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About the Author(s)

Karthik Muralidharan

Karthik Muralidharan is a research associate in the NBER's Programs on Development Economics and Education, and the Tata Chancellor's Professor of Economics at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He is a board member of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development and J-PAL, the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at MIT, where he chairs the education program.

Born and raised in India, Muralidharan earned an AB in economics from Harvard, an M.Phil. in economics from Cambridge, and a PhD in economics from Harvard. His research spans development, public, and labor economics with a focus on improving the effectiveness of public spending in the social sector — education, health, and social protection programs — in developing countries. His research program is characterized by large-scale randomized experiments conducted in partnership with governments to study the impact of programs and policies at scale. He is actively involved in policy advising and capacity building in India, and teaches a course on the Indian Economy at UCSD.

Endnotes

1. World Development Report 2004, "Making Services Work for Poor People – Overview (English)," Washington, D.C., World Bank Group, 2003.   Go to ⤴︎
2. S. G. Rivkin, E. A. Hanushek, and J. F. Kain, "Teachers, Schools, and Academic Achievement," NBER Working Paper 6691, August 1998, and Econometrica, 73(2), 2005, pp. 417–58. Go to ⤴︎
3. R. Chetty, J. Friedman, and J. Rockoff, "Measuring the Impacts of Teachers I: Evaluating Bias in Teacher Value-Added Estimates," NBER Working Paper 19423, September 2013, and the American Economic Review, 104(9), 2014, pp. 2593–632. Go to ⤴︎
4. K. Muralidharan, "Field Experiments in Education in Developing Countries," in A. Banerjee, E. Duflo, eds., Handbook of Field Experiments, Vol. 2, North Holland, The Netherlands, Elsevier, 2017.   Go to ⤴︎
5. K. Muralidharan and P. Niehaus, "Experimentation at Scale," NBER Working Paper 23957, October 2017, and Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31(4), 2017, pp. 103–24.   Go to ⤴︎
6. N. Chaudhury, J. Hammer, M. Kremer, K. Muralidharan, and H. Rogers, "Missing in Action: Teacher and Health Worker Absence in Developing Countries," Journal of Economic Perspectives, 20(1), 2006, pp. 91–116.   Go to ⤴︎
7. J. Das, A. Holla, A. Mohpal, and K. Muralidharan, "The Fiscal Cost of Weak Governance: Evidence from Teacher Absence in India," NBER Working Paper 20299, July 2014, and the Journal of Public Economics, 145, 2017, pp. 116–35.   Go to ⤴︎
8. "Teaching and Learning: Achieving Quality for All," in UNESCO 2014: EFA Global Monitoring Report 2013–14, Paris, France, UNESCO, 2014.   Go to ⤴︎
9. "World Bank 2010: Transforming Indonesia's Teaching Force," Washington, DC, World Bank, Human Development Department.   Go to ⤴︎
10. J. de Ree, M. Pradhan, K. Muralidharan, and H. Rogers, "Double for Nothing? Experimental Evidence on Impact of an Unconditional Teacher Salary Increase on Student Performance in Indonesia," NBER Working Paper  21806, December 2015, and published as "Double for Nothing? Experimental Evidence on an Unconditional Teacher Salary Increase in Indonesia," Quarterly Journal of Economics, 133(2), 2018, pp. 993–1039. Go to ⤴︎
11. F. Finan, B. Olken, and R. Pande, "The Personnel Economics of the State, NBER Working Paper 21825, December 2015, and in A. Banerjee and E. Duflo, eds., Handbook of Field Experiments, Vol. 1, North Holland, The Netherlands, Elsevier, 2017.   Go to ⤴︎
12. K. Muralidharan and V. Sundararaman, "Teacher Performance Pay: Experimental Evidence from India," NBER Working Paper 15323, September 2009, and Journal of Political Economy, 119(1), 2011, pp. 39–77.   Go to ⤴︎
13. K. Muralidharan, "Long-Term Effects of Teacher Performance Pay: Experimental Evidence from India," UC San Diego Working Paper, October 2012.   Go to ⤴︎
14. E. Duflo and R. Hanna, "Monitoring Works: Getting Teachers to Come to School," NBER Working Paper 11880, December 2005, and published as "Incentives Work: Getting Teachers to Come to School," by E. Duflo, R. Hanna, and S. Ryan, American Economic Review, 102(4), 2012, pp. 1241–78.   Go to ⤴︎
15. E. Lazear, "Performance Pay and Productivity," NBER Working Paper 5672, July 1996, and the American Economic Review, 90(5), 2000, pp. 1346–61.   Go to ⤴︎
16. K. Muralidharan and V. Sundararaman, "Teacher Opinions on Performance Pay: Evidence from India," Economics of Education Review, 30(3), 2011, pp. 394–403.   Go to ⤴︎
17. I. Mbiti, K. Muralidharan, M. Romero, Y Schipper, C. Manda, and R. Rajani, "Inputs, Incentives, and Complementarities in Education: Experimental Evidence from Tanzania," NBER Working Paper 24876, July 2018. Go to ⤴︎

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