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Draft:Justin Sandefur

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Justin Sandefur
Sandefur in 2013
Education
Academic career
Field
Institutions
Information at IDEAS / RePEc
Academic background
ThesisEssays on Labour and Credit Markets in Africa (2008)

Justin Sandefur is an American development economist currently serving as a Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development, a Washington, D.C. based think tank.[1] His research focuses on the economics of health and education in the developing world, in addition to the evaluation foreign aid and international development projects more generally.[1]

From 2019 to 2020, he served on the Economic Advisory Council of the Millennium Challenge Corporation,[2] a U.S. bilateral aid agency providing grants to countries deemed to have good economic policies and promising growth trajectories. In 2021, Sandefur served on an external panel evaluating the methodology of the World Bank's annual Doing Business report.[3][4]

Education

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Sandefur studied for his undergraduate degree at La Sierra University in Riverside, California, graduating with a BA in Political Economy in 2002.[5][6] He subsequently moved to the University of Oxford, where he received an MPhil[6] and DPhil[1] in Economics in 2004 and 2008, respectively. While at Oxford, Sandefur was a lecturer at Keble College.[6] His thesis was entitled "Essays on Labour and Credit Markets in Africa".[7]

Career

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Sandefur began his academic career at the University of Oxford, his DPhil alma mater, where he worked as a research officer at the Centre for the Study of African Economies.[1] During his appointment at Oxford, he also worked as a resident adviser to the Tanzanian National Bureau of Statistics in Dar es Salaam,[1] advising the agency on the implementation of its National Panel Survey.[8] In addition to Tanzania, he has worked on projects in partnership with government ministries in Liberia, Kenya, and Sierra Leone.[8][9] He has also held visiting research positions at the Georgetown Walsh School of Foreign Service[1] and Peking University in Beijing.[10]

Center for Global Development

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In 2010, Sandefur joined the Center for Global Development as a Research Fellow. His research focuses on the economics of education and health in low and middle income countries, in addition to the evaluation of foreign aid more generally.[1] He is currently a Senior Fellow at CGD.

World Bank Doing Business report

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World Bank's Ease of Doing Business index map for 2020
  ≥ 85.0
  80.0–84.9
  75.0–79.9
  70.0–74.9
  65.0–69.9
  60.0–64.9
  55.0–59.9
  50.0–54.9
  45.0–49.9
  40.0–44.9
  35.0–39.9
  30.0–34.9
  ≤ 25.0
  Data unavailable

In December 2020, Sandefur joined an external panel appointed to review the Doing Business report, an annual World Bank publication that ranked countries based on their overall suitability for private enterprise.[11] The external review was called in response to accusations of data irregularities in several countries' ease of doing business indices.[11] In particular, Kristalina Georgia, an earlier president and CEO of the World Bank Group, was accused of pressuring bank staff to improve China's ranking.[11][12] Additional concerns were raised regarding the placement of Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, and the United Arab Emirates.[11]

In response to the controversy, Sandefur observed that the challenges of the Doing Business report highlighted a "governance problem" at the World Bank.[11]. In response to reports of the Bank releasing an altered Business Ready ranking based on a new methodology, he argued that the institution should be careful making promises "about rigorous measurement and transparency, not rankings and chasing news headlines."[13]

Lead exposure

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Sandefur has also been involved in the Center for Global Development's efforts to combat lead exposure in the developing world. In 2021, the Center for Global Development issued a global call for the eradication of lead poisoning, citing high blood-lead levels in many developing countries and a large literature on the negative consequences of the neurotoxin.[14] In 2024, CGD served as a founding member of the Partnership for a Lead-Free Future, a $150 million public-private partnership including UNICEF, USAID,[15] Pure Earth,[16] Open Philanthropy,[17] the Asian Development Bank,[18] and a number of other organizations. Sandefur has supported CGD's work in this area, co-authoring a meta-analysis of the consequences of lead exposure on educational outcomes,[19] and drawing media attention to the challenge of lead poisoning in the developing world.[10]

Research

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Sandefur's research focuses on a range of topics in development economics, including the economics of education, health economics, and the management and efficacy of overseas development aid.[1]

