What share of recent development RCTs report preregistration and a pre-analysis plan?

Today's cool young researcher #econtwitter #econsky is @rama_mosh @geai_afep who works on topics related to education + labor, particularly in southern Africa

Sobering fact #econtwitter #econsky re U.S. dominance in top general interest econ journals: from 2021 to 2025, there were more papers about SNAP/EITC/Medicare/Medicaid alone (66, by my count - abstract + title coding) than about Mexico (a country of 133 million ppl - 50 papers).

Happy to share a new paper @JPubEcon #econtwitter #econsky, "Do ultra-poor graduation programs build women's resilience to dryness shocks?" Joint with Kalle Hirvonen, @dogilligan, Tambet + Villa. We explore effects of a lighter-touch graduation program (SPIR)

As part of a recent discussion around agentic coding, I developed my "top 10" in agentic coding applications, and thought I would share it here. (Note these are not ranked!) 1) Re-organizing project folders! No more floating, disorganized, mislabeled files!

Today's cool young researcher #econtwitter #econsky is @ArlenGuarin at DIME who works on topics related to conflict, human capital + development

A fresh take on challenges for funders drowning in a higher volume of applications: at Wellcome trust (where they report 50-100% ⬆️) - if they receive applications above predetermined cap (unclear if it will be public), then they'll randomly select applications to move forward

This one hit home (+ not in a good way) expansion of high-speed internet in Uruguay *worsens* child development indicators. Why? Parents spend more time online, engage in more high-risk activities. from @kari_colombo @EFailache in JDE

I love that Claude is constantly asking me if I'm ready to "wire something in" to the pipeline I feel like an electrician. Or a plumber. Or like a mega electrician-plumber

Essential life-saving services uninterrupted, you say?

Today's cool young researcher #econtwitter #econsky is @mhigar @Uniandes who works on topics related to environment and transportation, particularly in Latin America

Today's cool young researcher #econtwitter #econsky is @pallaviprabhak, a recent PhD from NHH + soon to be postdoc at Stockholm School of Economics

As a counterpoint to all the posts describing an incredibly detailed + convolute agentic coding set-up: your regular reminder that if you are an applied economist, you probably don't need any of that detail (at least to start)

Today's cool young researcher #econtwitter #econsky is @Leo_Czajka at the EU Tax Observatory - PSE who works on topics related to public finance in LMICs

Tried to offer my 3 year old m&ms when he asked for jelly beans and he said in a surprised voice "no, those are m&ms!" How the f did he figure that out. Kids are so hard to fool

Today's cool young researcher #econtwitter #econsky is Sabareesh Ramachandran at the Indian School of Business - Hyderabad, who works on topics related to health, education + public economics

For those #econtwitter #econsky constantly fundraising (like me): using agentic AI tools to facilitate grant writing is a game changer. You can -repurpose sections from one proposal (or presentation) to the next -shorten proposals quickly -turn into academic papers into text

How many seminars + individual acknowledgments do development RCT papers report? Around 5 on average in a field journal and closer to 10 in top-5-journals, largely following the gradient you would expect . . .

Today's cool young researcher #econtwitter #econsky is @ChristinaSaraha @CollegioCA - soon moving to @tcddublin! - who works on topics related to health and gender in development

What does disclosure of IRB approval look like in a recent sample of published development articles (2025-2026)? Not great, tbh. Only about 2/3 disclose IRB approval in full text, for papers published in top general interest journals + JDE

Looking for referees for a qualitative paper on cash transfers / social protection - if you're interested, let me know!

Icymi #econtwitter #econsky: a new RCT showed that mentoring ⬆️ successful applications from students in SSA to masters' + PhD programs in economics: the percentage of successful ⬆️ from 16 to 32. From Adhar @OdhiamboFrank_O Poensgen

Today's cool young researcher #econtwitter #econsky is @rduartegonzalez, a brand-new PhD (congrats!) currently a postdoc at Yale and soon joining FIU who works on topics related to political economy + governance in LMICs

I like to index my sleep disruption based on how successful I am in using my basic coffee maker in the morning. This morning I removed the basket for grounds to dump it in the trash, and left the entire reusable basket there and just put grounds directly in coffee maker.

Starting my #ashecon2026 recap 🧵 #econtwitter #econsky - day 1 morning. In the first session on shocks to reproductive care, @BaumSarah shows that closure of title X clinics ⬇️ STI case detection

Today's cool young researcher #econtwitter #econsky is @fabalbav @WakeForest who works on topics related to education and health, particularly in Latin America

Excited to be here ASHEcon #ashecon2026 in Minneapolis - if you're here #econtwitter #econsky, say hello! In the trade-offs column, I missed the first day of camp drop-off! But I heard I have one very excited owl and osprey, + my little one [a falcon] only cried a bit

This morning I opened the laptop to check email, realized I needed some additional (simple) robustness checks for a paper, opened Claude and entered my prompt; then my toddler climbed on my lap + I cuddled himwhile answering simple Qs so the agent could do tedious coding

Who funds development RCTs? Using my new database of dev papers 2021-2025, I pulled information from funding acknowledgments. (This requires, generally, full-text, and is not feasible using metadata; thus I did not do this for non-RCTs.) #econtwitter #econsky

How many authors of development economics papers are women? Around 30% #econtwitter #econsky. Updated calc using my trusty new database of recently published (2021-2025) economics papers, and using the functions gender_guesser and Namsor to infer gender.