Monthly Archives: October 2012

Jed Friedman at Development Impact summarizes a new paper by De Vreyer, Guilbert, and Mesple-Somps that measures the effect of locust swarms on human capital formation in Mali. I very much like the idea behind this paper – early childhood … Continue reading →

The BNL Times has a story about a former professional “sex cleanser” who was hired to have sex with widows: ‘I started performing the duties of cleansing widows way back in 1985. I slept with widow after widow and each … Continue reading →

A new paper by David G. Blanchflower, Andrew J. Oswald, and Sarah Stewart-Brown argues that consuming more fruit and vegetables increases psychological well-being. This is the kind of paper that usually sends me on a rant about over-interpreting results and … Continue reading →

My old friend Jamie Lumsden recently posted the following on my facebook wall: This is a great question. On the surface it’s just an idle curiosity – why are the electronics I buy made it this poor, far-away place over … Continue reading →

I don’t normally have any contact with the respondents in my studies, and that is by design. My being present during interviews could change the results, particularly given the sensitive topic. We work very hard to ensure that the surveys … Continue reading →

The two questions in the post’s title come up almost every time I tell people what I do. The former is voiced more frequently, but “what the hell is the point” is often just under the surface. In trying to … Continue reading →

Today UKaid was distributing sacks of maize to needy people at the Mpyupyu trading center on the northern edge of TA Mwambo. As I understand it, this is a 6-month program to alleviate hunger and maize shortages. Relative to inaction, … Continue reading →

My wordpress account was just hijacked by by some kind of spambot. I have deleted that post but if you received it as an email please do not click the links or images in it. Kudos to my mom for … Continue reading →

“Ati” is a Chichewa word that literally means “which”. Technically the prefix has to change according to the noun class in question. I am absolutely horrible at noun classes used by Bantu languages, which are akin to the gender of … Continue reading →

I had a conversation about designing experiments a while ago that I thought was worth putting up here, in case some other stressed-out development economist Googles this same issue. A friend of mine, who I’ll leave anonymous, was worried that … Continue reading →