Bridge International Academies

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Much of Sandefur's research focuses on the quality of education in low and middle income countries.[1] Alongside Mauricio Romero and Wayne Aaron Sandholtz,[20] he was a principal investigator on an experimental evaluation of Partnership Schools for Liberia, a scheme in which management of 93 public schools in Liberia was delegated to private providers, among them Bridge International Academies, a for-profit education company with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.[21][22] The evaluation found that students in outsourced schools spent larger amounts of time learning and had improved educational outcomes, with students in outsourced schools had significantly higher scores in both English and mathematics.[20][23]

The Partnership Schools for Liberia initiative, supported by Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, faced strong opposition from teacher's unions in the country, as well as from the then United Nations special rapporteur for the right to education,[24] who called the experiment "a blatant violation of Liberia’s international obligations under the right to education."[22] Despite the positive results of the study, Sandefur cautioned against a rapid scale-up of the oursourcing model, warning that doing so may created an environment where "there was no longer a governance firewall between the interests of a commercial company and the Ministry of Education, which is supposed to be advocating on what is best for Liberian children."[25] The Partnership for Schools was also criticized for its cost. Schools to which teaching were outsourced spent considerably more than the Liberian government, accessing supplementary philanthropic funding on top of the $50 USD that the Liberian government typically allocates per pupil in a given year.[23] In 2023, reports emerged of over a dozen cases of child sexual abuse at Bridge International Academies in Kenya.[26] The World Bank, which held $13 million USD stake in Bridge International Academies from 2013 to 2022, was accused by its ombudsman of having insufficiently vetted the company prior to funding it in 2014, and was criticized heavily by civil society organizations, divesting its stake in response.[27] In response to Ajay Banga's role in negotiating compensation for the victims, Sandefur observed that "I think symbolically now it’s started to become a big deal in that is he [Banga] willing to shoot straight and turn over a new page on this."[26]

After three years, Sandefur co-authored a follow-up of their initial study, finding that the program's effects on educational attainment had plateaued, rising from only 0.18 to 0.20 standard deviations from the first year.[28][29] They also found that the program increased rates of dropout and had no detectable effect on sexual abuse, which likewise emerged as an issue in the Liberian experiment after one of their outsourced operators was found to have obscured information on the rape of a student prior to the onset of the program.[28]

Unconditional convergence

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Sandefur has also pursued research on the macroeconomics of development. In 2021, he published an article alongside Arvind Subramanian and Dev Patel in the Journal of Development Economics, arguing that since the mid-1990s, cross-country convergence in incomes has accelerated, with higher growth rates in low and middle income countries than high income ones, on average.[30][31] The article documented a departure from the decades preceding the mid-1990s, when rich countries on average grew faster than poor ones.[30][32] The paper's observations thus suggested that recent growth trajectories are in line with the empirical predictions of the Solow–Swan model,[33] and other macroeconomic models predicting "catch-up" growth among countries inside the technological frontier.

Measurement of educational attainment

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Sandefur has also pursued research on the measurement of educational achievement in different countries.[34] A core challenge for cross-country comparisons of educational attainment is that tests are often not standardized internationally.[35] Alongside Dev Patel of Harvard University, Sandefur developed a statistical model to predict how scores on certain tests translate into scores on others.[34][35] Using results from this predictive model, he found that differences in income across countries matter more than differences of income between households.[34] In other words, households in poor countries were found to systematically underperform households in rich countries, even if they had the same income.[34]

