Lasting change requires more than cash—interventions adding information meetings and home visits produce real, sustained gains for mothers and children, from Richard Akresh, Damien de Walque, Harounan Kazianga, and Abigail Stocker www.nber.org/papers/w34578

Evaluating a soft-skills course implemented in Ugandan and Kenyan primary schools that replaced academic review time with lessons on goal-setting and related skills as students prepared for primary school-leaving exams, from Dam, Gray-Lobe, Kremer, de Laat, and Morsink www.nber.org/papers/w34562

Woah. Argentina's 1990s preschool expansion program appears to have been a smashing success. The program increased high school completion by a whole 11.9 percentage points. The authors estimate that for every $1 spent, the preschool expansion generated about $11 in benefits.

My friend Xu has a WP out! He and prof Zhengwei use CEPS data to show private tutoring exacerbates inequality via the "rat race": intense competition degrades class atmosphere and demotivates non-tutored peers, causing them to give up Link here papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Pre-school in Africa works. "on average, these programmes are successful in improving children's cognitive outcomes by 0.10 standard deviations (p-value < 0.01) [and] children's socioemotional development by 0.09 standard deviations (p-value < 0.01)." academic.oup.com/jae/advance-...

The EdDev Community Group will meet tomorrow at 11 AM ET. Alejandro Ganimian will present work in progress. Join the EdDev Community Group today aefpweb.org/communit...

Cool new @cesifo.org paper, documenting "teaching to the top": www.ifo.de/en/cesifo/pu...

Forthcoming in AEJ: Applied Economics: "From Access to Achievement: The Primary School-Age Impacts of an At-Scale Preschool Construction Program in Highly Deprived Communities" by Bassi, Besbas, Dinarte-Diaz, Ravindran, and Reynoso. www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

Today's cool young researcher #econtwitter #econsky is @palaashbhargava postdoc @UChicago who works on topics related to development, labor + social networks

New guidance on EdTech in developing countries, by @singhabhi.bsky.social , @lnavarrosola.bsky.social , and Philip Oreopoulos This looks good! voxdev.org/voxdevlit/ed...

I have a new VoxDev Lit launching this week on education technology👇 This area has lots of froth, but also some very promising evidence on tech use (on teaching, assessments, information) across K-12. Pulling this together was fun (with Phil Oreopoulos and @lnavarrosola.bsky.social ).

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!

The World Bank plans to “operationally align” its research arm. But the changes could undermine its ability to deliver rigorous, independent analysis free from client or internal pressure. More from @charlesjkenny.bsky.social and @eeshani.bsky.social ⬇️ https://go.cgdev.org/43vNSgK

Can Tutoring—and Technology—Finally Solve Bloom’s Two Sigma Problem? www.gettingsmart.com/2025/11/25/c...

🚀 I’m excited to share that I’m on the #EconSky job market this year! In my #EconJMP, I study how teachers in Finnish upper secondary schools impact students’ socio-emotional skills – and the labor market returns of these effects! (🧵, 1/N)

The EdDev Community Group will meet tomorrow at 11 AM ET. Vatsal Khandelwal & Nneka Esther Osadolor will present work in progress. Join the EdDev Community Group today aefpweb.org/communit...

PacDev 2026 will take place on March 14---submit your paper now! Deadline: Dec 14 #pacdev2026 #econsky cega.submittable.com/submit/34150...

👋 I'm Danielle, and I'm on the #econjobmarket this year! Let's start with a student describing her segregated school: "The school felt temporary. Built like a warehouse with aluminum siding . . . I had a slipshod education" The twist? The student is white, and her school is private. A JMP 🧵 -->

Grading difference affect gender gap in STEM? - Need to dig into this but need to understand why there would be gender differences in "preference" for grades #linkoftheday public.econ.duke.edu/~psarcidi/aa...

This week I read the forthcoming paper in AEJ: EP by Bowden, Rodriguez, Weingarten studying how a more lenient grading policy affected student behavior and outcomes As the table shows - pre: min effort for D -> 69 points - post: min effort for D -> 60 points #econsky 1/N

I think this is kind of neat and I don't think anyone else has noticed it (I've looked and I can't find anyone who has) osf.io/preprints/so... Maybe I should back off "justification" language, but it's at least a remarkable coincidence. I still think someone else *must* have noticed it...

This paper is adapted from our more traditional research paper: academic.oup.com/wbro/article....

Recently accepted by #QJE, “Digital Distractions with Peer Influence: The Impact of Mobile App Usage on Academic and Labor Market Outcomes,” by Barwick, Chen, Fu, and Li: doi.org/10.1093/qje/...

👀 this new meta-analysis on edutainment by @bardiarahmani.bsky.social, Montano, @dylanwgroves.bsky.social, and Green doi.org/10.1017/bpp.... 377 ests in 77 exps: edutainment moves attitudes, norms, beliefs 📊 Effects persist ⏳ Many reasonable theories about effect heterogeneity are not supported 😇

Confusing title. I really expected a paper on Indian parenting...

