- The second edition of the book Impact Evaluation in Practice by Paul Gertler, Sebastian Martinez, Patrick Premand, Laura Rawlings and Christel Vermeersch is now available. For free online! “The updated version covers the newest techniques for evaluating programs and includes state-of-the-art implementation advice, as well as an expanded set of examples and case studies that draw on recent development challenges. It also includes new material on research ethics and partnerships to conduct impact evaluation.”
- Interesting Priceonomics piece on R.A. Fisher, and how he fought against the idea that smoking causes cancer
- Oxfam blog post on power calculations for propensity score matching
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The importance of airlines for research and growth:
- VoxEU piece on work showing that when Southwest airlines opens up routes between U.S. cities, more scientific collaboration in Chemistry occurs (diff-in-diff) and NPR story on this
- New working paper by Campante and Yanagizawa-Drott uses discontinuity in connectiveness of cities at 6,000 miles to show air links have positive impact on economic activity by inducing links between businesses. The Kennedy school provides a media summary here.
- A creative re-use of those discrimination audit studies – Marginal Revolution reports on a study that went back to the firms used in a 2004 audit study, and finds firms that discriminated were less likely to survive until 2010. Sample is 170 businesses, of which they could find data on 139. 17% of the 103 non-discriminatory businesses had failed, vs 36% of the 33 discriminatory businesses.
- New federal rules for the reporting of clinical trials (h/t Berk)
- Experiments on how students should study better – less highlighting and more self-quizzing, better planning (Washington Post)
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