Kathleen Beegle

Weekly links May 16: Using AI for development, win-wins for the environment, electricity, psychology and poverty, …

Lots of good reading this week in my weekly links: use cases of AI for development, electricity is complex, the psychology of poverty, several conferences on jobs and women, and more... blogs.worldbank.org/en/impacteva...

The research group at the Workd Bank is doing an off-cycle hire for a trade economist worldbankgroup.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...

Weekly links March 28: surveying shopkeepers, giving second-best policy advice, Bayesian power analysis, saying no, and more…

This week's links include the challenges of interviewing shopkeepers vs farmers, giving second-best policy advice, power analysis the Bayesian way, customised business services as place-based policy, and more... blogs.worldbank.org/en/impacteva...

Join in with the CSAE Conference 2025 with us here on BlueSky!

Presenting a paper? Amazed by the research? Looking forward to the keynote? Mention us & #OxCSAE2025

It is time to stop asking who is the household head

On the blog today, @kbeegle.bsky.social on why it is time to stop asking "who is the household head?" in surveys in developing countries. blogs.worldbank.org/en/impacteva...

An ode to the Demographic and Health Survey Program Caren Grown reflects on the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) Program and its 40-plus years of impact.

An ode to the DHS by my friend, colleague, and former boss Caren Grown
www.brookings.edu/articles/an-...

Devastating news at IZA yesterday. More than 25 years of hard work, earned reputation, and valuable institutional knowledge and public good provision wiped out with a single stroke. It’s hard to find the words.

Yikes! Backlash from an IPV intervention

Read up on work that finds significant backlash from couple intervention to reduce IPV… scaling up and spillovers matter!

End of year links 2024

The last blog links for the year features several nice review articles, funding and conference calls, advice on publishing, and more... blogs.worldbank.org/en/impacteva...

Let the Cream Rise to the Top: Digital Traceability and Quality Upgrading in Kenyan Dairy Value Chain. Guest post by Guanghong Xu.

The last in our #econjmp has @guanghongxu.bsky.social (UCSC) shows how a new (Bayesian inference based) digital traceability system for milk quality in Kenya helped improve milk quality and led to farmers getting more credit from cooperatives and changing inputs blogs.worldbank.org/en/impacteva...

Public works in Djibouti targeting women had high uptake but only short term. Public works in Djibouti targeting women had high uptake but only short term.

Emanuela Galasso & I had a bit of fun using NotebookLM to create a podcast (and blog) of our paper….read and listen here.

A new paper by researchers at Stanford takes on both the question of whether we are adapting to climate change and, indirectly, how we should measure such adaptation. A new paper by researchers at Stanford takes on both the question of whether we are adapting to climate change and, indirectly, how we should measure such adaptation.

In today's blog Patrick Behrer summarizes a new working paper by @marshallburke.bsky.social and co-authors on how we should go about measuring adaption to climate change: blogs.worldbank.org/en/impacteva...

The latest Development Impact blog with Louise Fox: Creating or displacing jobs in Nigeria?

blogs.worldbank.org/en/impacteva...

Six Questions with Jing Cai An interview with Jing Cai, an Associate Professor at the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of Maryland. Her research has focused on the diffusion and impact of finan...

Today we continue our occasional interview series with Jing Cai, who tells us about her path into development economics, what other countries can learn from her work on firm networking in China, working in an ARE department, industrial policy lessons, and more... blogs.worldbank.org/en/impacteva...

The State of Development Journals 2024: Quality, Acceptance Rates, Review Times, and What’s New The 2024 round-up of journal impact factors, rankings, number of submissions, numbers of papers published, and review times at leading development economic journals.

My annual post on submission numbers, acceptance rates, review times, etc. at development journals is now up: blogs.worldbank.org/en/impacteva...

Lee Bounds in Practice This post discusses how to use Lee Bounds for dealing with attrition, and the practical issues that can arise when applying this in field experiments.

Lee bounds in practice: today's post covers how to use covariates, what to do when your outcome is binary or has ties, issues using Lee bounds with LATE, how to discuss the bounds if they include an opposite sign effect, and other practical issues...

blogs.worldbank.org/en/impacteva...

Spillovers, three ways

On Development Impact today, Gabe Englander illustrates three different ways of dealing with spillovers in estimating treatment impacts, through papers that examine impacts of marine conservation areas on fish blogs.worldbank.org/en/impacteva...

Weekly links April 12: declining African agricultural productivity, revenue from .ai, returns to Bangladeshi migration, and more…

This week's links include how Anguilla is funding half of its government in a surprising way through ai, the puzzle of declining agricultural productivity in Africa, public finance and structural transformation, and more... blogs.worldbank.org/en/impacteva...

Weekly links March 8: More bad news on power, Mumbai’s housing mess, spillovers personified and more… A short set of links this week includes getting magnitudes precise, housing restrictions in Mumbai, and the Economist mag on RCTs

Short links this week: blogs.worldbank.org/impactevalua...

The lastest from Development Impact, where Manu and I take a look at a great new paper on public works in urban Ethiopia by Franklin et al:
blogs.worldbank.org/impactevalua...

Firms have a hard time too! Leveraging employment agencies to reduce search frictions for firms. Gue... Many firms may use college education as a heuristic to find skilled workers, but search frictions in the labor market prevent firms from developing accurate beliefs of college graduates’ productivit...

We resume our job market series with today's post by David Wu, who conducts an RCT in Ethiopia that matches firms with employment agencies to help them find college-educated workers. The results are surprising, with this resulting in more non-college workers blogs.worldbank.org/impactevalua...

Innovation on the rise, math scores take a dive: Unraveling the potential and perils of teaching inn... Unraveling the potential and perils of teaching innovation

Today’s job market post is by Saloni Gupta and looks at whether you can teach kids innovation in school, and also how to measure this. Kids then do better at innovation but worse in math scores & enthusiasm blogs.worldbank.org/impactevalua...

What prevents Indian housewives from local flexible work opportunities? Guest Post by Suhani Jalota This study demonstrates that improved childcare and transport policies, among other policies targeted to reduce practical barriers to women's employment, may not overcome all barriers preventing India...

Today's job market post by Suhani Jalota is an RCT with Indian housewives that cross-randomizes job offers for flexible work at home vs in the office, and wage rates. Job take-up much higher for working at home, and not very sensitive to wages. blogs.worldbank.org/impactevalua...