Benjamin A. Olken (born April 1975)
[Benjamin Olken's CV from the MIT website.](_blank)
/ref> is an American economist
An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics.
The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this ...
and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...
(MIT). Olken is one of the directors of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab
The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) is a global research center working to reduce poverty by ensuring that policy is informed by scientific evidence. J-PAL conducts randomized impact evaluations to answer critical questions in the fi ...
(J-PAL), a research centre specializing on the use of randomized evaluations for the purpose of studying poverty alleviation. His research focuses on the political economy
Political economy is the study of how Macroeconomics, economic systems (e.g. Marketplace, markets and Economy, national economies) and Politics, political systems (e.g. law, Institution, institutions, government) are linked. Widely studied ph ...
of developing countries
A developing country is a sovereign state with a lesser developed industrial base and a lower Human Development Index (HDI) relative to other countries. However, this definition is not universally agreed upon. There is also no clear agreem ...
, especially regarding the role of corruption
Corruption is a form of dishonesty or a criminal offense which is undertaken by a person or an organization which is entrusted in a position of authority, in order to acquire illicit benefits or abuse power for one's personal gain. Corruption m ...
and the impact of interventions addressing corruption.
Biography
In 1997, Benjamin Olken earned a B.A.
Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...
''summa cum laude'' in mathematics, ethics, politics, and economics from Yale University
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...
, followed by a Ph.D.
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...
in economics from Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
in 2004. During his studies, Olken worked as a business analyst for McKinsey & Company
McKinsey & Company is a global management consulting firm founded in 1926 by University of Chicago professor James O. McKinsey, that offers professional services to corporations, governments, and other organizations. McKinsey is the oldest and ...
in New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
as well as in the World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects. The World Bank is the collective name for the Interna ...
's Jakarta
Jakarta (; , bew, Jakarte), officially the Special Capital Region of Jakarta ( id, Daerah Khusus Ibukota Jakarta) is the capital and largest city of Indonesia. Lying on the northwest coast of Java, the world's most populous island, Jakarta ...
office. After completing his Ph.D., Olken joined the Harvard Society of Fellows
The Society of Fellows is a group of scholars selected at the beginnings of their careers by Harvard University for their potential to advance academic wisdom, upon whom are bestowed distinctive opportunities to foster their individual and intell ...
as a Junior Fellow in 2005, while also maintaining an affiliation with J-PAL and MIT as a visiting scholar. In 2008, this affiliation translated into an associate professorship with tenure at MIT, which was upgraded to a full professorship in 2012. Besides teaching at MIT, Olken has also held positions as visiting (associate) professor at Harvard University and the Booth School of Business
The University of Chicago Booth School of Business (Chicago Booth or Booth) is the graduate business school of the University of Chicago. Founded in 1898, Chicago Booth is the second-oldest business school in the U.S. and is associated with 10 N ...
of the University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
.
After working from 2005 to 2010 as an affiliate at J-PAL, Olken became J-PAL's Co-Chair of the Political Economy and Governance section as well as a Member of J-PAL's Board of Directors. Since 2012, he has been serving as one of J-PAL's Directors and, in particular, as Co-scientific Director of J-PAL Southeast Asia. In addition to his involvement in J-PAL, Olken is affiliated with several other economic institutions, including the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD), the International Growth Centre
The International Growth Centre (IGC) is an economic research centre based at the London School of Economics, operated in partnership with University of Oxford's Blavatnik School of Government.
The centre was launched in December 2008 and is fund ...
, the Centre for Economic Policy Research
The Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) is an independent, non‐partisan, pan‐European non‐profit organisation. Its mission is to enhance the quality of policy decisions through providing policy‐relevant research, based soundly in e ...
(CEPR), and the National Bureau of Economic Research
The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is an American private nonprofit research organization "committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic research among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic c ...
(NBER). Finally, Olken also contributes as associate or co-editor to the ''Review of Economics and Statistics
''The'' ''Review of Economics and Statistics'' is a peer-reviewed 103-year-old general journal that focuses on applied economics, with specific relevance to the scope of quantitative economics. The ''Review'', edited at the Harvard University’s K ...
