- Recommendations for conducting SMS surveys from the Busara Center, who “sent a one-time mobile SMS survey to 3,489 Kenyans familiar with SMS surveys and to 6,279 not familiar. Each sample was randomized into one of 54 cross-cutting treatment combinations with variation across several dimensions: incentive amounts, pre-survey communication, survey lengths, and content variation” include keep mobile surveys to 5 questions or provide higher incentives; randomize questions and response options; and know that males and under-30s will be most likely to respond. Some useful benchmarks on survey response rates (only 36% overall, and 55% for those who have participated in past studies, vs only 18% for a sample of newer respondents); how much incentives help (moving from 0 to 100 KES ($1) increases response by 8% in the new respondent sample, but has no effect for past respondents).
- Oxford’s CSAE has set up a new coder’s corner, where DPhil students will be posting weekly tips on coding that they have found useful.
- VoxDev this week focuses on industrial policy – including Dani Rodrik starting the series off by giving an overview of where we currently stand in the literature: “the relevant question for industrial policy is not whether but how”
- On Let’s Talk Development, Dave Evans notes that a 20-year re-issue of Angus Deaton’s famous “Analysis of Household Surveys” is now out (DOWNLOAD FOR FREE!!!!), with a new preface in which he reflects in trends over the last two decades – “I would be even more skeptical. As I taught the material over the years, it became clear that many of the uses of instrumental variables and natural experiments that had seemed so compelling at first lost a good deal of their luster with time.” – “Twenty years later, I now find myself very much more skeptical about instruments in almost any situation”. I read this book cover-to-cover multiple times during my PhD and I highly recommend it.
- Video of Chico Ferreira’s policy talk this week on Inequality as cholesterol : Attempting to quantify inequality of opportunity.
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Conference calls for papers:
- CEGA at Berkeley is holding a conference on lab experiments in developing countries, submissions due March 1.
- Maryland is hosting the next BREAD conference. They invite submissions from interested researchers on any topic within the area of Development Economics. The deadline for submissions is February 18, 2019. Only full-length papers will be considered. Please send your paper to BREAD2019@umd.edu
- The World Bank’s ABCDE conference is on multilateralism/global public goods – submissions are due March 24.
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