“Selling mosquito nets cheaply in malaria-afflited areas is more effective than giving them away, because people who pay for them will value them more and be more likely to use them.”
Plausible, but false. I got it from this New Yorker article about randomized trials of social policy, which might have other good nuggets for you as well. (The economist doing the studies annoyed some people by showing evidence that microloans don’t work, or something like that—I read it in the hard copy a while ago, and the online version is behind a subscriber wall.)
This is the best I’ve seen in this thread. More like this please!
NB: I like not because of which turns out to be true—I doubt we’re ready to take a confident position on that—but because I can easily rationalize either one as “obvious”.
“Selling mosquito nets cheaply in malaria-afflited areas is more effective than giving them away, because people who pay for them will value them more and be more likely to use them.”
Plausible, but false. I got it from this New Yorker article about randomized trials of social policy, which might have other good nuggets for you as well. (The economist doing the studies annoyed some people by showing evidence that microloans don’t work, or something like that—I read it in the hard copy a while ago, and the online version is behind a subscriber wall.)
This is the best I’ve seen in this thread. More like this please!
NB: I like not because of which turns out to be true—I doubt we’re ready to take a confident position on that—but because I can easily rationalize either one as “obvious”.
Indeed. Both sides of the inversion need plausible rationalizations.