These past few decades have been witness to great change. It is hard to imagine that the Covid Pandemic will not increase this rate of change; that the pace of change will be slowing down anytime soon. Looking back, the advent of the microprocessor and all that followed changed the world forever. Looking forward, the COVID-19 pandemic, too, will little doubt change the world forever. The one gave us the means to do things differently, the other, the...
Read More »IPA’s weekly links
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...
Read More »IPA’s Weekly Links
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...
Read More »IPA’s weekly links
Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action First a plug – my colleagues at IPA have done amazing work this year quickly pivoting a big research organization to tackle the covid crisis head-on, studying hunger, refugee issues, education and 80+ other topics, and staying up late into the night, over and over again. Not all of our expenses are covered directly by research grants, so we rely on donations for the rest. If you donate here BEFORE TUESDAY you gift will be...
Read More »IPA’s weekly links
Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. You can register for the big NEUDC development conference, featuring an opening address by Penny Goldberg, held Fri Nov 6 – Sat Nov 7, now all online! You can also still submit an abstract (500 word limit) for a lightning round session, deadline Monday! Cool paper comparing 150 education interventions from Noam Angrist, David Evans, Deon Filmer, Rachel Glennerster, F. Halsey Rogers and Shwetlena Sabarwal. They use a common...
Read More »Higher Education in Brazil: Interrupted Inclusion?
by Ana Luíza Matos de Oliveira Brazil is a highly unequal country — so is the access to its higher education system. However, in the beginning of the 21st century (2001-2015), there was a convergence between the profile of Brazilian higher education students and the Brazilian population in terms of income, race, and region, although many inequalities still exist. Now, this process might be at risk. From 2001 to 2015, economic growth and improvements in the labor market affected...
Read More »IPA’s weekly links
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...
Read More »What the Shift to Virtual Learning Could Mean for the Future of Higher Ed — Vijay Govindarajan and Anup Srivastava
Difficult to estimate now how this pandemic will change education other than to say some effects are highly likely. The digital revolution is now here of necessity and necessity is the mother of invention. Not only higher education is being effected but also primary and secondary. In addition, many are working at home for the first time. The obvious benefit is reduced transaction costs and less need for resources directed to physical plant, transportation, etc. So some change is...
Read More »the 2020-21 Alberta budget
I’ve written a ‘top 10’ overview of the 2020-21 Alberta budget, tabled on February 27. The link to the overview is here. Nick Falvo is a Calgary-based research consultant with a PhD in Public Policy. He has academic affiliation at both Carleton University and Case Western Reserve University, and is Section Editor of the Canadian Review of Social Policy/Revue canadienne de politique sociale. You can check out his website here: https://nickfalvo.ca/....
Read More »the 2020-21 Alberta budget
Thank you, as always for your succinct and cogent analysis. Consider that increased taxation to support provincial government spending, while entirely justified, is essentially a shift in spending, not an increase, and its stimulative effect will be small. Particularly with the collapse of oil revenues, Alberta must receive substantial federal support. The federal gov’t which owns a central bank with sovereign currency has the fiscal capacity to fight long wars, bail out the whole...
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