Tag Archives: covid

George Mason University law professor Todd Zywicki has filed suit against GMU over its policy of requiring students and staff to be vaccinated against covid.  Zywicki does not argue that any vaccine mandate is unconstitutional.  Instead, he claims that GMU’s vaccine mandate violates his constitutional rights to bodily integrity and medical choice because he has recovered from covid and has natural immunity.  In his view, only a mandate with an...

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. A quick note, my posting frequency has slowed down in 2021, thanks for sticking with it. One reason has been that I’ve been co-authoring another set of links with my brilliant IPA colleagues, Luciana Debenedetti & Rachel Strohm, every other week focused on new research on COVID and social protection (this week’s is here). Among other, I think I also hit what I now realize was a quarantine burnout. If it’s helpful to anybody...

One Dose or Two? There are two theories out there about how to vaccinate.  One says, look, we have data only on the protocols that were adopted in the trials.  The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were administered in two doses, three to four weeks apart.  We know that works.  Don’t mess with it.  Stick to the protocol and make sure everyone getting these vaccines gets both doses in the proper time frame. The other says, our goal should be to get...

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. My colleagues in the methods department at IPA have an RFP out for awards of up to $20,000 for studies to improve methods, generalizability, transparency and the like. Deadline Feb 28th. 26 co-authors published a paper using 16 samples of household surveys of 30,000 people in 9 countries to assess impact of last spring’s COVID disruptions. As you can imagine, it was grave, with losses of income, and hunger—including in...

Pretty good piece in SSIR by Kevin Starr and Sarah Miers of the Mulago Foundation, why don’t big NGOs scale up other social entrepreneurs’ solutions? They spoke to a bunch of leaders and once they got past the laughter and disbelief at the idea, found “Not created here syndrome” that everybody knows about Big funders like government aid agencies prioritize project-based work Differing priorities at country vs. headquarters Hard to replicate someone else’s idea and get it to work They...

Intervista su WallStreetItalia Che cosa significa per l’Italia una caduta del Pil superiore al 12% 21 Luglio 2020, di Alberto Battaglia Per l’Italia le previsioni economiche difficilmente potrebbero essere più drammatiche: secondo il Fondo monetario internazionale, nel 2020 il prodotto interno lordo cederà il 12,8%. Con la Spagna, sarà proprio l’Italia il Paese che subirà il colpo più duro. Per chiarire che cosa significhi, in termini concreti, una caduta del Pil di...

 Da Micromega on line. Apertura atenei: adelante con juicio di Sergio Cesaratto Studenti e docenti sono ancora nell’incertezza circa la riapertura degli Atenei il prossimo settembre, e soprattutto circa “quale riapertura”. Se studenti e docenti risultano totalmente esclusi dalle decisioni, essi non appaiono peraltro unanimi nel merito. Gli atenei, a loro volta, sembrano procedere in ordine sparso, in ossequio al modello delle autonomie disordinate che pare prevalere nel Paese. Una...

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action Last week I mentioned the new COVID research RECOVR hub, which was still in development. This week it’s been launched officially, to help development researchers share information about ongoing studies, survey instruments, and funding opportunities. If you are doing related work, please share or have a look at what other researchers are doing so we can build on one another’s work. A great initiative from the Busara Center, “Give...

1) Politicamente Scorretti 7: intervista al prof. Sergio Cesaratto CSEPI 2)  Presentazione delle Sei lezioni con la prof.ssa Lilia Costabile (allieva di Augusto Graziani) organizzato da Rethinking Economics Pisa (inizia al minuto 11 circa) Buona visione

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action First some good news – congratulations to development economist and dewormer Ted Miguel, social psychologist of diversity and justice Jennifer Richeson, gynecologist and Nobel laureate, Denis Mukwege of the DRC, and the other newly elected members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. For researchers working on (or interested in working on COVID in low- and middle-income countries): to facilitate collaboration, with...