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WORKING PAPERS
February 03, 2021
This paper surveys common ethical concerns and proposes a series of practical suggestions to help researchers and policymakers be more mindful of and transparent about ethics as they consider, design, implement, and report randomised controlled trials and other impact evaluations in development sett...
Blog Post
February 03, 2021
Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in development have never failed to inspire discussion, on whether they offer methodological advantages, whether they answer (or distract from answering) big questions in development, or whether they are ethical. Several recent RCTs have ignited heated debates abo...
Blog Post
January 27, 2021
Last year, I claimed that you win or lose readers with the introduction of your economics paper. That might have been generous. A lot of people will read no further than the abstract of your paper to decide whether it’s worth reading, sharing, or citing. (Some people may read no further than the tit...
Blog Post
December 17, 2020
With increased focus on the shortfall inlearning outcomes around the world (the “learning crisis”!), one might assume that just about every child is in school, or at least that every young child is in primary school. But sadly, that’s not the case: in low-income countries, just two-thirds of childre...
WORKING PAPERS
December 17, 2020
Cash transfers boost educational outcomes for poor children on average, but which aspects of educational performance are most responsive and which poor children benefit the most? This study examines the educational impacts of cash transfers, drawing on a randomized, community implemented conditional...
Blog Post
November 09, 2020
Last weekend was the North East Universities Development Consortium annual conference. Researchers presented about 225 papers on a wide range of development topics, from agriculture and credit to tax and transport. We’ve prepared a brief takeaway from each paper that we could find online.
Blog Post
October 29, 2020
There are many studies that show how one intervention reduces dropouts (better access to school) or another intervention increases learning (better quality of schooling). But policymakers and others care about a combination of access and learning! So how do you choose between one intervention that s...
WORKING PAPERS
October 23, 2020
Limited resources mean that policymakers must make tough choices about which investments to make to improve education. Although hundreds of education interventions have been rigorously evaluated, making comparisons between the results is challenging. This paper proposes using learning-adjusted years...
Blog Post
October 16, 2020
This week the IMF released new global economic growth projections in the face of COVID-19, updating their earlier projections from June and from April before that. In recent weeks, the World Bank has also released new projections for various regions. Here are six takeaways that we gleaned from revie...
Blog Post
October 05, 2020
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, the quality of health services across many African countries was too low. In an article that is now forthcoming at BMJ Global Health, we draw on data for more than 20,000 health providers and 8,000 facilities to construct an aggregate measure o...