I'm chalking this one up in favor of playing the long game--as Holden Karnowsky likes to advise, prioritizing building career capital because it would create greater impact in the future. Clearly though, Prof. Karlan has been making a substantial impact in the area for a couple of decades at least.

Oh wow! This is  fantastic news. Both because he'll have influence on the $29.4 billion :O!, and that his appointment might reflect a bigger change in USAID policy in general. 

Wonderful news!

I spent a few days with Dean on my internship- a few random recollections. We briefly discussed EA and he was enthusiastic about it- my sense was that he had a "that's a cool thing you kids are doing" vibe.

Unrelated, he also said he'd never spent more than $10 on a t-shirt (I was impressed), so if you're lucky enough to be able to work with him, you should probably have your "frugal EA" hats on- no invites to the Bahamas/ our latest castle.

Also unrelated, my colleague asked him why IPA didn't consider more systemic level changes to trade policy, aid policy, growth interventions etc. vs. the more micro economic randomisation IPA does. He said: "I believe in the division of labour" and explained that he thought we needed better systemic change in the aid sector, but that wasn't the IPA model. So perhaps he'll be quite ambitious at USAID, and not just all about better data/ micro stuff.

Another EA connection is that Samantha Power, the USAID Administrator who appointed Dean Karlan, is married to Cass Sunstein, who has spoken at EA Global and was once a guest on the 80,000 Hours podcast.

What do we know about his views regarding effective altruism?

Thanks for the update on this! I don't think I'd heard about it.