iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Duncan Webb @duncanwebb.bsky.social · 17h

Super excited to see this labour of love out in the Journal of Political Economy! 🤩 I find that getting neighbours to talk to each other about hiring a transgender worker can on its own drastically reduce discrimination in urban India www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

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Duncan Webb @duncanwebb.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Can menstruation be a barrier to girls' learning in low-income settings? We've been studying this for the last few years (since early PhD days!) in Madagascar in partnership with @CARE Madagascar / CARE France. 🧵

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Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · 09/12/2025

Big new blogpost! My guide to data visualization, which includes a very long table of contents, tons of charts, and more. --> Why data visualization matters and how to make charts more effective, clear, transparent, and sometimes, beautiful. www.scientificdiscovery.dev/p/salonis-gu...

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Duncan Webb @duncanwebb.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

🔥Very cool paper showing that women in India are way more likely to take up a job (↑29%) in a female-only workplace, and that this can be explained by husbands' jealousy/desire for control. These are massive effects, equivalent to 2.5x increases in wage bit.ly/4nn9apn

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Johannes Haushofer @johanneshaushofer.com · 27/11/2025

Exciting news on @malengo.org, the NGO that helps East African students move to Europe for education: Our research team has given us a glimpse of their early findings! Here is the full writeup, joint with @richardnerland.bsky.social: forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CpZYHk... Thread follows!

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Colin Yeo @colinyeo.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

Going to leave you with a Home Office chart from their most recent asylum stats so you can decide whether the UK is a magnet for asylum seekers with a uniquely generous asylum system www.gov.uk/government/s...

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Seema Jayachandran @seema.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

Elsevier has a 38% profit margin, and the other journal publishers aren't far behind.

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John Hanger @jrfhanger.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

Good morning with good news: India meets 50% renewables & nuclear capacity target 5 years early! As clean capacity deploys, clean electricity production surges. Solar grew from 5 TWh in 2014 to 48 TWh in 2019 & 137 TWh in 2024. Hydro was 157 TWh; wind 82 TWh; nuclear 55 TWh in 2024. #energysky

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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 17/11/2025

In the last decades, the world has made fantastic progress against extreme poverty. In 1990, 2.3 billion people lived in extreme poverty. Since then, the number of extremely poor people has declined by 1.5 *billion* people. 🧵

A stacked area chart showing the total population (split by World Bank region) living in extreme poverty, defined as living below the International Poverty Line of $3 per day. Shown from 1990 to 2025, with World Bank projections from 2026–2040. The data is adjusted for inflation and cost of living differences.

Rapid progress against extreme poverty in recent decades has slowed and is projected to end.

In 1990, 2.3 billion people lived in extreme poverty. Since then, the number of extremely poor people has declined by 1.5 billion people.

The number of people in extreme poverty is projected to decline, from 831 million people in 2025 to 793 million people in 2030. After 2030, the number of extremely poor people is expected to increase.

The data source is Lakner et al (2024), updated using the World Bank PIP (2025). The chart is licensded CC BY to Our World in Data.

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Steven Durlauf @durlauf.bsky.social · 15/11/2025

1/ Egalitarianism should begin at home. I link to this article by @bencasselman.bsky.social in light of the communications between Larry Summers and Jeffrey Epstein that have just been released. The released emails and the fact of friendship are vile. www.nytimes.com/2021/02/23/b...

nytimes.com

For Women in Economics, the Hostility Is Out in the Open (Published 2021)

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Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham @paulgp.com · 02/11/2025

Dropping a beta version of this page while everyone is up and processing baseball! This tool lets you search the full text of papers from the American Economic Review, American Economic Journal series, and over 30,000 NBER working papers. paulgp.com/econlit-pipe...

paulgp.com

Economics Literature Search

Full-text search across 15,000+ papers from top economics journals and NBER working papers. Track how empirical methods have evolved over time.

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Rafe Meager (they/them) @economeager.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

HOLY SHIT they did it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Duncan Webb @duncanwebb.bsky.social · 07/09/2025

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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Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 30/08/2025

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 · 28/08/2025

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

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Duncan Webb @duncanwebb.bsky.social · 02/08/2025

🌟 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

tinyurl.com

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

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Seema Jayachandran @seema.bsky.social · 31/07/2025

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.

rpde.princeton.edu

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 ...

