The Truth About Data: A Conversation with Dr. Jenny Aker

In this episode of Building with Carnelian, host Lauren Chuhta sits down with Dr. Jenny Aker, Professor of Development Economics at Cornell University and co-chair of MIT's Poverty Action Lab, whose 25 years of fieldwork across 21 countries in Africa and Latin America has taken her deep into the question of what it actually means to measure impact. Dr. Aker breaks down what development economics really is, what impact evaluation requires in practice, and why drawing a true causal relationship between a policy and its outcomes is harder and more important than most people realize.