinance and Financial Inclusion (7 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Biology (5 works) · Poverty, Education, and Child Welfare (5 works) · Psychology (5 works) · Social and Economic Development in India (5 works) · Sociology (5 works)