UC Berkeley — Research Support
Published: February 2019
Note: This page summarizes the rationale behind a GiveWell Incubation Grant to the Regents of the University of California, Berkeley. Ted Miguel, whose research this grant is intended to support, reviewed this page prior to publication.
Summary
As part of GiveWell’s work to support research to further our understanding of our current priority programs, the Regents of the University of California, Berkeley ("UC Berkeley") received a GiveWell Incubation Grant of $170,000 in February of 2019 to hire an additional research assistant to support Ted Miguel's research on deworming and cash transfers.
Table of Contents
About the grantee
Our core goal for this grant is to increase the research capacity of Ted Miguel (UC Berkeley). We have found some of Professor Miguel's past research highly useful.
Professor Miguel collaborated with Michael Kremer on a deworming study (Miguel and Kremer 2004) which plays a major role in supporting GiveWell's current recommendation of giving to deworming charities.
GiveWell has previously recommended other Incubation Grants to support research in which Professor Miguel is involved, including:
- A long-term impact evaluation of previously completed randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in global health and development,
- the Kenya Life Panel Survey Round 4 (KLPS-4), a 20-year follow-up to Miguel and Kremer 2004, and
- an investigation into the feasibility of following up on other deworming studies.
Professor Miguel is also a principal investigator on a study on "general equilibrium" effects of cash transfers which we consider especially relevant to our conclusions about the evidence base for cash transfers.
About the grant
This grant is intended to allow Professor Miguel to hire an additional research assistant for two years to support his research on deworming and cash transfers. We expect hiring an additional research assistant to:
- Generally increase Professor Miguel's capacity and allow him to focus his time on the most important work
- Speed up the analysis, results, and publication of GiveWell-funded research (see above)
- Allow for better data transparency by, e.g., increasing Professor Miguel's team's ability to post its full datasets online
Our process
Professor Miguel contacted us and asked if we would be interested in funding this opportunity. Due to our familiarity with Professor Miguel's work, our investigation for this grant was relatively limited. Our impression is that it would likely require a fair amount of time and effort for Professor Miguel to find another source for this funding.