Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 11d

This is going to bankrupt me

Reposted by Ranil Dissanayake

Royal Economic Society @resmedia.bsky.social · 29d

📢 Join our next Active Bystander Training for economists!

🗓️ 18 Nov 2025 | 09:30–11:00 | Online
Learn tools for safe, effective intervention & fostering an inclusive profession.

👉 Register: [email protected]
🔗 bit.ly/466tIur

#Economics #EDI #EconSky

5 10

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 21d

This is a spectacular reference.

3

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 22d

4

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 24d

Tolstoy and his confidante (a lizard).

From Gorky’s Fragments from My Diary

2

Reposted by Ranil Dissanayake

Oliver Hanney @olihanney.bsky.social · Aug 21

What is development economics?

I find it more and more difficult to define what development economics actually is.

So, for this @voxdev.bsky.social blog, I asked development economists how they define development economics: voxdev.org/topic/what-d...

What is development economics?

I asked development economists for their definitions of development economics.

voxdev.org

1 3 9

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · Aug 14

Reading Pearl on causality widened my horizons so much. Made it harder, though, but so crucial for thinking this all through from a practical policy perspective.

1

Reposted by Ranil Dissanayake

Michael Clemens @mclem.org · Aug 14

This is a crucial point. Still relatively few economists are explicitly trained on this point, and too many econ papers show it.

David Brady @davebrady72.bsky.social · Feb 22

Say you’ve got very good causal IDENTIFICATION. Can you say you have causality, can make a causal general claim, and can say what “THE causal effect” is?

NO

We explain why in new article at Journal of Causal Inference.

www.degruyter.com/document/doi...

The necessity of construct and external validity for deductive causal inference

The Credibility Revolution advances internally valid research designs intended to identify causal effects from quantitative data. The ensuing emphasis on internal validity, however, has enabled a negl...

www.degruyter.com

1 3 14

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · Aug 7

Can you share the table?

1 1

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · Aug 7

I haven't thought about this deeply, but how much do we think using PPPs adjusts for the Baumol effect here? On a scale of 100% to not at all

1

Reposted by Ranil Dissanayake

Jo Wolff @jowolff.bsky.social · Aug 5

When thinking about how to get out of this mess we need to keep in mind 'asymmetric causation'. Knowing what caused a problem doesn't tell you how to solve it. The example that brought the point home to me was: If you're run over by a steamroller, the cure is not to have it reverse back over you

17 19 120

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · Jul 31

A wine that makes you think, @jowolff.bsky.social

4

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · Jul 30

Maybe he misread the title as 'complex organisms'?

1

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · Jul 30

"One star. TOO MANY WORDS!"

1 3

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · Jul 30

This is a truly mad review of Perrow's classic Complex Organizations:

1 2

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · Jul 29

New entrant to the J-Rock song name hall of fame

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · Jul 28

Cackling

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · Jul 27

Just a happy coincident he’s also incredibly good at cricket (another one I called spectacularly wrong in his early career)

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · Jul 27

Some people are cool because they’re good at something, and in others it’s just completely innate to their bearing. Jadeja is the latter. He could be a clerk in the bank and he’d be the coolest bank clerk in history.

1 2

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · Jul 23

I’m about a third of the way through, and absolutely love it. I feel exactly the same way.

1

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · Jul 22

And let’s be honest, I’d rather watch Jayawardene bat than read Brodsky, and I’ve done a lot of both.

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · Jul 22

He also says “poetry is more valuable than cricket”, which isn’t so much wrong as just a complete nonsense. It’s like saying hiking is better than a good glass of wine. They’re two different things done at two different times! I don’t need to rank them.

1

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · Jul 22

Bedtime reading. I’m three pages into Apology and have already written the margin note “not just wrong but dangerously wrong.” He may yet convince me otherwise, mind.

2

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · Jul 22

do you know if the slides are available anywhere?

1

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · Jul 13

World *excluding china* goes from ~30% to <15% in 2015.

2