COVID-19 in India

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During the global COVID-19 pandemic, Sandefur also pursued research on the prevalence and mortality rate from the disease. As of 2021, few comprehensive estimates existed of India's total death toll from COVID-19.[36][37] Alongside Abhishek Anand and Arvind Subramanian, Sandefur released a Center for Global Development working paper estimating that between 3.4 and 4.7 million excess deaths had occurred between January 2020 and June 2021, approximately ten times the official tally at the time.[36][37][38] Their estimation involved several distinct sources of data, such as state civil registration systems, seroprevalence datasets, longitudinal panel data from the Consumer Pyramid Household Survey.[39]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i "Justin Sandefur". Center for Global Development. Retrieved September 27, 2024.
  2. ^ "Economic Advisory Council September 2020 Meeting Minutes". Millennium Challenge Corporation. October 30, 2020. Retrieved September 27, 2024.
  3. ^ Shalal, Andrea (September 20, 2021). "External review finds deeper rot in World Bank 'Doing Business' rankings". Reuters. Retrieved September 27, 2024.
  4. ^ Alfaro, Laura; Auerbach, Alan; Cárdenas, Mauricio; Ito, Takatoshi; Kalemli-Özcan, Sebnem; Sandefur, Justin (September 1, 2021). "Doing Business: External Panel Review" (PDF). World Bank. Retrieved September 27, 2024.
  5. ^ Becker, Larry (May 15, 2015). "Alumnus Quoted In National Radio News Story". La Sierra University. Retrieved September 29, 2024.
  6. ^ a b c "Keble College: The Record 2006" (PDF). Keble College, Oxford. Retrieved September 29, 2024.
  7. ^ "Essays on Labour and Credit Markets in Africa". International Household Survey Network. Retrieved September 29, 2024.
  8. ^ a b "Justin Sandefur". RISE Programme. June 15, 2018. Retrieved October 1, 2024.
  9. ^ "Justin Sandefur". International Growth Centre. Retrieved October 1, 2024.
  10. ^ a b Bonnifeld, Rachel Silverman; Sandefur, Justin; Hares, Susannah; Crawfurd, Lee (January 22, 2024). "The Global Lead Poisoning Crisis". Foreign Affairs. Retrieved September 30, 2024.
  11. ^ a b c d e Shalal, Andrea (September 20, 2021). "External review finds deeper rot in World Bank 'Doing Business' rankings". Reuters. Retrieved October 1, 2024.
  12. ^ Gold, Shabtai (February 9, 2022). "Back in business: The World Bank has a new 'Doing Business' plan". Devex. Retrieved October 1, 2024.
  13. ^ Vargas, Ramon Antonio (June 7, 2023). "New World Bank business ratings will examine countries' worker rights". The Guardian. Retrieved October 1, 2024.
  14. ^ Hares, Susannah; Bonnifeld, Rachel; Crawfurd, Lee (April 20, 2021). "Biden Wants to Eliminate Lead Poisoning in American Children. We Propose an Even More Ambitious Goal: Global Eradication". Center for Global Development. Retrieved September 30, 2024.
  15. ^ "USAID and UNICEF Launch $150 Million-Backed Partnership for a Lead-Free Future | Press Release". U.S. Agency for International Development. September 25, 2024. Retrieved October 1, 2024.
  16. ^ Berg, Sarah (September 26, 2024). "Pure Earth Celebrates Launch of the Partnership for a Lead-Free Future at the UN General Assembly". Pure Earth. Retrieved October 1, 2024.
  17. ^ Berger, Alexander; Oehlsen, Emily (September 23, 2024). "Announcing the Lead Exposure Action Fund". Open Philanthropy. Retrieved October 1, 2024.
  18. ^ "ADB Joins Partnership for a Lead-Free Future". Asian Development Bank. September 24, 2024. Retrieved October 1, 2024.
  19. ^ Crawfurd, Lee; Todd, Rory; Hares, Susannah; Sandefur, Justin; Bonnifield, Rachel Silverman (August 16, 2024). "The Effect of Lead Exposure on Children's Learning in the Developing World: A Meta-Analysis". The World Bank Research Observer. doi:10.1093/wbro/lkae010. ISSN 0257-3032.
