- An excellent list of links curated by Masa Kudamatsu, on tips for economists, right through from applying to grad schools to becoming chair of department and Dean (h/t @seema_econ).
- From Unicef, a set of impact evaluations of humanitarian assistance programs (see papers on the right), including supporting the school participation of Syrian children in Lebanon, food assistance in Mali, and programs in Iraq, Yemen and Niger.
- On VoxDev, Karlan, Roth and Mullainathan summarize their work on debt traps – “Even when street vendors are freed from debt and educated about the benefits of saving, they go back to borrowing from moneylenders at exorbitant rates”
- “One of the IVs that has gotten overused in recent years - to the point where it eventually became a punchline - is rainfall”, and “if you have to use IV, stick to linear regression”. Marc Bellemare’s lecture notes on IVs.
- From Poverty to Power summarizes a review of the evidence on Community-Driven Development (CDD) programs as “pretty devastating”, although the findings are very similar to those of the 2013 Policy Research Report by Mansuri and Rao, and Susan Wong and Scott Guggenheim offer a response to critics in a recent working paper.
- Wood and Heard over at 3ie highlight 3 common incorrect assumptions about power (statistical, not political) that can undermine impact evaluations.
- Dave Evans and Mũthoni Ngatia review the evidence on school uniforms and children's education outcomes at the Nasikiliza blog.
- Conference call for papers: The economics of peace-building conference, to be held in Medellin, Colombia.
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