this wonderful paper uses our R package, baggr, for Bayesian evidence aggregation! Give it a look :) !!

In today's blog, I discuss 3 ways for international migration to be part of a structural transformation policy: 1) as an industry itself; 2) training people abroad in the skills to develop a new industry at home; and 3) through immigration (eg Start-up Chile) blogs.worldbank.org/en/impacteva...

🆕 Does index insurance work? Insights from eight experiments in agriculture Today on VoxDev, Pauline Castaing (World Bank) & @gazeaud.bsky.social (@cerdi.bsky.social) discuss the impact of index insurance on smallholder productivity in developing countries: voxdev.org/topic/agricu...

Interested in agricultural insurance, meta-analysis, and external validity? Read my VoxDev blog with Pauline Castaing, based on an article published earlier this year in the JDE. voxdev.org/topic/agricu...

I am teaching a PhD seminar this fall which attempts to put a decision-theoretic lens (or lenses) on research design. So e.g., statistical decision theory, eliciting beliefs & preferences, and rational benchmarks. Here's a draft syllabus docs.google.com/document/d/1... What's missing?

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...

Israel has normalised killing journalists, like it normalised killing medical workers, like it normalised destroying hospitals and schools, like it normalised killing the equivalent of a classroom of children per day. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

I have studied the targeting of journalists for many years, but the scale and public display of these killings is truly shocking: “Israel admits deliberate attack on the journalist, known for frontline coverage, in a strike on a tent outside al-Shifa hospital“ www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

Israeli political scientist Lihi Ben Shitrit: "The more I learn about genocide, the more shocked and embarrassed I am by my own ignorance. Once I actively tried to be better informed about genocide, the picture in Gaza became terrifyingly clear." forward.com/opinion/7598...

My practical tips for designing, implementing, and analyzing powerful experiments. In today's blog I summarize a new paper I've written for a special issue on power calculations. A key message is that it does not make sense to talk of “the” power of an experiment. blogs.worldbank.org/en/impacteva...

I've been working on a new tool, Refine, to make scholars more productive. If you're interested in being among the very first to try the beta, please read on. Refine leverages the best current AI models to draw your attention to potential errors and clarity issues in research paper drafts. 1/

A horrifying statement published today by the Editorial Committee of the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency. "Without immediate intervention, the last reporters in Gaza will die" Translation from French to English by @cnorristrent.bsky.social:

Since you folks seem to like lengthy threads, let's look at visualizing distributions. I'll visualize one data set 16 ways and give some other examples of each chart type. #dataViz

Call me basic, but my theory of fertility can be condensed to 6 bullet points: t.co/uxM6qq4lwx

Additionality: What it means & why it matters @voxdev.bsky.social Before taking credit for offsetting carbon/reducing emissions, organisations need to ask: Would this have happened anyway? Non-additional projects are common, but economists have offered solutions ⤵️ voxdev.org/topic/energy...

🚨 New draft 🚨 Measuring the Emperor's Clothes: Estimating Latent Opposition to Authoritarian Regimes with Randomized Response Qs Want to know how much support a dictator really has? You might have heard of a list experiment... but we've got something *so* much better. Link: osf.io/preprints/so...

Unintended consequences: When policy backfires in unforeseen ways I have written on @voxdev.bsky.social about what we can learn from when policies go wrong, from the war on drugs, biodiversity, digitisation, prisons, and more: voxdev.org/topic/uninte...

A splendid 4 episodes series on PhD supervision from the "Ceteris Never Paribus" podcast Produced by @mariabach.bsky.social, based on 2 years of interviews w/ supervisors & students, w/ fun, emotional & deep reflections about intellectual challenges and personal struggles ceterisneverparibus.net

As cardinals gather to elect a new pope, I found Philip Shenon's new book, "Jesus Wept," to be fascinating reading! A biography of popes and history of Catholic Church from WW2 (Pius XII) to Pope Francis. Highly recommended! @philipshenon.bsky.social #EconSky #Religion

As I meet people from aid agencies around the world this week I will be making the case for a radical simplification in how we do aid: fewer countries, fewer projects, radically simpler programs. It was key takeaway from my time in govt. Read why. www.cgdev.org/blog/radical...

Hi #econsky and conservation friends, if you need a hopeful story, the RCT we completed in eastern DRC might be for you. It is about a viable path to clean (electric) cooking, human development, and the protection of endangered wildlife, including mountain gorillas 🧵🧪 tinyurl.com/4jccmcaw

Important null results in development economics Despite the bias against publishing null results, they are important for policy, helping to kill bad ideas. I've highlighted some key examples we have featured on @voxdev.bsky.social: voxdev.org/topic/import...

