Published in Christianity Today, March 3, 2026 What is God’s heart? What does he value? What relative importance does he place on the different facets of our flourishing? He certainly…
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A year ago this week on election day, Christianity Today ran the following article that my British political scientist friend and colleague Matt Beech and I wrote on trying to…
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Bruce Wydick and Nolan Sherwood, University of San Francisco An online tour of prominent impact investing firms reveals some truly spectacular websites with truly spectacular claims. Beautiful infographics herald transformative…
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by Bruce Wydick and Jeff Bloem We’re approaching an exciting new era in the relationship between development practitioners and development researchers. After decades of academic paternalism, market fundamentalism, and the…
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Why should a development NGO invest in the modern tools of impact evaluation? I’ve met with many Christian development NGOs who are eager to understand the real effects of their…
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A number of years ago on a flight from SFO to the East Coast I was seated next to a guy who told me he was returning home after doing…
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The 2021 Nobel Prize in Economics was given to David Card, Joshua Angrist, and Guido Imbens for their work in using observational data and natural experiments to help us understand…
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David Levine and Bruce Wydick Americans—and the world—should cheer the government’s news Friday to lift the pause on the distribution of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine. The decision will…
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(Written for Christianity Today’s Better Samaritan Blog 1/15/21, click here for link to CT’s online post.) What is the role of hope in escaping poverty? A quick glance at the…
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by Bruce Wydick and Kent Annan, appearing in Christianity Today online 10/23/20 Particularly in this time of global pandemic, we want to know how to care for our local and…
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This blog appeared as a guest post earlier this month for reopeningthechurch.com, sponsored by the Humanitarian Disaster Institute at Wheaton College and National Association of Evangelicals. Like many churches, the…
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Recently my coauthors and I finished a CEGA working paper for a research project that fell into the category of one of those “dying to know if this popular thing…
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The smartest administrators will not only plan for delivering education during the pandemic, but will develop capacities to meet the surge in demand for higher education when the pandemic fades.
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The only way to feel worse about the impacts of COVID-19 than talking to people in public health is to talk to people in business and economics. Macroeconomists often tell…
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Development practitioners and development economists have an interesting relationship. We talk about the same things, have many of the same interests, but don’t understand each other well. Practitioners sometimes see…
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Microcredit has arguably been through more ups and downs than virtually any modern poverty intervention. For decades up through the 1980s, the thought was that the poor would never repay…
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We as development economists are poverty “experts” in many respects. We are experts at talking and writing about poverty. We are experts at developing mathematical models that explain poverty. And…
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That Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer would eventually win the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences has never been the subject of much debate in the development…
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Part of growing in our engagement with the global and domestic poor is understanding the stage where we are currently along this road, and what our possible roles can be…
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This post is taken from a blog post for the Center for Effective Philanthropy and contains excerpts from my new book Shrewd Samaritan: Faith, Economics, and the Road to Loving our…
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(Excerpt from the introduction to the book–now available July 2019.) It’s been my experience that most people have a genuine desire to help the poor—including the poor in their communities…
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I returned from Guatemala on this week, helping lead a group of 25 people on a visit to the village where our non-profit organization Mayan Partners works in the western…
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A great number of life’s important questions are causal questions. Whether we are a parent trying to choose the best school for our child, a physician pondering the best approach…
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Beginning about four years ago, microcredit as an effective poverty intervention seemed dead, or at least on life support. Along with a couple of earlier studies, the six famous randomized…
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Why I Cannot (Fully) Embrace Effective Altruism
One of the most popular schools of thought in global ethics today is a movement called Effective Altruism. Founded on the work of Princeton philosopher Peter Singer, it draws heavily…
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