Mahesh Shrestha

Mechanism Design for Personalized Policy: A Field Experiment Incentivizing Exercise | Becker Friedman Institute Making policy entails setting rules, regulations, and other guidelines with a desired outcome in mind. However, people respond differently to such efforts, and these heterogeneous responses necessaril...

Personalized policies made exercise incentives 80% more effective for people with lifestyle-related health conditions, without added costs. Research by @rdizonross.bsky.social (@chicagobooth.bsky.social) and Ariel D. Zucker shows tailoring programs can greatly boost results: ow.ly/Npga50W8rtu

Is it "good" or "bad" when skilled people leave low-income countries? We summarized the evidence in favor of "brain gain" vs. "brain drain": www.science.org/doi/epdf/10....
Ungated PDF: johanneshaushofer.com/research

Congrats!

Cash transfers are now part of policymakers' toolkits for poverty alleviation.

Evidence from 115 studies in 34 LMICs shows robust positive impacts across key economic & social outcomes: consumption, income, total assets, food security, well-being & children’s education/health ⤵️

MIT Says It No Longer Stands Behind Student’s AI Research Paper The university said it has no confidence in a widely circulated paper by an economics graduate student.

With the excitement (delirium?) surrounding the rise of AI, it's more important than ever that scientists and journalists maintain an attitude of skepticism and dispassion about new findings as they arrive
www.wsj.com/tech/ai/mit-...

4teen

42

The Godfather IV

Quadruple Indemnity

At Princeton BREAD conference, my co-authors @pbrimble.bsky.social & Akhila Kovvuri will present our paper on the political economy impacts of the Ramayan TV show in India! 1 pm US ET, tomorrow Fri May 2.

Watch on Zoom: princeton.zoom.us/j/93399992221

ibread.org/conference/b...
#EconSky #Ramayan

Looking forward to talking to @adb.org President Kanda about Asia's experience with industrial policy and what the rest of the world can learn as well as recent developments. Join us, 11:30am EST April 22 in person or online.

Figure 1: Mentions of software in three journals. Percents are reported among articles mentioning any of “Stata” or “Python” or “Rstudio” or “R programming” or “R code” in the Journal of Economic Education, the Journal of Political Science Education, and the Journal of Statistics and Data Science Education, from 1995 through 2024.

🚨New paper alert!🚨 How do different disciplines use statistical software? We looked at 10,000 papers. We all know a lot of economists use Stata and a lot of statisticians use R. But...

I'm speaking tomorrow Mon 31 Mar at the LSE Applications Seminar. Paper is on the Ramayan TV show's impact on Hindu identity and the rise of the BJP in India... 12:00-13:30, SAL 1.04, Sir Arthur Lewis Building, LSE. Come one, come all!

cep.lse.ac.uk/_new/events/...
#EconSky #Ramayan

If you get a "You forget Econ 101" from Mankiw, you automatically lose your economist card. Sorry I don't make the rules.

Subsidising secondary school had transformative impacts.

Female recipients had ~15% fewer unplanned pregnancies, 15% fewer children + significantly delayed age at first childbirth & marriage.

Over time, their offspring’s outcomes improved dramatically ⤵️

Unlocking migration’s potential: Five key insights on Bilateral Labor Agreements (BLAs) In his blog "Unlocking migration’s potential: Five key insights on Bilateral Labor Agreements (BLAs)," Maheshwor Shrestha discusses the critical role of migration in balancing labor markets amid demog...

In this blog, we discuss how migration can help balance the demographic divergence between countries though bilateral labor agreements.

They can be a great instrument, esp when combined with skills dev & match, and strong implementation capacity.

blogs.worldbank.org/en/developme...

Congratulations to Manasi Deshpande, @talgross.bsky.social, and Yalun Su who were recognized for the AEJ Best Paper Award for Applied Economics at #ASSA2025 for the paper “Disability and Distress: The Effect of Disability Programs on Financial Outcomes.” #econsky aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

Journalists. Please. Too many of you are going to call this a tax “on Colombia”.

It’s a tax on Americans. All Americans who ever drink coffee. Or buy cut flowers.

A tax. On Americans.

What's the potential financial cost of Trump's immigration policies? Millions of undocumented immigrants could now face heightened enforcement as President Trump works to fulfill his promise of mass deportations — a promise that could cost the government billions.

“Americans can expect fewer job opportunities, higher prices for a range of goods” from mass expulsion, I told @scrippsnews.bsky.social.

“They can expect less new home construction. They can expect higher rates of institutionalization for the elderly, & they can expect no change in the crime rate.”

Nudges can work; but some work better than others. Some combinations work much better…

Here is what we did to identify the most effective and the most cost effective combinations of nudges to boost demand for immunization in the Indian state of Haryana:

This paper is an amazing introduction to considering effective policy in the real world

How does international migrant income affect development of migrant-origin areas?

Emir Murathanoglu presents our paper (w/ @econgaurav.bsky.social, Caroline Theoharides) at #ASSA2025 migration session! Today 2:30pm

VoxDev summary: voxdev.org/topic/migrat...
#EconSky
www.aeaweb.org/conference/2...

Evidence from cash transfers at scale in Kenya suggests that demand-side policies or stimulus may be very effective at raising output without creating inflationary pressure when there is a lot of ‘slack’ in the economy.

Read more on the macroeconomic impacts of cash transfers ⤵️

Researcher: "We let the data speak for itself."

Earlier that day:

Vastly wealthier than the merely moneyed

How many people have been arriving via the US Southwest border?

The US Census Bureau just unveiled a new method for counting them.

It appears to substantially address (eliminate?) the CPS/ACS undercount relative to other data sources—> www.census.gov/newsroom/blo...

Academics from poorer socio-economic backgrounds are more likely to
- not publish
- have outstanding publication records
- introduce more novel scientific concepts
- less likely to receive recognition, as measured by citations, Nobel Prize nominations, and awards.
www.nber.org/papers/w33289

New working paper:

We find that bilateral labor agreements significantly increases migration.

Low- and lower-middle-income countries can gain US$ 120 million each year from a single BLA in the form of higher migrant earnings!

documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/099…