- Are regression-discontinuity designs ok for election studies? The Monkey Cage summarizes a new paper which says yes.
- The IPA blog summarizes two new experiments by Dean Karlan with the microfinance organization Compartamos in Mexico – “The bank also worked with the researchers to randomly assign some branches nationwide to lower interest rates. This study, designed to address the tension between for-profit banks, who require a sustainable business model, and critics who have accused the bank of extracting profits from the poor, found that the lower interest rate brought in enough new customers to keep profits unchanged.” This work is also covered in the Economist which notes “Perhaps the clearest impact of microlending in the study was its impact on the power of women in the home. Female borrowers gained control over a significantly larger number of household decisions.”
- Chris Blattman does us an enormous favor by summarizing in a good blog post his 54 page, 4-year evaluation of giving youth groups grants for skills training and capital acquisition in northern Uganda. This was a project supported by the World Bank, and it is good to see positive impacts on employment.
- The FAI blog continues its series of posts summarizing papers from the JDE special issue on measurement by discussing diaries and other alternatives for capturing accurate self-reported data.
- On from Poverty to Power, Sophie Romana discusses evidence on the saving for change program, with interesting discussion of where RCT evidence and qualitative data differ in the conclusions one would draw.
- The Lancet published a paper showing a correlation between the extent of coverage of Bolsa Familiar (a CCT in Brazil) and lower incidences of child mortality, especially from malnutrition and diarrhea.
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