Markus Goldstein

My very first podcast...luckily I had great, thoughtful and eloquent guests in Temina Madon and @hanshengchia.bsky.social!

Refugees’ Economic Integration (Forthcoming Article) - Refugees are international migrants escaping persecution and crises, whose economic success in their countries of destination is threatened by lack of access to labor and credi...

Forthcoming in the JEL: "Refugees’ Economic Integration" by Dany Bahar, Rebecca Brough, and Giovanni Peri. www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

The World Bank Group is planning to reorganize its research functions. The results could be even uglier than the powerpoint: an end to independent research at the institution and conflicts of interest all over...

New blog with @eeshani.bsky.social, link in reply.

SMS Charges May Be Inhibiting the Use of AI for 1 Billion People Smartphone users across the globe increasingly have access to a variety of services that make use of AI, but high markups on text messages will prevent the world’s poorest from making use of the techn...

There are 252 million phones in India without internet. It costs those users 85,000 times more to get a byte of data. This is price discrimination in the access of the world's poor to AI. A post by Daniel Björkegren lays out the costs, the why and what to do about it: www.cgdev.org/blog/sms-cha...

if you missed it, it was indeed interesting with some provocative questions - now available to stream at the link below

Cholera in Africa: Rising Deaths, Shrinking US Aid The United States—long the world’s largest provider of lifesaving assistance and the largest humanitarian donor to many countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa—saw a sharp reversal in early 2025. ...

Cholera deaths are rising in sub-Saharan countries. While the data suggest the US responded to this in the past, now we see programs cancelled. Colleagues and I take a look at these patterns in a new blog: www.cgdev.org/blog/cholera...

Who Bears the Burden? Tracking the Global Impact of Recent US Foreign Policy Shifts Since January, the United States has adopted a range of foreign economic policies with negative impacts on the rest of the world, including higher tariffs on exports, taxes on remittances, and reducti...

In a new blog @cgdev.org colleagues and I add up the effects of changes in foreign economic policy (aid, tariffs, remittance taxes)- which countries are the most heavily hit and which are least - some surprises:
www.cgdev.org/blog/who-bea...

Alongside this year's #AnnualMeetings, experts are convening at CGD to unpack novel AI approaches and why they matter for policymakers.

With: @hanshengchia.bsky.social, Rebecca Sharp, Temina Madon, Gabriel Demombynes, and @markusgold.bsky.social.

Happening Oct. 14—join us:
https://bit.ly/42m2Vcl

Safe Spaces for Teenage Girls in a Time of Crisis Abstract. Adolescent girls across low-income countries face disadvantages stemming from limited agency over their bodies and barriers to investing in their

Forthcoming article "Safe Spaces for Teenage Girls in a Time of Crisis" by Oriana Bandiera, Niklas Buehren, @markusgold.bsky.social Imran Rasul and Andrea Smurra
@eeanews.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1093/jeea...

Totally proud of the PRO team, making this announcement in NYC this morning. Excellent to hear from Helen Keller International what a difference this was making on the ground. Go PRO!

Four speakers on a stage at an event

The PRO Initiative, hosted by CGD, has reached a major milestone: every first-wave urgent, high-impact project is funded for 12 more months, sustaining life-saving aid for 41M people in 30+ countries.

See what's next: https://bit.ly/46DY5bQ

Do US Visa Restrictions Target Overstays or Poor Countries? The US administration justifies its restrictions on visas to citizens from certain countries by citing high overstay rates. But taken together, the targeted countries account for only a small share of...

My new blog discussing the faulty math that underlies US visa restrictions:
www.cgdev.org/blog/do-us-v...

Our new paper in the JEEA shows BRAC's ELA program offsets the pregnancy and drop-out impacts of the Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone:

academic.oup.com/jeea/advance...

How much does it cost to provide a healthy diet? How does this vary across countries? www.worldbank.org/en/programs/... Will Masters shares an open-access resource that seeks to compare across countries at #ABCDE2025.

.@leecrawfurd.bsky.social: "Lead exposure could explain 1/5th of the learning gap between rich & poor countries"

academic.oup.com/wbro/article... #ABCDE2025

NEUDC 2025

One month left to submit papers for this year's NEUDC: neudc2025.com:

A recent blog by my colleagues @helen-dempster.bsky.social, Charley Ward and @samhuckstep.bsky.social shows the stark impact of the just-passed remittance tax on poorer countries, adding to the impact of aid cuts:https://www.cgdev.org/blog/even-1-percent-us-remittance-tax-hits-poor-countries-hard

Some Things We Don't Do Anymore - This American Life Trump froze U.S. foreign aid and dismantled USAID. We examine the agency’s impact and hear from people trying to navigate this chaotic moment.

