Mike Denly

Cooperative Complexity: The Next Level of Global Economic Governance with Political Scientist Ricky Clark Global Stage · Episode

You can also hear me discuss my book, Cooperative Complexity: The Next Level of Global Economic Governance, on the Global Stage podcast from @keoughglobalnd.bsky.social @kellogginstitute.bsky.social open.spotify.com/episode/5Pws...

Hi Ray, Indeed, there was a rescue project ( sciop.net/datasets/ohs...). The torrent can downloaded via replayweb.page Heather Huntington and Erik Wibbels at UPenn can provide more info. Hope this helps!

Foreign aid cuts have slashed support for nutritional programs around the world.

As Nick Kristof explains, decades of evidence from CEGA Faculty Director @tedmiguel.bsky.social has proven that deworming medications are a cost-effective way to boost physical, mental, and economic development.

Wow, such a cool design and important findings from an awesome team! Did I miss a link to the full paper?

A patriot. Government provides invaluable information to us all.

Penn researchers lose funding and jobs after USAID shutdown Researchers say losing USAID funding means less research that benefits the U.S. government, fewer opportunities for students, and a loss of trust in the U.S. overseas.

WHYY has published a story on the implications of the Trump administration's decision to gut USAID for the work of researchers in our lab (PDRI-DevLab). You may find it interesting: whyy.org/articles/pen...

Bob, there is so much amazing stuff in this post! A question: is there some sort of parallel between what you are saying about time for measurement and what Macartan Humphreys said in the post below survey experiments being often about measurement? Maybe I am reaching too far, but maybe not...

Dear @ericlipton.nytimes.com, I wrote my PhD dissertation on corruption and worked on it for the World Bank & USAID. The most basic definition of corruption is “the misuse of public office for private gain or entrusted power.” What you’re writing about is textbook corruption. Please drop “potential”

Massive thanks to everyone for posting replication files and for your commitments to open science!

Bonus 2. Students' favorite examples:

- Kocher et al - Bombing & counterinsurgency (IV)
- @saadgulzar.bsky.social et al - Donations & procurement (RDD)
- @benjaminhelms.bsky.social - Nativism in India (DiD)
- @laiabalcells.bsky.social & Torats-Espinosa - Elections & terrorism (Nat. Exper.)

Bonus 1. Students' favorite group work replications:

- @dacemoglumit.bsky.social et al - Colonial origins (IV)
- @szakonyi.bsky.social - Corruption in Russia (fixed effects)
- @mirkoheinzel.bsky.social et al - Gender mainstreaming (weighting)
- @nickkuipers.bsky.social - Failing the test (RDD)

4. Final paper: Participating in @i4replication.bsky.social Replication Games and completing a replication report:
- ensures students learn how to run their own results without much of my help
- teaches students how to fairly write about others' work
- shows students how knowledge is produced

3. Group work: replicating results from readings, assisted by lecture notes summarizing the videos given out after the quiz
- randomization into dif. groups each class to prevent selection issues
- lecture notes cover everything, thereby obviating need for ChatGPT
- I answer Qs
- students have fun!

2. Open-handwritten note quizzes to start class:
- research is clear that you remember more when you write things down on paper, as opposed to typing
- if students take good enough notes, then the quiz is an easy 100
- due to the quiz, students arrive to class already knowing the material

1. Online video lectures: they work -- don't change, Andrew!

Students like:
- not having to buy an expensive textbook
- knowing exactly what they need to learn, as textbooks have too many extra things that we profs tend not to cover
- being able to rewind & rewatch when they get stuck

How I'm (mostly) beating ChatGPT in my Quant 2 MA course:

1. online videos lectures - no textbook or in-person lectures
2. open-handwritten note quiz to start class
3. group work: replicating results from readings, assisted by lecture notes videos given out after quiz
4. final: Replication Games
🧵

Opinion | No One Has Ever Defeated Autocracy From the Sidelines

Appeasement, as Churchill warned, is like feeding a crocodile and hoping to be the last one eaten.

