Tag Archives: Crime

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action Medellin, Colombia New results from my colleagues in Colombia with Chris Blattman, David Cerero,  Gustavo Duncan, Sebastian Hernandez, Benjamin Lessing, Juan F. Martínez, Juan Pablo Mesa-Mejía, Helena Montoya, and Santiago Tobón find the sensationalized headlines from early in the COVID days about gangs enforcing quarantine don’t hold up, at least in Medellin, where gangs do provide a lot neighborhood municipal services. Using...

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action Professor Lisa Cook explains that black and white inventors put in equivalent numbers of patent applications once in 1899, and never again.  First, a great webinar by Professor Lisa Cook, former economic advisor to President Obama, among many other accomplishments, on how lynchings, violence, and discrimination caused African-American inventions (measured by patent applications) to peak in 1899 and never recover. Here’s the video...

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action Stanford Political Scientist Hakeem Jefferson hosted a great conversation with a number of scholars on race and the criminal justice system [embedded content] The readings mentioned are assembled in this Dropbox folder and thread, and the Stanford Daily summarized the conversation. A couple of points that jumped out at me were what counts as research/evidence in academic research circles (it seems common for scholars of the black...

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...

It’s complicated, trust me, see below.Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action Two Blattman-related things, for researchers and aspiring researchers:IPA’s Peace and Recovery program is accepting research proposals, on topics such as war, peace, electoral violence, state-sponsored violence, terrorism, forced displacement, natural disasters, and recovery from all the above.They fund: “full randomized trials, pilot studies, exploratory and descriptive work, travel grants,...

One of the original Kodak “Shirley” cardsGuest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action Have fun to everybody at the NEUDC conference this weekend! Fun fact: the Northeast Universities Development Consortium conference is being held at Northwestern, which is neither in the Northeast, nor the Northwest. The conference has never been held at Northeastern University. So for everybody complaining about confusing econ speak, this is what they do to themselves.An interesting idea...

(Photo via Flickr) Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action I realized after I posted it last week that it was my 200th links, which is a nice occasion to acknowledge and thank my colleague Cara Vu, who, despite being one of the busiest people I know, edits them and saves me from self-humiliation on a weekly basis. She catches between 8 and 200 mistakes in every one.And also thanks for reading. I really do appreciate the occasional emails, twitter shout outs, and...

Guest post by by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action Chris has been threatening it for a while but looks like he’s finally done it (click through to see the full thread and description of why his answer’s not what you might expect): Set your 2-year clock for my book: Why We Fight. Everything you need to know about why gangs, nations, and other groups go to war, and how to stop it. Just signed with editor Wendy Wolf @VikingBooks, an imprint @PenguinUSA! Huge credit to agent...

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action IPA’s Peace and Recovery initiative, led on the academic side by Chris, has an open call for funding. We define peace and recovery pretty broadly:Reducing violence and promoting peaceReducing “fragility” (i.e. fostering state capability and institutions of decision-making)Preventing, coping with, and recovering from crises (focusing on conflict, but also including non-conflict humanitarian crises), It also funds a variety of types...

If you’ve been wondering where Chris has been, all I know is that it seems to involve a Colombian unicornGuest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action First, congratulations to Dave Evans, everybody’s favorite public good generator, on his upcoming move to the Center for Global Development, where he’ll join an impressive bench, including Pam Jakiela, Susannah Hares, and Kristaps Porzingis. (And subscribe to his blog at that link for great book reviews, and other interesting...