Tag Archives: news

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. A few years ago, Liberia, whose educational system has been troubled to say the least, tried an experiment. In the face of under-resourced and underperforming public schools, they wondered if private education providers could run public schools better than the government was? The country announced that it was going to outsource the whole country’s schools to one American company, but after public outcry the plan was scaled back...

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...

Photo: Larry George II on UnsplashGuest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action For your travels this weekend I’ve put up some favorite podcast recommendations, plus some bonus reading, and kids’ podcasts. (Though they’re all potentially kids’ podcasts, in that when my kids misbehave in the back seat I threaten to put on an econ podcast and they shape up pretty quick.)The Nathan Nunn article on rethinking economic development was very readable. He argues that instead of...

A slope even non-economists can loveGuest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action First, please pass along to your skiing friends that the owner of the ski treehouse above in Whitefish, MT (Glacier National Park adjacent) is offering to donate proceeds to the non-profit I work for, IPA, from any rentals between now and Jan 31. (Instructions here)Among other things, IPA’s been investing in expanding the things that academics don’t always have incentives to do, hiring Ph.D.s...

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,...

They spend the next 45 minutes arguing about Stata vs. R. (In honor of the new Jack Ryan season) Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. Dave Evans offers a short PhD in Michael Kremer’s work, with quick summaries of 100+ of his papers. But being a Nobel-winning researcher is only one of his jobs. He’s founded, or been instrumental in, more than one non-profit, and in USAID DIV. As a friend told me this morning, most people who know him from just one facet of his life...

One of the best Indian dairy cooperative-based Nobel pun cartoons you’ll see all day. Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action That is Abhijit Banerjee & Esther Duflo above, thanks to Neela Saldanha and Elizabeth Koshy for explaining that Abi Jit means “(He) just won” or “won now,” so it means “just won the Nobel.” And that the dairy cooperative Amul is known in India for their punny billboards (which you can also find on their twitter feed).On the Nobel sugar high,...

Ethiopian Prime Minister and Nobel Laureate Abiy Ahmed Ali Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali has won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work towards peace with Eritrea, though the committee acknowledged it’s still a work in progress. Ethiopia has also loosened some of its more repressive policies around security and journalism recently. Commentary from BBC starting around 6 minutes here (both stories h/t Laura Seay).For longer...

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...

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action First, a word from Chris (click the linked screenshot below for the whole interesting story): Here’s that link to his CV (including a graduate degree from Columbia). But you can hear him and Chris on Freakonomics talk about the program he developed in Liberia. The American Economic Association released its full report on the professional climate survey it ran and it’s not good. Ben Casselman from The New York Times, who has done a...