CAREER: Culture, Context, and Development Policy: An Interdisciplinary Research and Training Program

职业：文化、背景和发展政策：跨学科研究和培训项目

• 批准号: 2238314
• 负责人: Sara Lowes
• 金额: $ 53.52万
• 依托单位: University of California-San Diego
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-07-01 至 2028-06-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2238314&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Culture; Context; Development; Policy

This CAREER proposal uses four projects to study how culture interacts with policy to affect development outcomes. Culture has important implications for a wide variety of outcomes, including governance, human capital investment, and the scope and extent of cooperation. Economists have sought to understand the drivers of variation in culture, and the consequences of various cultural practices for key economic outcomes. The theme of this CAREER project is that insights from anthropology, culture, and local context can help explain differences in development policy success across countries and if appropriately used, may improve the design and effectiveness of development policies. The first project studies how to improve accountability and performance of local leaders; the second studies how a mismatch between indigenous institutions and development initiatives hinders the success of such initiatives, while the third project studies how social structures affect insurance and cooperation. The final project digitizes a new, large, and innovative ethnographic data for many developing countries that will be one of the few data sets of its kind. The results of this project will improve the efficiency of development policies, hence reduce poverty around the world. In addition, the results will help improve the effectiveness of US foreign aid programs, hence help the US maintain its global leadership in poverty reduction.The research consists of four projects to study how culture interacts with policy to explain the heterogeneity in development outcomes across countries as well as contribute to the literature in evolutionary anthropology. The projects combine a variety of methods: randomized controlled trials, lab-in-the-field experiments, original surveys, and digitization of archival and ethnographic data. The first project uses RCT to investigate whether social structures that increase accountability of local leaders can be leveraged to improve the provision of public goods. The second project provides new evidence on the ecological origins of private, relative to communal, land rights and explores how traditional property rights structures affect efforts to title land. The third project studies how matrilineal kinship systems affect cooperation and insurance in the extended family, expanding the traditional focus within economics on the nuclear family to extended kinship. The fourth project is an innovative data digitization effort to provide access to new ethnographic data for several developing countries. The results of these projects will provide insight into how culture affects the efficacy of development policy, and how greater understanding of local context can improve development initiatives. Besides improving development policy outcomes, the results will also help improve the effectiveness of US foreign aid.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

这份职业计划使用四个项目来研究文化如何与政策相互作用，从而影响发展成果。文化对包括治理、人力资本投资以及合作范围和程度在内的各种成果具有重要影响。经济学家试图了解文化差异的驱动因素，以及各种文化习俗对关键经济成果的影响。这一职业项目的主题是，来自人类学、文化和地方背景的见解可以帮助解释各国发展政策成功程度的差异，如果使用得当，可能会改善发展政策的设计和有效性。第一个项目研究如何改进地方领导人的问责制和业绩；第二个项目研究土著机构与发展倡议之间的不匹配如何阻碍这类倡议的成功；第三个项目研究社会结构如何影响保险和合作。最后一个项目将许多发展中国家的新的、大型的、创新的人种学数据数字化，这将是为数不多的同类数据集之一。该项目的成果将提高发展政策的效率，从而减少世界各地的贫困。此外，研究结果将有助于提高美国对外援助计划的有效性，从而帮助美国保持其在减贫方面的全球领先地位。研究由四个项目组成，研究文化如何与政策相互作用，以解释各国发展结果的异质性，以及对进化人类学文献的贡献。这些项目结合了多种方法：随机对照试验、现场实验室实验、原始调查以及档案和人种学数据的数字化。第一个项目使用区域合作研究来调查是否可以利用增加地方领导人问责制的社会结构来改善公共产品的提供。第二个项目提供了关于私人相对于集体土地权的生态起源的新证据，并探讨了传统的产权结构如何影响土地所有权的努力。第三个项目研究母系亲属制度如何影响大家庭中的合作和保险，将经济学中对核心家庭的传统关注扩大到大家庭。第四个项目是创新的数据数字化努力，为若干发展中国家提供获取新的人种学数据的途径。这些项目的成果将使人们深入了解文化如何影响发展政策的效力，以及更好地了解当地环境如何改进发展举措。除了改善发展政策的结果，结果还将有助于提高美国对外援助的有效性。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。