'', ''Journal of Development Economics
The ''Journal of Development Economics'' is a bimonthly peer-reviewed academic journal published by Elsevier. It was established in 1974 and is considered the top field journal in development economics.
Its editor-in-chief from 1985 to 2003 was Pr ...
'', and the '' American Economic Journal: Applied Economics''.
Research
Olken's research interests focus on development economics
Development economics is a branch of economics which deals with economic aspects of the development process in low- and middle- income countries. Its focus is not only on methods of promoting economic development, economic growth and structural ...
in general and the political economies of developing countries
A developing country is a sovereign state with a lesser developed industrial base and a lower Human Development Index (HDI) relative to other countries. However, this definition is not universally agreed upon. There is also no clear agreem ...
(e.g. corruption) in particular. Geographically, a large part of his research is concentrated on Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, south-eastern region of Asia, consistin ...
, especially Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...
. With regard to research output, Olken belongs to the top 3% highest-ranked economists according to the bibliographic database IDEAS/RePEc
Research Papers in Economics (RePEc) is a collaborative effort of hundreds of volunteers in many countries to enhance the dissemination of research in economics. The heart of the project is a decentralized database of working papers, preprints, ...
.
In his research on corruption, Olken finds that traditional top-down monitoring can substantially reduce corruption even in highly corrupt environments based on the impact evaluation of a randomized field experiment
Field experiments are experiments carried out outside of laboratory settings.
They randomly assign subjects (or other sampling units) to either treatment or control groups in order to test claims of causal relationships. Random assignment helps ...
involving government audits of village road projects in Indonesia; an announced increase in the share of monitored projects from 4% to 100% decreases missing expenditures by 8%, making the audits cost-effective. In another Indonesian field experiment, Olken and Patrick Barron document the influence of market structure on bribe payments, i.e. whether the drivers of overweight trucks have affordable alternatives to driving on roads with frequent checkpoints, and the use of sophisticated pricing schemes by corrupt officials (e.g. two-part tariffs). Olken's research on corruption also touches about the differences between (often used) corruption perceptions and the actual extent of corruption; contrasting the perceptions of Indonesian villagers of corruption with more objective measures, Olken finds that villagers do perceive corruption and are able to distinguish between project-specific corruption and general corruption but that they also typically misestimate the true extent of corruption and are subject to systematic biases. These results suggest substantial limits to the reliability of subjective corruption perceptions in research.
Another strand of Olken's research deals with the relationship between temperature and economic development (and the direction of the relationship's causality). In his research on the relationship between temperature and economic growth, together with Melissa Dell
Melissa Dell (born ) is a Professor of Economics at Harvard University. Her research interests include development economics, political economy, and economic history.
In 2014, the International Monetary Fund named Dell among the 25 Brightest Yo ...
and Benjamin F. Jones, Olken finds that higher temperatures (i) substantially decrease economic growth in developing countries, (ii) reduce ''both'' growth rates and output levels, and (iii) depress agricultural and industrial output as well as political stability, thus overall suggesting the potential of large negative impacts of higher temperatures on developing countries. These conclusions have been challenged as relying on "an untenable method of classifying countries by income." Furthermore, in prior work, Dell, Jones and Olken also found that a large part of the strongly negative impact of high temperatures on income may be offset by adaptation in the long run. These and other results are summarized and discussed in these authors' highly cited review of the economics of climate change
The economics of climate change concerns the economic aspects of climate change; this can inform policies that governments might consider in response. A number of factors make this and the politics of climate change a difficult problem: it is a l ...
, ''What Do We Learn from the Weather?''.
Personal life
Olken is married to MIT economist Amy Finkelstein
Amy Nadya Finkelstein (born November 2, 1973) is a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the co-director and research associate of the Public Economics Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and ...
.
References
External links
Olken's profile on the website of MIT
Olken's profile on the website of J-PAL
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Olken, Benjamin
21st-century American economists
MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences faculty
American development economists
Political economists
1975 births
Harvard University alumni
Living people
Yale University alumni