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NOVAFRICA @novafrica.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

🎙️ 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...

voxdev.org

Why ‘Brain Drain’ is an incomplete story of migration

The migration of high-skilled workers, sometimes referred to as 'brain drain', is usually seen as negative for origin countries. New research suggests this is an incomplete story—highlighting the chan...

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METR @metr.org · 10/07/2025

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 · 04/07/2025

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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Bill Gates @billgates.bsky.social · 04/07/2025

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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Dan Tortorice @dantortorice.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

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...

voxdev.org

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.

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Michael Clemens @mclem.org · 26/06/2025

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.

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Atul Gawande @agawande.bsky.social · 25/06/2025

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...

politico.com

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.

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Tatyana Deryugina @tderyugina.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

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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Joshua Goodman @joshua-goodman.com · 17/06/2025

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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Alexander Berger @albrgr.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

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 · 06/06/2025

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

jpalsouth.asia

JD • J-PAL SA Jobs Database

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

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 · 28/05/2025

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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Michael Clemens @mclem.org · 26/05/2025

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

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Kimberly Clausing @kclausing.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

🧵 (1/6) ‪Tax Policy Center, @budgetlab.bsky.social‬@taxpolicycenter, and PennWharton all have new analyses of the House bill; they paint a remarkable picture of a starkly regressive bill. Cuts to Medicaid/SNAP exacerbate the regressive pattern of the tax increases, making quite a picture.

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Duncan Webb @duncanwebb.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

Come and work with me in lovely Lisbon! I’m hiring a full-time predoc research associate to work on exciting projects on discrimination, AI and health, and social media use in LMICs. Please share and apply! #econra #econtwitter #econsky tinyurl.com/novapredoc

tinyurl.com

Predoc Job Description

Pre-Doctoral Research Assistant (Development Economics)Institution: Nova SBE, Lisbon (In-Person, with Partial Remote Flexibility)Supervisor: Duncan Webb, Assistant Professor of Economics Position O...

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Ethan Mollick @emollick.bsky.social · 06/04/2025

All the evidence is that Gemini 2.5 Pro represents a new level of LLM that is much more capable than any released model, including other big reasoners. It got 24.4% on the Math Olympiad test that every other model bombed last week, for example. I am very curious to see the system card. matharena.ai

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Justin Sandefur @justsand.bsky.social · 16/03/2025

Each dot represents 10 people whose lives depend on US foreign aid, just for HIV prevention & treatment. Without it, 1.6m people could die *per year*.

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Duncan Webb @duncanwebb.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

Every day, PEPFAR helps about 430 pregnant women get an H.I.V. diagnosis... If PEPFAR’s work remains interrupted for the full 90-day foreign aid pause, an estimated 136,000 babies will be infected with H.I.V. at birth who otherwise would not be. h/t Leah Libresco www.nytimes.com/2025/02/10/o...

nytimes.com

Opinion | As Fellow Pro-Lifers, We Are Begging Marco Rubio to Save Foreign Aid

Every day that PEPFAR’s work is interrupted, 230 babies are born with H.I.V. in South Africa who otherwise would not have been infected.

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Max Roser @maxroser.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

One thing I admired Americans for was they provided efficient and effective aid for people around the world. I thought this made America great. The PEPFAR program saved plausibly about 25 million lives and prevented at least 5.5 million babies from being born with HIV. See: pepfarreport.org

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Corinne Low @corinnelow.com · 27/01/2025

Are any economists interested in organizing a letter on PEPFAR? On how essential it has been, what knock on infrastructure it has created, and how devastating even a short pause can be? @belindaarch.bsky.social

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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

PEPFAR, started by George W. Bush, has saved more than 25 million lives worldwide. 600,000 people would die over the next decade in South Africa alone, which relies on PEPFAR for only 20% of its H.I.V. budget. Some countries are almost entirely dependent on the program.

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Duncan Webb @duncanwebb.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

benthams.substack.com/p/the-upcomi...

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