Tag Archives: Kenya

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. Samia Suluhu Hassan was sworn in as Tanzania’s first woman president, following the death of John Magufuli, known for his denial of COVID-19 in the country. Some speculate the virus was the cause of his death rather than the official announced cause, heart failure. A nice article from Dani Rodrik about how economists can get along with other fields. Known for their breadth and willing to take on many kinds of questions,...

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. There’s a lot of basic social science documenting humanity’s flaws, biases, and injustices, but less on fixes. The cover of the new issue of Science today features Salma Mousa’s paper using an experiment in post-ISIS Iraq to promote reconciliation between persecuted Christians and their Muslim neighbors (plain language summary here). Using contact theory, she randomly assigned Muslim players to some teams in a Christian soccer...

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. It’s a little tricky to write links when it feels like things are changing hourly. Here’s the main message to keep in mind for the research community – you can do more than idle your projects. COVID-19 will affect every aspect of development, health, education, entrepreneurship, mobile money, cash transfers, political systems and trust in authority. But, if you have a research expertise in some area of development, now’s the time...

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. There’s a new evaluation out of the Northern Ghana site of the famous expensive Millennium Villages project most associated with Jeff Sachs. I’m not an expert, but as I understand it, the theory is that an intensive big fix (building new institutions like hospitals and many other things at once) could fix the interdependent problems of poor areas.The thing is that Sachs insisted he knew it would work, and it didn’t need an...

Couldn’t make it to Oxford to the CSAE conference? Better call Dave.Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action First, he’s back! David Evans, ensconced in his new digs at the Center for Global Development, brings us a roundup of over 275 papers from the Center for the Study of African Economies (CSAE) conference, in a fancy new expandable format indexed by topic. (Honestly it’s probably better than going to the conference to have someone review all those papers and give...

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. Field researchers in Uganda strategize before going out to track down cash grant recipients nine years laterIt’s been a big week for cash, with two studies out on cash transfers based on data from my IPA colleagues:Craig McIntosh and Andy Zeitlin worked with IPA, USAID, Catholic Relief Services, and GiveDirectly in Rwanda to compare a standard WASH (water/sanitation/hygiene) and nutrition program to cash. You can read the...

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. “Economists have now settled down into RCTs as just one tool,” Glennerster told Devex. Among academics, the kind J-PAL works to connect with the world’s policymakers, she said, “the trend toward using RCTs is simply part of this bigger movement in economics to care more about where we can really pin down what is causing what we see.” Any critique I’ve seen of RCTs as a method apply in one way or another to any empirical study...

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. Madina Nalwanga as chess champion Phiona Mutesi in the film Queen of Katwe.Photo: Edward Echwalu/Disney Recognizing that an increasing amount of development policy is being done in developing countries, the prominent British NGO Oxfam is moving its headquarters from the UK to Nairobi. There’s some evidence that being exposed to relatable role models can improve performance in school or at work. A newly-published RCT compared the...

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. Madina Nalwanga as chess champion Phiona Mutesi in the film Queen of Katwe.Photo: Edward Echwalu/Disney Recognizing that an increasing amount of development policy is being done in developing countries, the prominent British NGO Oxfam is moving its headquarters from the UK to Nairobi. There’s some evidence that being exposed to relatable role models can improve performance in school or at work. A newly-published RCT...