In Pakistan, providing a technological tool to teachers but framing its use as optional delivered bigger impacts than either an analog tool or a mandatory tool. tahir-andrabi.sites.pomona.edu/wp-content/u...

Exciting news. We are hiring a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Public Policy. Focus areas: environmental policy, international development, or poverty. Link: unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/307... Submission Deadline: November 3, 2025. Don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions.

Early Childhood Education is central to India’s NEP and global edu goals. Our(@petterberg.bsky.social @singhabhi.bsky.social) new paper at EJ (@resmedia.bsky.social ky.social, bit.ly/4gOtoVV), shows private ECE outperform public options, explaining 60% of the SES gap. In primary, NO private premium.

🆕 Where to find development economics resources I've updated my list of all the various sources of newsletters, articles, podcasts & videos relevant to development economics that I've come across in my three years at @voxdev.bsky.social: voxdev.org/topic/where-...

This week's links include some positive developments in development, how to negotiate your econ job, why an SEZ was not very successful, econ meets other disciplines, and more... blogs.worldbank.org/en/impacteva...

A new GLO Discussion Paper shows that online tutoring during wartime improves student learning outcomes, reduced stress, and is highly cost-effective. It is possible to develop human capital amid conflict. #GLabor www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10...

New by Ila Fazzio, Rukmini Banerji, @alexeble.bsky.social, and others, edited by Nishith Prakash: Support To Rural India’s Public Education System (STRIPES2) and impact on numeracy and literacy scores: A cluster randomized trial in rural villages of Madhya Pradesh, India doi.org/10.1371/jour...

Many interventions “work” in small trials but fail at scale Also, EdTech often promises much, but delivers little In a new paper (bit.ly/3JKLgVn) @karthik-econ.bsky.social & I show how personalized adaptive learning (PAL) software can sharply improve learning outcomes at scale🧵1/16

4 findings from our experimenting with policymakers paper, finally published in World Development last month (a mere 3.5 years after the CGD working paper version) ...

Conference Announcement: 16th International Workshop on Applied Economics of Education (IWAEE - www.iwaee.org) will be held on the 15th and 16th of June, 2026. More information, including call for papers, to follow

as editor, I'm actually signing the petition myself :) == Adopt Registered Reports at Psychological Methods - Sign the Petition! chng.it/wszLWM4KPX == e.g., look forward to exploring options for preregistration for the journal @apajournals.bsky.social @akmontoya.bsky.social

What great news that @iza.org is moving to @liser.lu! The world's top network of labor economists emerged from tumult with a new and wonderful home. A visionary choice by both institutions, with large ripple effects for economists worldwide. Thank you @iza.org and @liser.lu

How to get honest answers to sensitive survey questions? Our WP introduces the ballot-bag, a new method that is both precise and unbiased, improving on existing approaches such as list experiments. Joint work with Bruno Crépon and Ahmed Elsayed. #econsky www.iza.org/publications...

Thanks for the great response so far! The @aefpweb.bsky.social EdDev group still has an open presentation slot for Sept. 12, 11am eastern! Contact me if you're interested. #edusky #econsky

Much better data viz here than for our similar analysis of school books from 3 countries! journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

🆕 The challenges of improving parenting practices at scale Today on VoxDev, Irma Arteaga (University of Missouri), Andreas de Barros (UC Irvine) & Alejandro J. Ganimian (NYU) present evidence from an automated phone call programme in India: voxdev.org/topic/educat...

I love that so much attention is going to making sure children master literacy & numeracy in the early grades! But we can't forget the kids who need later remediation. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1... This study substantively boosts literacy & numeracy among secondary school students.

Society of Labor Economists (SoLE) Annual Conference will be May 1-2, 2026 in Denver, Colorado. Submission portal is now open! Deadline for submissions is October 31--don't forget to submit! It will be a great conference! (organized by me and @jrothst.bsky.social) mailchi.mp/sole-jole/so...

Exciting NBER study (and NYT coverage) finding that $1,000 unconditional cash transfers in Kenya reduced under-5 deaths by 45%. GiveWell already took this evidence into account in their positive update on GiveDirectly last fall (doesn't make a huge quantitative difference).

Oxford University CSAE Conference 2026: Economic Development in Africa Deadline: September 14 Call for papers: www.csae.ox.ac.uk/sitefiles/cs...

School feeding program in Rwanda yields 11x return on investment academic.oup.com/jae/article-...

TIL "Originally considered by Allied scientists in World War II, [multi-armed bandits] proved so intractable that (...) the problem was proposed to be dropped over Germany so that German scientists could also waste their time on it." doi.org/10.1111/j.25... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-a...

Hey #econSky I've written a short blog post on some hidden advantages I see in Pre-Analysis Plans for team work, whether you do experimental research or not. Check it out here: adegendre.github.io/posts/2025-0...

Our special issue seeks to foster novel theoretical and empirical papers that treat scaling as an object of study in its own right—exploring its methodological foundations, economic incentives, institutional challenges, and pathways to impact. Please spread the word! ideas.repec.org/p/feb/artefa...