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Reposted by Duncan Webb

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 4h

#WarRavagedPortland

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Reposted by Duncan Webb

Molly Jong-Fast @mollyjongfast.bsky.social · 24d

From @economist.com

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Duncan Webb @duncanwebb.bsky.social · Sep 7

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

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Duncan Webb @duncanwebb.bsky.social · Sep 3

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

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:

issues.org

Duncan Webb @duncanwebb.bsky.social · Sep 3

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...

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.

asteriskmag.com

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Reposted by Duncan Webb

Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · Aug 30

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

Average nitrogen dioxide concentration in Paris has fallen significantly

Her proposals have faced pushback — from right-leaning politicians, a car owners’ association and suburban commuters, who say that targeting cars makes their lives more difficult.

But last month, Parisians voted in a referendum to turn an additional 500 streets over to pedestrians. A year earlier, Paris had moved to sharply increase parking fees for SUVs, forcing drivers to pay three times more than they would for smaller cars. The city has also turned a bank of the Seine from a busy artery into a pedestrian zone and banned most car traffic from the shopping boulevard of Rue de Rivoli.

Carlos Moreno, a professor at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University and a former adviser to the city, said the French capital has developed “an urban policy based on well-being.”

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Seema Jayachandran @seema.bsky.social · Aug 28

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

Oren Samet @osamet.bsky.social · Aug 28

I know there's a lot happening today, but this is sneaking in under the radar. This proposed new rule would absolutely crush foreign PhD students, potentially making it impossible for them to enroll with any certainty of their ability to finish www.politico.com/news/2025/08...

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Reposted by Duncan Webb

Princeton Research Program in Development Economics @princetondevo.bsky.social · Aug 5

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

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

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Duncan Webb @duncanwebb.bsky.social · Aug 2

🌟 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

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

tinyurl.com

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Reposted by Duncan Webb

Seema Jayachandran @seema.bsky.social · Jul 30

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.

Job Opportunity: Senior Field Research Associate for Uganda-based ODH Health Project

Senior Research Associate Job Description for ODH Health Project Professors Seema Jayachandran, Rebecca Dizon-Ross and Isabelle Cohen and predoc researcher Fiker Negash seek a qualified applicant for ...

rpde.princeton.edu

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Reposted by Duncan Webb

NOVAFRICA @novafrica.bsky.social · Jul 10

🎙️ 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...

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Reposted by Duncan Webb

METR @metr.org · Jul 10

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.

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Bill Gates @billgates.bsky.social · Jul 3

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.

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Reposted by Duncan Webb

Bill Gates @billgates.bsky.social · Jul 3

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

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Reposted by Duncan Webb

Dan Tortorice @dantortorice.bsky.social · Feb 13

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...

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.

voxdev.org

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Reposted by Duncan Webb

Michael Clemens @mclem.org · Jun 26

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.

Dan Tortorice @dantortorice.bsky.social · Feb 13

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...

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.

voxdev.org

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Reposted by Duncan Webb

Atul Gawande @agawande.bsky.social · Jun 25

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...

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.

www.politico.com

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Tatyana Deryugina @tderyugina.bsky.social · Jun 19

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.

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Reposted by Duncan Webb

Joshua Goodman @joshua-goodman.com · Jun 17

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.

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Reposted by Duncan Webb

Alexander Berger @albrgr.bsky.social · Jun 10

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

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Duncan Webb @duncanwebb.bsky.social · Jun 6

Work with me and my star coauthors (Patrick Agte & Pascaline Dupas) on AI & health! We're recruiting a full-time, Hindi-speaking field research associate to work on our project in Rajasthan. Please share and apply.

jpalsouth.asia/jobsPage?ID=...

#econtwitter #econsky #econra

JD • J-PAL SA Jobs Database

jpalsouth.asia

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Reposted by Duncan Webb

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · May 30

Nature ran a piece finding that 25 million people could die as a result of ending USAID. This puts Trump and Musk in the category of the most brutal leaders of the 20th century in terms of unnecessary lives lost.
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Nature graph documenting estimated lives lost from USAID. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01191-z

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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · May 28

Poland’s GDP per capita has more than doubled since it joined the European Union in 2004

The image shows a line graph comparing Poland's GDP per capita to the average GDP per capita of the European Union (EU 27) from 2000 to 2023. The vertical axis ranges from $0 to $60,000, while the horizontal axis represents the years, marked from 2000 to 2023.

A red line represents Poland's GDP per capita, starting at around $21,200 in 2004, the year Poland joined the EU, and increasing to approximately $44,400 by 2023. A blue line depicts the EU average GDP per capita, which trends higher than Poland's throughout the graph.

A note emphasizes that between 2004 and 2023, Poland's GDP per capita more than doubled, reducing the gap with the EU average. The source of the data is the World Bank, projected for 2025, and the data is expressed in international dollars adjusted to 2021 prices.

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Reposted by Duncan Webb

Guy Grossman @guygrossman.bsky.social · May 26

Short, timely, important, and informative piece by Rohini Pande on the economic costs of ending DEI.

www.science.org/doi/full/10....

On the economic costs of ending DEI

In January 2025, Donald Trump signed executive orders 14151 and 14173, which were intended to eliminate all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) activities in the federal bureaucracy and nondiscrimi...

www.science.org

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Reposted by Duncan Webb

Michael Clemens @mclem.org · May 26

The obliteration of this survey is a terrible loss to social science.

Jasmin Abdel Ghany @jasminabdelghany.bsky.social · May 26

The Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) Program was central in improving the evidence base for health policies and interventions, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa and Central & Southern Asia - figure by @aasli.bsky.social.
Our preprint on the termination of the DHS Program: osf.io/preprints/so...

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