Stefan Dercon, former Chief Economist at DFID, on the importance of being receptive to new ideas and how to use bits of evidence to inform a decision.*
Audio file
“We are often working in evidence-poor environments”, says Stefan Dercon. He then goes on to discuss the need to use different pieces of evidence and adapt them to the context in question, to inform key decisions. He further talks about evidence being useful only in the hands of those who are open to changing their preconceived notions based on contrary information.
*Editor’s Note: This is part of our series on how practitioners use economic evidence.