  20. ^ a b Romero, Mauricio; Sandefur, Justin; Sandholtz, Wayne Aaron (February 1, 2020). "Outsourcing Education: Experimental Evidence from Liberia". American Economic Review. 110 (2): 364–400. doi:10.1257/aer.20181478. ISSN 0002-8282.
  21. ^ Pilling, David (April 21, 2017). "Inside Liberia's controversial experiment to outsource education". Financial Times. Retrieved September 27, 2024.
  22. ^ a b Williams, Jennifer (April 8, 2016). "Liberia is outsourcing primary schools to a startup backed by Mark Zuckerberg". Vox. Retrieved September 27, 2024.
  23. ^ a b "A report card for Liberia's charter schools". The Economist. September 7, 2017. Retrieved September 27, 2024.
  24. ^ Rosenberg, Tina (June 14, 2016). "Liberia, Desperate to Educate, Turns to Charter Schools". The New York Times. Retrieved September 27, 2024.
  25. ^ Tyre, Peg (June 27, 2017). "Can a Tech Start-Up Successfully Educate Children in the Developing World?". The New York Times Magazine. Retrieved September 27, 2024.
  26. ^ a b Rappeport, Alan (March 13, 2024). "Handling of Sex Abuse Inquiry Poses Test for World Bank's Ajay Banga". The New York Times. Retrieved September 27, 2024.
  27. ^ Kimeu, Caroline (December 4, 2023). "World Bank accused of 'turning blind eye' to sexual abuse in Kenyan schools it funded". The Guardian. Retrieved September 27, 2024.
  28. ^ a b Pilling, David (October 13, 2021). "Liberia's schools outsourcing experiment divides opinion". The Financial Times. Retrieved September 27, 2024.
  29. ^ Romero, Mauricio; Sandefur, Justin (November 11, 2021). "Beyond Short-Term Learning Gains: the Impact of Outsourcing Schools in Liberia After Three Years". The Economic Journal. 132 (644): 1600–1619. doi:10.1093/ej/ueab087. ISSN 0013-0133.
  30. ^ a b Krugman, Paul (October 20, 2018). "Notes on Global Convergence (Wonkish and Off-Point)". The New York Times. Retrieved September 29, 2024.
  31. ^ Smith, Noah (October 18, 2018). "Why the Developing World Started Gaining on the West". Bloomberg. Retrieved September 29, 2024.
  32. ^ Pritchett, Lant (August 1, 1997). "Divergence, Big Time". Journal of Economic Perspectives. 11 (3): 3–17. doi:10.1257/jep.11.3.3. ISSN 0895-3309.
  33. ^ Solow, Robert M. (February 1956). "A Contribution to the Theory of Economic Growth". The Quarterly Journal of Economics. 70 (1): 65–94. doi:10.2307/1884513. JSTOR 1884513.
  34. ^ a b c d "It's better to be a poor pupil in a rich country than the reverse". The Economist. October 3, 2020. Retrieved October 1, 2024.
  35. ^ a b Angrist, Noam; Djankov, Simeon; Goldberg, Pinelopi K.; Patrinos, Harry A. (April 2021). "Measuring human capital using global learning data". Nature. 592 (7854): 403–408. Bibcode:2021Natur.592..403A. doi:10.1038/s41586-021-03323-7. ISSN 1476-4687. PMC 8046667. PMID 33692542.
  36. ^ a b Singh, Karan Deep (July 20, 2021). "India's true pandemic death toll is likely to be well over 3 million, a new study finds". The New York Times. Retrieved September 27, 2024.
  37. ^ a b Jha, Prabhat; Deshmukh, Yashwant; Tumbe, Chinmay; Suraweera, Wilson; Bhowmick, Aditi; Sharma, Sankalp; Novosad, Paul; Fu, Sze Hang; Newcombe, Leslie; Gelband, Hellen; Brown, Patrick (February 11, 2022). "COVID mortality in India: National survey data and health facility deaths". Science. 375 (6581): 667–671. Bibcode:2022Sci...375..667J. doi:10.1126/science.abm5154. ISSN 0036-8075. PMC 9836201. PMID 34990216.
  38. ^ Li, Shan (July 20, 2021). "India's Covid-19 Death Toll Is Likely in the Millions, Study Finds". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved September 27, 2024.
  39. ^ Anand, Abhishek; Sandefur, Justin; Subramanian, Arvind (July 20, 2021). "Three New Estimates of India's All-Cause Excess Mortality during the COVID-19 Pandemic". Center for Global Development.
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