Michael Kremer

Michael Kremer is the development economist in Piles of cash and a town of solutions in Kenya, Nigeria (Summer School) who helped make [[BusiaKenya|Busia]] a landmark site for Randomized Controlled Trials in economics. The source says he had previously taught high school near Busia and later designed a randomized textbook study for a nonprofit working with schools.

The textbook result is important because it was negative on average. In the episode’s account, average test scores did not improve even though high-scoring students benefited, pushing development economists toward Remedial Education Targeting and a more empirical approach to what education spending actually does.

Connections

• Kenya and Busia, Kenya - local research setting.
• Carol Nkesa, Ted Miguel, and Pascaline Dupas - people connected to the Busia research ecosystem.
• Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Development Economics - Nobel and field context.