The impact of the pressure to show impact, having a pretty face, concerns about the business case for gender and more...

·         The impact of soccer frustration and euphoria on violent crime in Argentina courtesy of the IADB’s effectiveness blog.

·         A warning about the pressure to show impact suffocating the important role of negative findings and research failures at the LSE social science blog….”Recent analysis has estimated that, for a selection of cardiovascular-related medical interventions, the time lag between key research and impact on health was around 17 years”…

·         The value of a pretty face – it gets you more job interviews  (via @franciscome)

·         Esther Duflo on the dangers of relying on the business case for efforts to increase gender equality: “There is a range of claims that people make to say that discriminating in favor of women is the policy efficient thing to do. I think that’s a slightly dangerous case to make, because if you find out eventually that that’s not true, it’s going to be apparent, and then once the business case disappears—that is, you have problems—people will say, “You fooled us on the business case,” and you’ll get this backlash. So I think it’s better to call a spade a spade and to say, “Well, if you look at the rich countries, there is still plenty of discrimination against women.” So if you care about equality for its own sake, then you might have to continue to help out for a while.”

·         Lant Pritchett talks about the politics of CCTs at the CGD blog, and Berk respectively disagrees with him again in the comments.

·         Latest issue of Science covers the issues of evaluating the impact of charter schools…most studies are “use unsophisticated methods that tell us little about causal effects” while lottery-based studies focus on unrepresentative schools that are likely oversubscribed for a reason.