Thoughtful and wrenching stories of the waste and damage caused by the abrupt cutting of USAID: www.thisamericanlife.org/862/some-thi...

Opinion | The Waste Musk Created

The Waste Musk Created www.nytimes.com/2025/06/21/o...

The Window for Host Communities and Refugees Survives, but What Does the Future Hold Under GROW? Recently, the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA) released their plans for IDA21, including for the Window for Host Communities and Refugees (WHR), now placed under a new umbrella...

The World Bank has released their IDA21 plans, with the $2.4bn Window for Host Communities and Refugees now part of a broader regional window. In this new @cgdev.org blog, @thomasginn.bsky.social and I spell out the good, the bad, and where to go from here.

www.cgdev.org/blog/window-...

Certified to Stay? Long-Run Experimental Evidence on Land Formalization and Widows’ Tenure Security in Benin In many parts of the world, women’s land rights remain informal, leaving widows—especially those without a male heir—at high risk of losing access to their land and homes when their husbands die. We…

Globally, women’s land rights remain informal, leaving widows at high risk of losing access to their homes.

In a new working paper, @markusgold.bsky.social‬ & fellow experts study if large-scale land formalization programs can improve widows’ tenure security ⬇️
bit.ly/43xQR7y

Ministers Launch International Taskforce to End School Violence Eleven countries have come together to launch a new international taskforce to tackle violence in and around schools at a high-level roundtable organised by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development O...

Proud of our education team, partnering with the FCDO and the Global Partnership with Education to support the launch of the Ministerial taskforce against violence in and around schools. Excited to see us build the data and evidence on what works to address this issue.
www.cgdev.org/article/mini...

Building the Future of Aid—Starting Now: Strategic Lessons from a Crisis Despite what administration officials have claimed about preserving life-saving work, many of the programs delivering interventions known to save the most lives per dollar spent have not received the ...

In the wake of the abrupt dismantling of USAID, there are taxpayer funded vaccines, food, and bednets sitting in warehouses, going bad. My colleagues Robert Rosenbaum, Caitlin Tulloch, and Cindy Huang blog about an initiative trying to make sure less people die: www.cgdev.org/blog/buildin...

Children Are Being Poisoned Because of Bureaucratic Inertia This month saw joint meetings of the Conferences of the Parties (COPs) to the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Convention. These meetings are held once every two years, and are the key mechanisms for in...

Despite it's ability to cause substantial harm to human health, lead chromate is still not regulated by the Rotterdam Convention, likely due in part to bureaucratic inertia.

More from @leecrawfurd.bsky.social & @rorytodd98.bsky.social:
www.cgdev.org/blog/childre...

Cutting through the Noise: Identifying Smart Bets in AI Applications for Development There are more than 450 AI applications targeting health or education outcomes in low- and middle-income countries, but not every application will prove cost-effective. How can the development sector ...

My colleague @hanshengchia.bsky.social and I cut through the noise and lay out some ideas on identifying smart bets on AI for development:
www.cgdev.org/blog/cutting...

An AI Evaluation Framework for the Development Sector There's a common concern that AI systems are black boxes prone to unexpected behavior, from Google recommending users eat rocks to Sora’s AI videos depicting gymnasts sprouting extra limbs. While some...

Looking for some weekend reading? My colleague Han Sheng Chia and coauthors lay out a map for evaluating AI interventions in the development sector (spoiler: it does not start with an RCT): www.cgdev.org/blog/ai-eval...

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Professional update: In June, I’ll be joining the @cgdev.org as a Senior Fellow. I’m enthusiastic to generate and disseminate policy-actionable research with fabulous colleagues under @rglenner.bsky.social’s leadership.

📅 On Apr. 25, @cgdev.org & @theirworld.bsky.social invite you to a discussion on the benefits of supporting early childhood development & childcare, and how to increase investment in these years to achieve the triple dividend for children, women, & economies.

RSVP ⬇️
bit.ly/4jENeDt

Sub-Saharan African countries will bear the brunt of US & UK aid cuts.🌍

Join CGD & Africatalyst for a #SpringMeetings discussion on responses to the new development landscape, how leaders can react, & ways to move away from aid dependency.

RSVP!⬇️
bit.ly/4j9H8uQ

Educating international students is a massive export of services. They pay us money earned in a foreign nation for a product the US has, until now, had an absolute advantage in. We cannot effectively sell these services if these students can be deported, detained, and even kidnapped at random.