Category: Research - Aid Thoughts

📚 This is an archive of Aid Thoughts, a development economics blog that was active from 2009 to 2017. Posts are preserved in their original form.

Category: Research

126 posts

Machine learning and the replication struggle

November 07, 2017

A Checklist for the Modern Development Bureaucrat

November 01, 2017

Help me test a (very silly) hypothesis by answering a few questions

August 03, 2016

The limitations of the Absolute Palma Index, in two graphs

March 11, 2016

The difficulty of getting good feedback

February 25, 2016

The problem with nudges is that sometimes they don't move things very much

February 19, 2016

So how do you feel about not winning the lottery?

January 04, 2016

A randomista for hire is a dangerous thing

September 14, 2015

The IMF, inequality and the trickle-down of empirical research

June 29, 2015

I drink your milkshake

February 27, 2015

LaTeX Wars Episode V: The Word Users Strike Back

January 25, 2015

Troubling aspirations

January 10, 2015

The Lynchian Randomization

January 05, 2015

You just don't get me

December 16, 2014

When blind is not beautiful

April 15, 2014

Come work for me in Tanzania (short notice)

November 22, 2013

I felt a great disturbance in the force

November 17, 2013

An apple a day means nothing in a complex system

October 14, 2013

The unbearable lightness of being a dead salmon

October 08, 2013

Of tribes and titles

October 01, 2013

On the ethicical approval of RCTs

July 29, 2013

On day care and large impacts

July 10, 2013

Too cool for school

July 08, 2013

In which Roving Bandit and I join forces, for the greater good!

July 05, 2013

Astonishingly, demand for circumcisions is lower than expected

June 03, 2013

Almost as awesome as the title suggests

April 30, 2013

In which your lab experiment might not be entirely representative

April 22, 2013

On causality and the returns to late marriage

March 25, 2013

Some more thoughts on land grabs and tricky statistics

February 21, 2013

Response from Oxfam: Governance, land grabs and tricky statistics

February 18, 2013

Governance, land grabs and tricky statistics

February 14, 2013

Angry post about empirical methods and philosophical plumbing

January 24, 2013

Aid as policy

January 14, 2013

Ask not what your country can do for you

January 09, 2013

Random thoughts left lying around

December 23, 2012

Ropey use of picture editor notwithstanding...

November 22, 2012

Randomised monkey trials

August 30, 2012

My God, it's full of stars!

June 28, 2012

Taking credit

May 30, 2012

I'll take an evaluation please, but hold the scientists

May 18, 2012

Sachs the rainmaker

May 09, 2012

Innocent until proven likely

May 02, 2012

Replication rite of passage

April 27, 2012

The temptation of the empirical knockout punch

April 19, 2012

When an RCT would have been really handy

April 18, 2012

Why predictions fail

April 10, 2012

The CSAE Blog

February 27, 2012

Stay in school, until you learn that correlation ≠ causation

February 24, 2012

White men can't run experimental games

February 13, 2012

On happiness

February 10, 2012

A land registry of their own

February 07, 2012

The skin I live in

January 30, 2012

Everything about poverty is relative

October 12, 2011

But what about the boy effect?

September 10, 2011

Cash-on-delivery grants in Indonesia

September 07, 2011

Accountability and the Gates Foundation

September 02, 2011

Conflict and climate assertions

August 30, 2011

Open data with minimal context

August 22, 2011

Hidden in randomness

August 15, 2011

All bets are off

August 09, 2011

What Now?

August 09, 2011

The complexity of happiness

August 09, 2011

Take that back

July 28, 2011

Kristof influencing Tabarrok

July 22, 2011

Sad sentences

July 15, 2011

The bottom billion bottles of beer on the wall

July 06, 2011

The perils of payday

June 24, 2011

Some thoughts on More Than Good Intentions

June 24, 2011

Dissing Development and Economics, Guardian Edition

June 15, 2011

Disconcerting statement of the day

June 14, 2011

Reading is Fundamental

June 10, 2011

Agricultural productivity, food consumption and Oxfam

June 07, 2011

Why no trial registry for development interventions?

June 07, 2011

Food prices and reliable predictions

June 02, 2011

Sir Humphrey Appleby on the Perils of Survey Design

May 07, 2011

The external validity double standard

May 02, 2011

The African and the Millennium Development Goals

May 02, 2011

What lies beneath

April 30, 2011

The bane of negative results

April 25, 2011

Green jelly beans and subsamples

April 06, 2011

Not so fast: food prices and riots

March 31, 2011

A mine of data

March 31, 2011

The elusive primary source

March 30, 2011

Ghanaian health care cage match

March 25, 2011

The MVP debate happens

March 20, 2011

Guardians of a critical culture

March 18, 2011

Insert title here

March 15, 2011

Weighing the dimensions of poverty

March 01, 2011

Health spending, suggestive studies and the IMF's guilt-by-association

January 17, 2011

Some thoughts for the year

January 04, 2011

The Proven Mean Initiative (external validity edition)

November 19, 2010

Research error and the reliability of big reports

November 18, 2010

Will the real bottom billion please stand up?

November 01, 2010

The holy grail of infinite cost effectiveness

October 25, 2010

In Today’s Language: “Dudes, WTF? STFU and let me do my job!”

October 13, 2010

The survey manager's guide to getting the most out of your Rav4

September 30, 2010

Africa, the safest web region?

August 26, 2010

The migrant's dilemma

August 23, 2010

Randomized trials are so 1930s

August 09, 2010

Questionable parentage

August 09, 2010

How does the MPI measure up?

July 28, 2010

Counting desires

July 27, 2010

The burden of proof

July 24, 2010

The tricky ethics of education information, J-Pal edition

May 18, 2010

Be careful who you nudge

April 24, 2010

Do the MDGs influence national policy? Should they?

April 01, 2010

What lies beneath

March 19, 2010

When the best of aid becomes the worst

March 06, 2010

Learning from a Different Angle

March 06, 2010

Schrödinger's cat and the fall of African poverty

March 02, 2010

Off to Dar es Salaam

January 19, 2010

A Short Post about Violence

December 11, 2009

To smile or not to smile

December 09, 2009

Perfectly prescient economics

December 05, 2009

Tips for field work: don't freak out your sample

November 30, 2009

J-PAL's Christmas shopping list

November 30, 2009

Will climate change really lead to more civil war?

November 27, 2009

The missing middle

November 24, 2009

Book recommendations: Tanzania

November 23, 2009

The dangers of hot issues

November 19, 2009

To Find Certainty upon the Dreaming Air

November 11, 2009

Academic sins

October 30, 2009

Unlikely enumeration

October 29, 2009

A question for the health bloggers

September 25, 2009

Sine qua non

July 21, 2009

If only you knew the power of nagging

July 06, 2009