Weekly links July 10: micro vs macro approaches to poverty reduction, migration and development in a small country, financial education years later, and more… David McKenzie July 10, 2026 This page in: English

https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/impactevaluations/weekly-links-july-10--micro-vs-macro-approaches-to-poverty-reduc Dean Karlan now has a substack. He discusses his responses to some of the repeated debate about the role of RCTs and micro vs macro approaches in development. “A microeconomist can’t tell you how to make Kenya rich. But she can tell you which of several candidate strategies, based on prior theory and evidence, is most likely to get more kids into school, keep them healthy, move them into the workforce, or help girls delay marriage to a healthier age. These things matter, a lot of money rides on them, and (critically) the right answer is often less than obvious. If we can do each of those even 10% better, I count those as wins” Here is the Todd Moss post that Dean is responding to.