Tag Archives: development

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. Penny Goldberg of Yale will be the new World Bank Chief Economist, she and Nina Pavcnik wrote about their work on why opening up trade helped developing countries grow at VoxDev. An update on last week’s discussion of GiveDirectly’s 3-year effects findings (if you need a catch-up, see Justin Sandefur’s post which is also valuable for the review of other recent research at the end). The questions focused on what we can say on...

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. The effective altruism careers blog 80,000 Hours argues that support roles within an organization, like in operations or assisting, can have big overall impact by multiplying others’ effectiveness. In that vein, IPA’s hiring a global operations director. We’re also hiring what (IMHO) might be one of the most important and complex jobs in the org, Kenya Country Office Director. It involves managing a staff of 500 across several...

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. Detecting soldiers registering as new voters in Cambodia from the gender distribution. Take a few minutes to read the latest newsletter from the CSWEP, the AEA’s Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession. In particular, the opening harrowing account from economist and law professor Jennifer Bennett Shinall on being sexually assaulted by a more senior colleague on an airplane, and on page 5, the anonymous...

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. Above: Some lessons from Rachel Glennerster on policy vs. academic research paths Nick Kristof talks with Amanda Glassman at the Center for Global Development about trying to get the world’s attention to alleviation of poverty and suffering. (FYI there are a number of tools that will let you covert youtube videos to audio MP3 to listen to like podcasts). A nice pair of short podcasts with Alice Evans and David Evans (who are...

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. Preregistration stops medications from working Tyler Cowen interviewed Chris Blattman and in typical Cowen fashion came prepared – I had to slow down my usual podcast playback speed to keep up. Topics Included what Chris learned from his first job at a higher class Canadian KFC, interviewing child soldiers, causes of the Peloponnesian Wars, why he’d rather transfer accountants to poor countries than cash, and how he tries to...

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. First, the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy has a new Obama Scholarship, which will pay (full tuition plus, travel costs and living stipend) for professional policy folks from anywhere in the world to get a 1-year mid-career masters there. It’s open to people from all sectors working for the public good with 3-5 years of work experience and a strong track record. Please forward to colleagues and friends who...

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. Markus Goldstein reports on a study from India which finds that paying respondents for their time participating might change their responses. There’s a bipartisan bill to create a new U.S. overseas development finance agency. It would combine several private sector-focused functions that currently exist across different agencies, offer higher spending caps, and would be allowed to make equity investments. There’s a long and...

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. IPA is offering funding for research on ideas about “Peace and Recovery” very broadly defined – looking to test new ideas for counteracting violence (including state and electoral), helping refugees, recovery from humanitarian crises, or countering extremism, and is accepting proposals from Ph.D. students. (The photo above is from research in a Colombian FARC demobilization camp). Expressions of Interest are due NEXT FRIDAY...

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. I wasn’t going to even address the SNAP/Box of canned foods proposal in the news, but thankfully Paul Niehaus and Michael Faye of cash transfer fame did it well. As always, when it comes to international development, even cash advocates say that some conditions need to be right. See this conversation with Berk Ozler, Seema Jayachandran, and Andrew Zeitlin for some reminders – markets need to function well so people can get when...

…The Measure of Civilization presents a brand-new way of investigating these questions and provides new tools for assessing the long-term growth of societies. Using a groundbreaking numerical index of social development that compares societies in different times and places, award-winning author Ian Morris sets forth a sweeping examination of Eastern and Western development across 15,000 years since the end of the last ice age. He offers surprising conclusions about when and why the West...