Dean Karlan
Professor of Economics
Yale University
President
Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA)
co-director
Financial Access Initiative
co-Founder and President
StickK.com
Dean Karlan is a Professor of Economics at Yale University. Karlan is also President of Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), co-director of the Financial Access Initiative, a consortium created with funding from the Bill and Melissa Gates Foundation, a research fellow of the M.I.T. Jameel Poverty Action Lab, and co-Founder and President of StickK.com.
In 2007, he received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on outstanding scientists and engineers beginning their independent careers.
In 2008, he received an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship. His research focuses on microeconomic issues of financial decision-making, specifically employing experimental methodologies to examine what works, what does not, and why in interventions in microfinance and health.
. Internationally, he focuses on microfinance, and domestically, he focuses on voting, charitable giving, and commitment contracts. In microfinance, he has studied interest rate policy, credit evaluation and scoring policies, entrepreneurship training, group versus individual liability, savings product design, credit with education, and impact from increased access to credit.
His work on savings and health typically uses insights from psychology and behavioral economics to design and test specialized products.
He has consulted for the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, FINCA International and the Guatemalan government. Karlan received a Ph.D. in Economics from M.I.T., an M.B.A. and an M.P.P. from the University of Chicago, and a B.A. in International Affairs from the University of Virginia.
