- The Wall Street Journal discusses the synthetic control method as a way to understand Brexit (gated): “There are small differences in the various studies, but they all use Prof. Abadie’s method as the basis for constructing a “doppelganger” U.K. from other similar advanced economies, such as the U.S., Canada, France and the Netherlands. They reach similar conclusions, suggesting the British economy at the start of 2018 was around 2% smaller than it would have been had the 2016 referendum gone the other way”
- Market-level experimentation: In the Harvard Business Review, How Uber used synthetic control methods combined with experiments to decide whether to launch Express Pool.
- As a companion to our state of the development journals post, Juan Carlos Suarez has coded up a shiny app (it works in a normal browser) that uses data on decision times at top general journals, the AEJs, and the JF to offer conditional distributions that are conditional on how long your paper has been waiting at a journal.
- Following up on Dave and Markus’s post this week on how to influence policy with evidence, J-PAL have a blogpost up about six pathways through which they think their evidence has influenced policy, with case study examples of each. One important one is deciding to scale back or eliminate programs where results are not so positive.
- In the latest JEP, Lucy Page and Rohini Pande argue for a greater focus on “invisible infrastructure” – “the social and human systems that enable citizens to realize their capabilities and escape poverty. This comprises traditional elements of social infrastructure like health care and education but also, importantly, the incentive and information structures that bring the actions of those who control resources in line with the needs of the poor” and for aid to not by-pass the state in delivering this.
- Northwestern has put up several 2 minute videos featuring the research of different faculty. Most focus on one particular paper of one faculty member, but for development they tried something different, focusing on their overall approach in development, featuring photos of a young Chris Udry in his Peace Corps days.
- Job opening: DIME is looking for a research assistant based in Washington, DC and a field coordinator based in Brazil to support ongoing impact evaluations of business support programs. Click here and here to know more about the positions.
- Finally, a reminder that our blog your job market paper series is still accepting submissions.
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