Duncan Webb

screenshot of my post

Big new blogpost!

My guide to data visualization, which includes a very long table of contents, tons of charts, and more.

--> Why data visualization matters and how to make charts more effective, clear, transparent, and sometimes, beautiful.
www.scientificdiscovery.dev/p/salonis-gu...

🔥Very cool paper showing that women in India are way more likely to take up a job (↑29%) in a female-only workplace, and that this can be explained by husbands' jealousy/desire for control. These are massive effects, equivalent to 2.5x increases in wage

bit.ly/4nn9apn

Exciting news on @malengo.org, the NGO that helps East African students move to Europe for education: Our research team has given us a glimpse of their early findings!

Here is the full writeup, joint with @richardnerland.bsky.social:

forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CpZYHk...

Thread follows!

Going to leave you with a Home Office chart from their most recent asylum stats so you can decide whether the UK is a magnet for asylum seekers with a uniquely generous asylum system www.gov.uk/government/s...

Elsevier has a 38% profit margin, and the other journal publishers aren't far behind.

Good morning with good news: India meets 50% renewables & nuclear capacity target 5 years early!

As clean capacity deploys, clean electricity production surges.

Solar grew from 5 TWh in 2014 to 48 TWh in 2019 & 137 TWh in 2024.

Hydro was 157 TWh; wind 82 TWh; nuclear 55 TWh in 2024. #energysky

A stacked area chart showing the total population (split by World Bank region) living in extreme poverty, defined as living below the International Poverty Line of $3 per day. Shown from 1990 to 2025, with World Bank projections from 2026–2040. The data is adjusted for inflation and cost of living differences. Rapid progress against extreme poverty in recent decades has slowed and is projected to end. In 1990, 2.3 billion people lived in extreme poverty. Since then, the number of extremely poor people has declined by 1.5 billion people. The number of people in extreme poverty is projected to decline, from 831 million people in 2025 to 793 million people in 2030. After 2030, the number of extremely poor people is expected to increase. The data source is Lakner et al (2024), updated using the World Bank PIP (2025). The chart is licensded CC BY to Our World in Data.

In the last decades, the world has made fantastic progress against extreme poverty. In 1990, 2.3 billion people lived in extreme poverty. Since then, the number of extremely poor people has declined by 1.5 *billion* people. 🧵

For Women in Economics, the Hostility Is Out in the Open (Published 2021)

1/ Egalitarianism should begin at home. I link to this article by @bencasselman.bsky.social in light of the communications between Larry Summers and Jeffrey Epstein that have just been released. The released emails and the fact of friendship are vile.

www.nytimes.com/2021/02/23/b...

Economics Literature Search Full-text search across 15,000+ papers from top economics journals and NBER working papers. Track how empirical methods have evolved over time.

Dropping a beta version of this page while everyone is up and processing baseball!

This tool lets you search the full text of papers from the American Economic Review, American Economic Journal series, and over 30,000 NBER working papers.

paulgp.com/econlit-pipe...

HOLY SHIT they did it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

#WarRavagedPortland

From @economist.com

Very excited to be starting as a faculty member at NovaSBE, along with 9 other lovely members of the crew! Looking forward to meeting all my fantastic colleagues in Lisbon

The Limits of Data Policymakers want to make decisions based on clear data, but important factors are lost when we rely solely on data. A philosopher writes:

Reminds me of this - "The Limits of Data"
issues.org/limits-of-da...

GDP: We Really Don’t Know How Good We Have It—Asterisk Everyone loves the hockey stick graph of long-run economic growth. For some, it's the basis of an entire worldview. Unfortunately, the numbers don’t add up.

Fantastic article by Oliver Kim about how to think about GDP measures across long stretches of history (it's hard!)

asteriskmag.com/issues/11/gd...

On one hand, reducing car use reduces urban pollution.
But on the other, everyone likes it and cities become more livable

A 4-year limit on student visa length would upend PhD programs.

A conversation with RPDE Postdoctoral Research Associate Miguel Ortiz: Understanding the economics of conflict, producing a radio drama, and more Note: This interview is the second in our series interviewing RPDE’s visitors. See the first with Eric Verhoogen here. Check back for our third with Jessica Goldberg soon.Before we welcome in an excit...

rpde.princeton.edu/news/2025/co...

Policy Associate - Scaling a Menstrual Hygiene & Stigma Intervention, J-PAL Africa | The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab

🌟 Opportunity: Policy Associate for an incredible project in Madagascar 🇲🇬

Our team is hiring a policy associate to support the Ministry of Education in scaling Kilonga - an evidence-based program that improves learning and combats menstrual stigma, reaching 712,000 students.

tinyurl.com/madapolicy

We're hiring for a short-term (mid-Sept to mid-Dec) role as a field RA on an RCT about rural healthcare in northern Uganda. Must have fieldwork experience and ideally experience in Uganda/East Africa. Please share with anyone who might be interested.

🎙️ In a recent @voxdev.bsky.social talk, NOVAFRICA Scientific Director @catiabatista.bsky.social & Caroline Theoharides discuss key findings from their @science.org paper:

“Brain Drain or Brain Gain? The Impact of High-Skilled Migration on Origin Countries.”

🔗 voxdev.org/topic/migrat...

We ran a randomized controlled trial to see how much AI coding tools speed up experienced open-source developers.

The results surprised us: Developers thought they were 20% faster with AI tools, but they were actually 19% slower when they had access to AI than when they didn't.

Since 2000, Gavi has helped get vaccines to 1.1 billion children. The U.S. announced that, after this year, it’s pulling out all its money. If that happens, Gavi estimates that 75 million children will miss vaccinations over the next five years—and of those, 1.2 million children will die.​

According to a UNAIDS analysis, ending PEPFAR-supported programs for people living with HIV could result in an additional 4.2 million deaths by 2029: b-gat.es/4lbD4Lw

Effective health aid: Evidence from Gavi’s vaccine programme Coordinated health aid for vaccination has increased coverage rates and saved the lives of children around the world.

USAID has spent $2 billion supporting vaccines through GAVI. In research, published in AEJ:Economic Policy, Kartini Shastry and I find GAVI saved 1.5 million lives at a low cost of $9,000 per child saved. See the writeup of our research in VoxDev:
voxdev.org/topic/health...

The global vaccine campaign GAVI saved 1.5 million lives so far, as economists @dantortorice.bsky.social and Kartini Shastry have shown.

Now the US Administration, captured by anti-vaccine zealots, will cancel *all* funding for GAVI.

www.nytimes.com/2025/06/25/h...

An act of mass death.

RFK Jr. says US won’t donate to global vaccine effort Kennedy ripped into Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, in a video address at its pledging summit.

This is a travesty & a nightmare. The US was a founder of @gavi.org. It lowers global vaccine costs, has vaccinated 1B children, & averted 19M deaths. This pull out will cost 100s of thousands of children's lives a year - and RFK Jr will be personally responsible.
www.politico.com/news/2025/06...

The CBO has analyzed the distributional impacts of H.R. 1, a.k.a. the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Household resources for the bottom income decile would fall by 4% ($1,600), largely due to Medicaid & SNAP cuts.

The top income decile will see increases of 2.3% ($12,000), largely due to tax cuts.

At Princeton today to celebrate the career of the brilliant and generous Janet Currie, a pioneer in the economics of children.

I and the many researchers in this audience wouldn't be where we are if not for her mentorship.

This post estimates that proposed USAID cuts will cost almost a million lives
www.cgdev.org/blog/millio...