Centering racial equity in economics research
J-PAL North America
J-PAL North America, based at MIT, seeks to reduce poverty by ensuring that policy is informed by scientific evidence.
I am excited to begin work as Scientific Advisor and chair of a newly-formed advisory committee at J-PAL North America focused on racial equity. Our committee will inform J-PAL North America’s year-long process to examine how research related to racial equity can best be funded through J-PAL, how we can identify the researchers best-positioned to do that work, and how we can support those researchers. We will also examine how J-PAL North America’s practices in general can be made more inclusive to help support a diverse group of economists and others studying racial equity via randomized evaluations.
My research background includes leading a number of randomized evaluations, including some funded and supported by J-PAL North America. In addition, my work has, of late, shifted toward a greater focus on issues of racial equity. I have found it important to incorporate lessons from the rich interdisciplinary body of work on the social construction of race, the racialization of ethnic and other groups, and structural forms of inequality and discrimination. I also have some background in doing policy work within the federal government on leveraging administrative data to measure racial equity, exploring the causes of inequality and sources of discrimination, and identifying policy solutions that help achieve greater racial equity. Finally, I have participated in a number of initiatives aimed at supporting scholars from underrepresented backgrounds within the field of economics. I hope to bring this experience to bear on our work at J-PAL North America.
I am most excited to gather our advisory committee, comprising scholars from within and outside of J-PAL’s network of researchers. In particular, we will critically assess the role that randomized evaluations might play in researching racial equity, including identifying and clarifying what limitations might exist. We will explore how researchers can go beyond simply measuring inequality or reporting heterogeneous treatment effects by race. Randomized evaluations might serve as helpful tools in understanding the process of racial stratification, the reproduction of racial hierarchy, or identifying the present impacts of historic forms of discrimination, but it's important for our field to be thoughtful about when and how randomized evaluations are—or sometimes are not—a good fit. It is also important to consider when researchers need other tools to understand racial equity, and how to make our work complementary and additive to the wealth of critical scholarship across disciplines. The committee will explore these questions, and discuss how researchers conducting randomized evaluations might benefit from and be informed by an understanding of these concepts.
Our first tasks will be to convene the above-mentioned advisory committee and provide a set of recommendations to inform J-PAL North America’s funding strategies, internal policies related to inclusion, and general support of a diversified pipeline of economists and others conducting randomized evaluations. I look forward to working with the very capable team at J-PAL North America, without whom such an endeavor would not be possible. For those interested in this work, please explore the MIT News announcement and two blog posts we highlight in this newsletter, and stay tuned for more to come.
领英推荐
Damon Jones | Associate Professor, University of Chicago | Scientific Advisor and Chair, J-PAL North America racial equity advisory committee
Read more:
Subscribe to receive the full newsletter here.