📣 𝟔 𝐏𝐡𝐃 𝐟𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐜𝐬 The CERDI offers 6 fellowships for a #PhD thesis in #economics 📈 Application deadline: 29 April, 2024. Find all information here 👉 t.ly/6jAuH #research #developmenteconomics #environment #taxation 🏷️ @cnrs-rhoneauvergne.bsky.social @ucauvergne.bsky.social

We are pleased to announce an experiment intended to stimulate academic discussion and exchange, centered on papers published in Econometrica 1/5

Nous appelons à signer le manifeste du mouvement #StandUpForScience en France. Ce texte pose les bases de la suite du mouvement, il a déjà été signé par plus de 5500 personnes. Partagez-le et signez-le massivement : standupforscience.fr/tribune/

Interesting new paper: arxiv.org/pdf/2503.09907 improves on both rdrobust and rdhonest! Quite compelling... 1/n

Just received this from Yale. It would be useful for students to have a tutorial on what they are allowed to say, and what they're not allowed to say.

#GDRI_rep Update 4: We have a new report. We reproduced the paper entitled "Parent–teacher meetings and student outcomes" by Islam @ European Economic Review. See below for links to report and author's response.

💥New 💥 IZA Discussion Paper! 🔵 What happens when 140+ teams of economists perform the same research three times, each time with less freedom? ✅ Find out here! www.iza.org/publications... ✅ This is a "Many-Economists" project led by Huntington-Klein & Pörtner. Read Nick's post below to learn more!👇

Submission deadline for 2025 #EUDN PhD Workshop is Friday March 14 - doctoral students in development economics please apply! Hosted by @cerdi.bsky.social in Clermont-Ferrand from May 15-16, it will be a great opportunity to network and get feedback. #EconSky #EconConf eudn25phd.sciencesconf.org

#GDRI_rep Update 1: I4R are now reproducing all published papers that use data from GDRI, or are closely related in other ways. Here is a first update on our work. 🧵

After a long wait, the working paper for the Many-Economists Project: The Sources of Researcher Variation in Economics. We had 146 teams perform the same research three times, each time with less freedom. What source of freedom leads to different choices and results? papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

After being alerted about possible misconduct, the I4R are reproducing published papers that use data from a specific NGO (GDRI). This thread releases the first 2 reports and provides more information about the work and responses/statements from authors journals and journals. 🧵

Can men & women be friends? A phenomenal paper analyses 1.3 trillion Facebook connections!!! open.substack.com/pub/dralicee...

@Antoinedeeb.bsky.social and I have new paper and Stata commands, to estimate & predict treatment-effect heterogeneity in multi-site RCTs! papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... Estimators computed by multisite_varITT multisite_regITT and multisite_varLATE Stata packages, available from SSC.

La semaine dernière j'ai expliqué pourquoi la France était un paradis fiscal pour milliardaires Voyons maintenant les solutions possibles Car elles existent ! Nous pouvons régler le problème, ici et maintenant (dès cette semaine, en l'occurrence) bsky.app/profile/gabr...

Some questions triggered by the release of DeepSeek R1 on January 20. These are formulated as questions, because I do not know the answers and it may well be that most of these answers are only things we can find out over time.

Hello! Severine @oxfordecondept.bsky.social and I @uofebusiness.bsky.social are organising an online Behind-the-Scenes Seminar series, focussing on the story behind research papers + an interactive survey during the seminar to measure & discuss audience beliefs. Find out more here: bts-seminar.net

Cela semble absurde, et j’ai été choqué la première fois que je l’ai compris, mais la France – il n'y a pas d'autre mot – est bien un paradis fiscal pour milliardaire Explications détaillées 🧵

Recently accepted by #QJE, “The Impact of Being Denied a Wanted Abortion on Women and their Children,” by Londoño-Vélez (@jlondonovelez.bsky.social) and Saravia: doi.org/10.1093/qje/...

I've been meaning to read this paper on mass extinctions (pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/...), and today, I came across this great write-up about it in VoxDev (voxdev.org/topic/energy...). It's a great paper. I am glad I found the time to read it. Below is a short thread.

The US Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) website is now offline. Since 1985, FEWS NET has provided assessments of the location and severity of food crises. These assessments are used by gov and non-government humanitarian organizations across the world to allocate aid. static.fews.net

Welcome immigrants from X interested in science to the friendlier skies of @bsky.app, as documented by a new @nature.com survey (but you already knew that 😉) "Bluesky is much better for science. There is much less toxicity, misinformation, and distractions." www.nature.com/articles/d41...

With @jeromevalette.bsky.social & Simone Bertoli, we are thrilled to announce the Call for Papers for the 3rd edition of the Junior Workshop on the Economics of Migration on 23-24 June 2025 @CERDI, Clermont-Ferrand, France. Submit until 23 February 2025 on economig2025.sciencesconf.org

It’s over 1,000km from Berlin to Paris There’s now a direct daytime train between them, that takes 8 hours and costs just €59. Leave at 10am, arrive 6pm. And… it’s just 1% the carbon emissions of the equivalent flight www.euronews.com/travel/2024/...

In economics, editors, referees, and authors often behave as if a published paper should reflect some kind of authoritative consensus. As a result, valuable debate happens in secret, and the resulting paper is an opaque compromise with anonymous co-authors called referees. 1/

VoxDev’s 10 insights from development economics in 2024. Fun list voxdev.org/topic/ten-ke...