According to oring theory, maybe you should found with obged and esther, but not with anyone else. So how do you think about the economics of you as founder? How shall i model that? You know, i'll just give an example. I guess the most recent thing that i've been involved n in founding, co founding, i was organization called precision agriculture for development. And what that organization does is it works on mobile phone based agricultural extension. Do you think you will found a for profit in developing economies? I don't have any plans to, but i don't always have plans in advance, or who knows....
Michael Kremer is best known for his academic work researching global poverty, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2019 along with Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee. Less known is that he is also the founder of five non-profits and in the process of creating a sixth. And Kremer doesn’t see anything unusual about embodying the dual archetypes of economist and founder. “I think there's a lot of relationship between the experimental method and the things that are needed to help found organizations,” he explains.
Michael joined Tyler to discuss the intellectual challenge of founding organizations, applying methods from behavioral economics to design better programs, how advanced market commitments could lower pharmaceutical costs for consumers while still incentivizing R&D, the ongoing cycle of experimentation every innovator understands, the political economy of public health initiatives, the importance of designing institutions to increase technological change, the production function of new technologies, incentivizing educational achievement, The Odyssey as a tale of comparative development, why he recently transitioned to University of Chicago, what researchers can learn from venture capitalists, his current work addressing COVID-19, and more.
Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.
Recorded September 9th, 2020 Other ways to connect