🆕 Aggregating evidence, the research process, and empowering the public to understand research All that & more in this week's episode of Ideas in Development with @economeager.bsky.social. Really enjoyed discussing how we can improve the evidence base in economics by aggregating.

A good question for philanthropy is always. "Does capital help this problem?" Anyone that considers philanthropy realizes capital can *hurt* when used in the wrong way. I am pro-art. I do not think tech billionaire capital will help us get better art.

My hottest parenting take is that Raffi is not only the great to ever do it, but he’ll probably never be bested. Michael Phelps-ass children’s songwriter.

Regular reminder that every time we are in a position to evaluate "signaling" vs. "human capital" models of education, "human capital" wins hands down.

Jeff (Hot Type) Jarvis@jeffjarvis.bsky.social · 3mo ago

WTF, NYer. "If we agree that college primarily serves a credentialling process that stamps select young people as worthy of work..." We do not. So much for the bastion of erudite journalism. This is sensationalism, damaging our most vital institution: education. www.newyorker.com/news/fault-l...

incredible work indevelopmentmag.com/money-for-no...

Policy implication: facilitating international migration should be in every developing country's toolkit. Nearly all developing countries already have government agencies for overseas employment. Our evidence says this is the right call: it's not hollowing out, it's building up.

Last call for applications. Deadline is on March 15.

Toman Barsbai@tomanbarsbai.com · 6mo ago

📢 Fully funded PhD position at the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Economics (Bonn) Opportunity to work on the scientific evaluation of @malengo.org, an exciting RCT on international educational migration from Uganda to Germany, and join our great team. www.povertyactionlab.org/careers/phd-...

Issuance of F-1 student visas by the United States, to all countries, monthly through August 2025 (latest available). The red line shows the start of the current US Administration. Shutting out the world's talented young people will impoverish the future of every Conservative and Liberal American.

Great Violet Buxton-Walsh (cc @ifpsanti.bsky.social) post on gov't data. I suspect this holds for all organizational knowledge & historical accidents that underlie modern data artifacts. High ROI? Build the .md files/skills via qualitative interviews of members deep in the bureaucracy.

Mobility "can increase TVET placement rates, improve institutional quality, attract investment, and expand opportunities for disadvantaged groups, including refugees." www.cgdev.org/publication/...

Linking Labor Mobility and Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET)

In the context of shrinking global aid budgets and persistent skills shortages in low-, middle-, and high-income countries, linking labor mobility and technical and vocational education and training (...

cgdev.org

Introducing the world to our amazing Malengo students, vol. 5: Please meet Jasmin Tendo Mpoza, who is a Malengo Uganda–University Scholar studying International Business at Hochschule Anhalt, Germany. youtu.be/PPGo3tYfLBI

Malengo Scholar Profiles: Jasmin Tendo Mpoza, Uganda–Germany University Scholar

YouTube video by Malengo Inc.

youtu.be

This aged well

Richard Nerland@richardnerland.bsky.social · 2y ago

There are many consequential decisions in our current system that are risky kludges: 1 Poor/No testing 2 Builders don't understand tools 3 Decision maker != builder 4 System is ancient 1 AI seems to improve tests 2 Make tools more legible 3 Unclear on builder <-> decisions 4 Speed up modernization

"We're interested in comparative or historical insights...about how something works or fails to work in the developing world." My fellow comparativists and historical political economists: this is your time to shine! Write <4K words to tell the world about your nerdy topic and make $2K.

Lauren Gilbert@lgilbert.co · 8mo ago

In Development's first call for pitches is up! . Tell us a compelling story about how something works — or fails to work — in the developing world. 2k-4k words, rolling review through Jan. 12 indevelopmentmag.substack.com/p/call-for-p...

I'm excited, the RCT suggests Malengo increases psychological well‑being by about 0.36 standard deviations. As a reference point, this is similar in magnitude to the improvements after vision-restoring cataract surgery. This is not obvious a priori!

Johannes Haushofer@johanneshaushofer.com · 9mo ago

Exciting news on @malengo.org, the NGO that helps East African students move to Europe for education: Our research team has given us a glimpse of their early findings! Here is the full writeup, joint with @richardnerland.bsky.social: forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CpZYHk... Thread follows!