Levitsky, Way, and me today in New York Times

www.nytimes.com/2025/05/08/o...

Measuring electoral democracy with observables Most cross-national indices of democracy rely centrally on coder judgments, which are susceptible to bias and error, and require expensive and time consuming coding by experts. We present an approach to measurement based on observables that aim to preserve the nuanced quality of subjectively coded democracy indices. Our observable-to-subjective score mapping is free of idiosyncratic coder errors arising from misinformation, slack, or biases. It is less susceptible to systematic bias that may arise from coders’ inferences about a country’s regime, for example, from the ideology of the ruler. The data collection procedure and mode of analysis are fully transparent and replicable, and the procedure is based on random forests and is cheap to produce, easy to update, and offers coverage for all polities with sovereign or semisovereign status, surpassing the sample of any existing index. We show that this expansive coverage makes a big difference to our understanding of some causal questions.

A few years ago, @danweitzel.net, John Gerring, @skaaning.bsky.social and I were curious how well one could predict subjective democracy measures using easy(ish) to code observables. Turns out, *quite* well, even out of sample. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

American Journal of Political Science | MPSA Journal | Wiley Online Library Immigration has been shown to drive ethnocentrism and anti-globalization attitudes in native-born populations. Yet understanding how global integration shapes intercultural relations also necessitate...

It doesn’t seem to be the exact paper you’re looking for, but this paper from Nikhar Gaikwad, @kolbyhanson.bsky.social, and @aliz-toth.bsky.social might be helpful: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Farewell to the Last Writer of the Latin American Boom The Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa was the world’s savviest and most accomplished political novelist.

RIP Mario Vargas Llosa. Not a perfect figure by any means but, wow, The Feast of the Goat (La Fiesta del Chivo) remains a highly relevant and powerful book today. Too bad that so many of my fellow citizens haven’t understood its takeaways about the dangers of the authoritarian strongman.

The Cost of Defunding Harvard If you or someone you love has cancer, cardiovascular disease, dementia, Parkinson’s disease, or diabetes, you have likely benefitted from the university’s federally funded discoveries in care and tre...

I saw firsthand the impact of stop-work-orders/terminations at USAID & now Harvard. My new @NewYorker piece is on the serious implications for the lives of millions across the world and the US – including for my own family and very possibly your own. 🧵
www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

After many years of working on it, it feels great to finally see my job market paper out in AJPS!

Super interesting post, Miles — thanks for your work!

Religion and Foreign Aid USAID gave funds to religious non-profits until DOGE got rid of it. Will religious folks care?

How does frequency of attending religious services affect support for foreign aid? I tackle that question in my latest newsletter.

open.substack.com/pub/mileswil...

The Texas A&M replication games is underway! The focus is mostly on political science articles. Big thanks to the local organizer @mikedenly.com . This is our 2nd games of the week after Göttingen. Our games guru, Derek Mikola, is flying all over the world to support teams!

It was delightful to have @noahgreifer.bsky.social on the podcast — as always I learned so much!

The uneven reach of the state: Using machine learning to map local state presence How can we estimate state presence in areas where direct measurements are lacking? New research offers a solution to measuring state presence using machine learning techniques.

🆕 The uneven reach of the state: Using machine learning to map local state presence

Today on VoxDev, Gustav Agneman (NTNU), Christoffer Cappelen (NTNU), Kasper Brandt (Kraka Economics), and David Sjoberg (Epista Life Science) outline research on sub-Saharan Africa: voxdev.org/topic/method...

Many at USIP have told me from the start that the reason the Trump administration has gone after them so aggressively is because of their really beautiful building.

Deporting—or threatening to deport—foreign students over social media posts isn’t just cruel, it’s profoundly anti-American. And it will almost certainly backfire, further eroding whatever reputation and influence we have left among our allies

Transparency works, but only with enforcement and public access!

Check out our brand new OREO Index that launched today from @acdatacollective.bsky.social and @anticorruption.bsky.social :

www.transparency.org/en/news/unve...