People > Faculty ProfiLes > Judith Tendler
- Geographic Areas of Expertise:
South and Central America (Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa
Rica), India and Bangladesh, and South Africa. - Teaching Focus:
Matters of subnational economic development, how organizations behave, crafting research questions and fieldwork–drawing from a range of sectors and issues like infrastructure (roads, electrification, etc., social programs, rural and agricultural development, the informal sector, nongovernmental organizations, and public services and the professionals that provide them).
- Recent Awards:
The Irwin Sizer Award and the Class-of-1960 Award
- Curriculum Vitae (PDF)
- Contact:
tendler@mit.edu
Room: 9-525
617.253.0249 - Assistant:Phil Sunde
psunde@mit.edu
617.253.9315
Q. What is your research focus?
Tendler: The study of better-performing programs and services, and in grounding theory and policy advice in the experiences of developing countries themselves.
Q. Please tell us about of your most recent publications of note.
Tendler: Recent publications are Good Government in the Tropics, “Why are social funds so popular?” “Small firms, the informal sector, and the Devil’s Deal,” “Why social policy is condemned to a residual category of safety nets and what to do about it,” and “Undoing the poverty agenda and putting it back together: economic development, social policy, or what?” Monographs (articles in progress) are: “The Fear of Education,” “The Economic Wars Between the States: Lessons from Brazil and the U.S. South,” and “The Transformation of Local Economies: Lessons from Northeast Brazil.”
Q. What are some of your most recent public lectures?
Tendler: “Who Participates? (in Mexico City, São Paulo, and Delhi),” 6-day workshop/working group meeting on research findings, Bellagio, Italy, 7/21-7/26 2006
Center for Global Development (CGD), Washington D.C., 10/14 2006
“State Initiatives in Central America,” workshop (and related discussions/interviews), sponsored by Guatemalan Ministry of Planning, and Institute for Fiscal Reforms (Guatemala City), 11/7-8 2006
