This aged well

"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.

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!

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.

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...

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-...

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.

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

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

While we're sharing 'Best of 2024' lists, I'm re-upping my round-up of medical breakthroughs, in case you missed it. There's an audio voiceover too! So I hope you enjoy reading or listening 😚

I'll be a little cynical here: Recent right-wing debates over high-skilled immigration reveal missed opportunities in opposition messaging and media coverage. Part of that is on us as advocates for migration not centering the debate on popular forms at all times.

It's time for an end-of-year update on @malengo.org! Our goal is to alleviate extreme poverty by facilitating international educational migration. Our flagship program supports Ugandan high school graduates in applying for and obtaining a Bachelor's degree in Germany. Here is what we're been up to!

As a Christmas treat, I put together a roundup of all migration job market papers in economics. International migration: www.laurenpolicy.com/p/2024-2025-... Domestic migration: www.laurenpolicy.com/p/2024-2025-...

Have you ever wondered: Which antibiotics are most common? How much is used in livestock? How do antibiotics even work? Which countries monitor antibiotic resistance? We have a new page on Our World in Data with data on all of these & more! Check it out: ourworldindata.org/antibiotics

We just donated to @malengo.org if anybody's looking for a great non-profit to support at the end of the year!

I suspect we are about to enter an interim period where AI exceeds human performance on many cognitive tasks, but this is not common knowledge, and so most people and institutions act like this is not generally the case.

Your regular reminder that it wasn’t until the mid 1990s that Africa caught up with Europe’s population. Relatively speaking, there *used to be* a lot of Europeans.

Very important paper: 2 billion dollars could save approx 500,000 children from dying from malaria. That's a very high ROI, easy to scale, and an issue we shouldn't drag our feet on. It took years of funding struggles to develop malaria vaccines in the first place. We can't let that happen again.

Apropos of nothing, childhood cancer mortality has been driven down substantially thanks to cancer research and better cancer therapies.

Great interview by Martin Wolf with Lant Pritchett on the case for *temporary* migration www.ft.com/content/ba0c...

Lots of automated or institutional trading has price impact. Some of it is unintended, caused by trading to optimize portfolios in partial-equilibrium portfolio models. An important example is the rise of Target Date Funds, held by previously passive or trend chasing investors. x.com/ProfJAParker...

Amazing work 🙌 I want to temper many hot takes by emphasizing that *both* arms saw significant gains in LFP and household earnings. Covid looms large, but various local shocks can also lead to temporary poverty. All studies show people recovering from these shocks and increasing income.

Late to the BlueSky party but finally arrived. Looking forward to revitalized econ/research threads. Below an article I enjoyed this morning @natureportfolio.bsky.social on the disconnect between science & policy: www.nature.com/articles/d41.... New survey data👇: media.nature.com/lw767/magazi...

I love the focus on evidence balanced with continuous exploration. Another criterion you may have seen is Hendren and Sprung-Keyser’s Marginal Value of Public Funds: the value to beneficiaries over the *net* costs. Many interventions should be invested in because they pay for themselves over time.

The process of producing flu vaccines with eggs: I didn't realise that 1 egg supplies only around 1 dose.

There's surely some correlation, but there is no simple answer to "how much immigration is too much." If you just have the data on immigration flows and their change (or stocks, for that matter), you wouldn't be able to tell where the public is more negative or where the issue is more politicized.

A paper in which we learn that pollution is about twice as bad for the economy as we previously thought, once you account for skilled workers' differentially larger emigration responses to avoid escalating pollution. egc.yale.edu/research/how...

delighted to see this prize go to Arun Chandrasekhar, a pioneer in applications and theory of networks in economics and social science more broadly a fantastically talented and energetic scholar

I would really enjoy being able to play with the specifications in this data. Not often that I get to look at immigration and finance data at the same time. Main table coefs of interest in main specification are not as significant as simpler coefs. I'd be interested in how covid data affects result

People endogenously allocate more attention to thinking about prices in high inflation environments; which they hate doing because they don’t like complexity. A plausible reason people hate inflation so much Sort of remarkable how far “thinking is costly” can take you

Housing Theory of Everything part 252

I literally showed that child mortality video this in class today. Everyone seems only vaguely impressed until I describe how my first born almost died shortly after birth (www.ryancbriggs.net/blog/2015/10...). It’s wild to me how much we need stories to even start to grasp something numerical.

Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) against women is a major public health and inequality concern. It's not clear what causes it or how to reduce it. Gaby Deschamps' JMP considers that IPV is positively correlated with motherhood, and asks if we can understand why. www.gabrieladeschamps.com/research

Folks, @jasonfurman.bsky.social is frequently posting on bluesky. We got him. Jason is a true must follow on economics. One of the most profoundly fair analysts. Even if you end up disagreeing w/ Jason, you know he’s always approaching all discussions in good faith & trying to get past his priors.

In conclusion interview and hire michelle!!!! She has a super strong pipeline, including a bunch of bayesian evidence aggregation work in behavioural/gender spaces, and an upcoming RCT with the world bank! www.michellerao.com/home

We still have a relatively poor understanding of the relationship between evidence and policy. Program evaluation in particular is often motivated by a desire to make policy better. But how effective is program evaluation itself?Michelle Rao's JMP tackles this question. www.michellerao.com/research

The first post in my living literature review on migration is now up, on the Mariel Boatlift: laurenpolicy.substack.com/p/the-mariel...

Now I've come across several instances of people writing, essentially: 'Let me provide a very rough estimate. Don't take this number literally, because it has several flaws.' And then their number becomes cited as the canonical figure on the topic.

I'm willing to quote dunk here. This is completely fallacious to the point I call negligence! All modern immigration studies consider multiple dimensions to determine a skill cell and evaluate multiple margins. Ryan is thoughtful in his reply, as he is in his work.

OK, this is now Information I Can Discuss In Public, so: new project! For the next ~year, I will be writing a living literature review on migration, a la @mattsclancy.bsky.social’s New Things Under the Sun and funded by Open Philanthropy First post coming Tuesday on the Mariel Boatlift!