Research Expertise and Interest

health economics, public health, health care financing, economic development, industrial organizaition

Research Description

Paul Gertler is the Li Ka Shing Professor of Economics, Faculty Director of the Institute for Business & Social Impact, and Scientific Director of the Center for Effective Global Action.  Gertler is an internationally recognized expert in impact evaluation. He was Chief Economist of the Human Development Network of the World Bank from 2004-2007 and the Founding Chair of the Board of Directors of the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) from 2009-2012. At the World Bank, he led an effort to institutionalize and scale up impact evaluation for learning what works in human development. At Berkeley he teaches courses in applied impact evaluation at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, as well as in an executive education program for policy-makers. He is the author of the best-selling textbook “Impact Evaluation in Practice” and the recently released second edition, published by The World Bank Press. He has been a Principal Investigator on a large number of at-scale multisite impact evaluations, including Mexico’s CCT program Progresa/Oportunidades and Rwanda’s Health Care Pay-for-Performance scheme. He has published results from impact evaluations extensively in both scientific and policy journals on early childhood development, education, fertility and contraceptive use, health, HIV-AIDS, energy and climate change, housing, job training, poverty alleviation, labor markets, and water and sanitation. He was awarded the Kenneth Arrow Award for best paper in health economics in 1996. He received his PhD in Economics from the University of Wisconsin in 1985, and, prior to UC Berkeley, he held academic appointments at Harvard University, RAND, and SUNY Stony Brook.