Weekly links September 18: gender inequality in India, sleep, jobs, farms, and more…

Weekly links September 11: the fragility of high growth firms, women’s work and families, how many papers use AI now to write, and more…

You are not testing for attrition correctly: Guest post by Jacobus Cilliers

Weekly links September 4: listening, how to not make your AI RCT useless, many conference calls, and more…

Weekly links July 31: AI use in journal submissions and refereeing, what makes a top paper, lessons from the world, and more…

Creating Jobs Through a Business Plan Competition: Does it matter how entrepreneurs are selected and how much funding they are given?

Weekly links July 23: a causal inference checklist, lessons from innovation RCTs, long-term impacts are hard to measure, and more…

Weekly links July 17: African soccer migrants, the public-sector’s impacts on private hiring, rural markets from space, and more…

Weekly links July 10: micro vs macro approaches to poverty reduction, migration and development in a small country, financial education years later, and more…

Measuring What Matters: Some Guidelines for Index Creation - Guest Post by Bruce Wydick

A Milestone for Open Science: 500 Packages in the World Bank’s Reproducible Research Repository

I just read all 700+ pages of John List’s Experimental Economics Textbook, Should You?

What does the development economics literature study the most? Guest post by Jessica Leight

The State of Development Journals 2026: More than 16,000 submissions, over 1,000 published papers, and more details.

Weekly links June 5: aggregating noisy evidence, standard deviations are a terrible way of comparing effect sizes redux, services-led development, and more…

The dangers of taking theory too literally, of log(x/a+1) transforms, and place versus cows in determining poverty dynamics

Weekly links May 29: labor force participation, the Zona Franca in Manaus, research transparency in the AI era, and more…

Weekly links May 22: photographing impact, public works aren’t job creation, what is the jobs challenge, agency and poverty, and more…

What's up with gender norms?

What happened when we showed almost 30,000 youth more than one type of role model?

Weekly links May 1: AI impacts when knowledge workers are scarce, using Bayesian stats for policy, should you be an entrepreneur instead of an aid worker, and more?

Weekly links April 23: The social value of big firms, how do the poor use AI, new trade research, and more…

The large and sustained impacts of Group Consulting on firm performance and jobs

Weekly links April 17: the missing development economics, unlocking migration’s potentials and getting refugees into jobs faster, writing well in the age of AI, and more…

In Development

Unlocking migration’s potential through better development financing

Rethinking coding assessment in an AI-assisted world

Development Accounting, but the kind done by Accountants not Macroeconomists

Weekly links April 3: research ethics, replication, public sector workers, graduation programs as Tang, and more…

From marriage penalties to child penalties: how development reshapes women’s work

Weekly links March 20: social protection, small answers to jobs, chips and human capital, industrial policy, and more…

Six Questions with Monica Lambon-Quayefio

Weekly links March 6: mark-up measurement issues, the origins of inflation targeting, overregulation in Indonesia, solar subsidies, and more…

Weekly links February 27: Migrating TVET, lending to small firms, quality coffee, and more…

Weekly links February 20: is that event study valid? Industrial development, nation building, local research, and more…

Weekly links February 13: fast cash after disasters, uh oh they answered on a mobile phone, rethinking the high school/undergrad research experience, and more…

Sector-targeted Skills Development as Industrial Policy

Weekly links February 6, 2026: overcoming beliefs about promoting women, limited impacts of electrification, falling fertility, and more…

Weekly links January 30: growth ideas, finding meaningful research questions, micro vs macro evidence on AI and productivity, and more…

Lee Bounds in Practice, Part 2

Weekly links January 23: communication as a key research tool, Indian firms vs Chinese competition, doing TA well, and more…

Weekly links January 16. 2026: sports betting economics, small firms and volatility, macro credibility? And more…