All I want in life is to persuade everyone, when encountering politics & culture, to ask, "why are we talking about this?" I mean that very literally: anything you encounter on your screens reflects a choice. Someone covered that, talked about that, rather than the many other things out there. Why?

Foreign aid from the United States saved millions of lives each year by @hannahritchie.bsky.social and @simonvanteutem.bsky.social

ourworldindata.org/us-foreign-a...

🚨 “Good Description” with @annagbusse.bsky.social 🚨

What sets 'good' description apart from 'mere' description?

We develop a framework for evaluating descriptive research, whether we are doing it as scholars or assessing it as readers.

Two main contributions...

🔗📄 tinyurl.com/gooddesc

This is a key table to understanding public opinion on migration. *When confronted with the real trade offs* people go for protecting the NHS and the economy over reducing migration.

The problem as per the rest of the thread is many don't believe those trade offs exist.

📢FREE Online Development Economics Course for students in Africa and South Asia PLUS access to impact evaluation video course by Stefano Caria

May 12-July 14

Apply by: April 21, 2025

Taught by Oriana Bandiera
& Robin Burgess & amazing TAs from LSE

Details & submission form: rb.gy/ct9ikf

NEW: updated long-run gap in voting between young men and women in Germany:

Gender divide continues to widen, but contrary to what is often assumed, young men continue to vote roughly in line with the overall population, while young women have swung sharply left.

www.ft.com/content/29fd...

Elon says 90% of US aid never reaches communities.

He confuses USAID's 90% reliance on intermediaries -- US companies delivering HIV drugs, WFP delivering food aid -- with waste. Comical if not so dangerous.

@rachelbonnifield.bsky.social & I break down where aid goes: www.cgdev.org/blog/no-90-p...

Musk's claim that just 10% of US aid reaches recipients is absurd. @cgdev lays out the facts:
- US gov costs are just 10%
- Rest reaches recipients mostly thru US corps/nonprofits + multilateral agencies
- ~10% goes thru foreign organizations
www.cgdev.org/blog/no-90-p...

People have gathered outside USAID HQ for press event with Democratic Congressmen Beyer, Raskin, Connolly and Olzewski and Senator Van Hollen where they're addressing the building's mysterious shutdown today in the midst of the Trump admin dismantling the agency.

(Photos shared with me)

Timely program evaluation is most likely to influence spending on the program. Highly relevant to all of us who do policy evaluation and hope to have an impact #EconSky

Do check out @mrao.bsky.social's excellent and important job market paper. It raises a bunch of important questions for those of us trying to conduct research to inform policy.

Thanks for the summary Rachael!

One big implication of the paper is that the link between research and policy cannot be taken as given, and needs to be rigorously studied -- this is what I do in my current and future work. Read more here: www.michellerao.com/research

#EconJMP #EconSky

Extremely 👀 JMP showing that policy evaluation, including RCTs, has *zero* link to further spending on the policy. The exception is when evaluations are a) done fast and b) are owned by the party in power.

The context is LatAm/Caribbean countries, but there’s lot’s here for us all to think about.

This is a really interesting paper from @mrao.bsky.social! In my consultancy days I was always struck by how much money & time gets spent doing surface-level lit reviews, that have previously been done in more depth by someone else, w/ no observable impact on decision-making.

👇 👏 important insights on how much (or little) policies are based research.
(I would be curious if this also applies to other fields/setting)

All policy is politics! Really cool work by @mrao.bsky.social

This is a super interesting thread.

Attention #econsky and #publicpolicy peeps:

We still have a relatively poor understanding of the relationship between evidence and policy. Program evaluation in particular is often motivated by a desire to make policy better. But how effective is program evaluation itself?Michelle Rao's JMP tackles this question. www.michellerao.com/research

Thanks to the World Bank Development Impact blog for the opportunity to post about my job market paper!

I study the relationship between program evaluations and policy spending, in the context of CCTs in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Read here for insights 👇