Great news on @malengo.org: With a new large investment from The Shapiro Foundation (theshapirofoundation.org), we'll be able to bring several hundred vocational training and university students from Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda to Europe over the coming years! More here: malengo.org/malengo-secu...

As of Feb 9, less than 10% of PEPFAR contractors surveyed had restarted any activities. It's not their fault: They need to get explicit program-level waivers and that's a bottleneck. Plus, even with a waiver, USG owes them heaps of $ and they have no cash.

Charles Kenny@charlesjkenny.bsky.social · last yr.

Survey of PEPFAR contractors Jan 24-28 suggested 36% of organizations had already shut down by that point. As of February 9, most services remained paused. Of 65 PEPFAR partners surveyed, less than 10% had restarted providing any services. www.amfar.org/wp-content/u...

It would be ideal if everyone thought of democracy mostly as rules/process PLUS a people-centered collective pursuit of material outcomes; as opposed to democracy as just rules and process. The latter model leads people to think they can fact check their way out of autocracy.

Quick 🧵 on American aid spending, to accompany my new Substack (link below) US aid obligations have remained remarkably steady in real terms since WWII, rarely exiting a band of $20-60 billion in 2023 dollars. Surprisingly, the year with the most aid obligations was... 1948!

Where are my newsmax readers at? www.newsmax.com/politics/grp...

I think USAID was underrated because it served something that is habitually underrated: scale flavoryeagle.substack.com/p/usaid-serv...

USAID Served Health At Scale

Overcoming Complexity with Strategic Funding and Unyielding Institutional Resolve

flavoryeagle.substack.com

Regarding the ongoing moral circle debate: Simply asking people who they care about is cheap talk. In my book, I find that when their own interests are at stake, most prioritize themselves and family over the country, and the country over foreigners. Notably, the nation ranks above the local.

Me p-hacking and finding stuff: Haha fuck yeah!!! Yes!! Me failing to replicate: Well this fucking sucks. What the fuck.

For a few years, I have been paying out of pocket for the epinowcast forum as I thought it was important to have a venue for people to collab. There is some great stuff kicking off at the moment which is lovely to see. community.epinowcast.org/t/include-a-...

Include a simple reference model

Baselines considered: no correction baseline (naïve but not realistically what epi colleagues would expect) cut off last few weeks and repeat the previous week(s) (i.e. thinking that the data will b...

community.epinowcast.org

struggling to endure this cold weather? let me share my new trick to stay warm outside. I mean this very sincerely as I have endured many cold winters to very slowly learn this point. In order for your winter clothes to keep you warm, you have to wear them. This trick really turned my life around.

I've had a long-running thread on twitter on the real migration crisis (not enough migrants). Will start posting here... but for the earlier 1,000-plus examples, see here: x.com/charlesjkenn...

What if we tax tech monopoly power by using market signals? Here's how: when ad platforms can charge way above market rates, they're extracting rent from their network effects rather than competing on quality.

Took my daughter to see Holiday Lights. I finished with a great picture of her.

a close up of a man 's face with his mouth open .

ALT: a close up of a man 's face with his mouth open .

media.tenor.com

What would be a) your preferred immigration reform and b) the best immigration reform that you consider politically feasible in the next 4 years?

This and the OP is critical for understanding people’s reactions to LLMs, both positive and negative. I’ve seen a bias develop in both cases. In former case, heavy users have a feel for what prompts work and have limited their requests to those categories. This creates impression of robustness 1/n

Rafe Meager (they/them)@economeager.bsky.social · 2y ago

i think this is a good and important general reminder that the toolkit you have always influences the questions you tend to consider. (ALWAYS. the only questions are the extent, how aware of it we will be, and what we will do about it.)

Persuasion (sales/marketing?) matters more than information sharing for financial product adoption in India. Makes me think: is this why for-profit programs often succeed where non-profits struggle? Donors fund programs but resist paying for marketing & sales teams that drive real adoption

Nicholas A. Christakis@nachristakis.bsky.social · 2y ago

Economics often appears to work in isolation: "It is now well established that many human behaviors spread on social networks." www.nber.org/papers/w33285 Boy do I remember resistance to this idea 20 years ago. :-)