iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jason Kerwin @jkerwin.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

How do kids actually learn to read? We tackle this question in a new paper that studies a program that tripled (!!) reading gains in Ghanaian 1st-grade classrooms. Its impacts match a model of cumulative reading ability, which we will assess with future waves of data.

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Jason Kerwin @jkerwin.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

Thrilled to be joining @nber.org as a Research Associate in the Economics of Education! I got to present our new work on reading in Ghana at the spring program meeting yesterday—amazing audience & questions as always.

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Jason Kerwin @jkerwin.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

My Duolingo streak is now a decade old!

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Jason Kerwin @jkerwin.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

Dear development economists: stop writing a ton of extra stuff in your PAP, and just tell me what analyses you are going to run

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Jason Kerwin @jkerwin.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

Development Impact is featuring my fantastic coauthor Monica Lambon-Quayefio! Amazing to see all the cool stuff she is working on.

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Johannes Haushofer @johanneshaushofer.com · 18/02/2026

Team "Elsevier Highlights Subversion" strikes again! Best one yet! @deankarlan.bsky.social, Monica Lambon-Quayefio, Utsav Manjeer, @christopher-udry.bsky.social

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Jason Kerwin @jkerwin.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

Happy birthday to @audreydorelien.bsky.social, the most beautiful & amazing woman I’ve ever met.

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Jason Kerwin @jkerwin.bsky.social · 17/12/2025

Also over on Twitter ("X") we are in day two of a debate about the value of RCTs in education research. Lots of value over at the bad place! That's where the people who disagree with me are.

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Jason Kerwin @jkerwin.bsky.social · 17/12/2025

In an A/B test we found that training principals to coach teachers in their schools improved teaching quality by 24 percent! These results are still tentative—but good enough for our implementing partner to keep running this intervention.

Graph of treatment effects (text on graph shows the numbers)

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Joshua Goodman @joshua-goodman.com · 11/06/2025

Re-upping my advice about how to write a good title and abstract for an academic paper, appropriately called: "How to Write a Title and Abstract" Feel free to share this thread, which will focus on titles. #EconSky #AcademicSky

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Jason Kerwin @jkerwin.bsky.social · 03/06/2025

Last Thursday I gave this quarter's Paul Heyne Seminar. My talk was about why USAID is great for America and also the world, why we should keep it, and how we can make it even better. A key point is that it is the best brand in the industry, by far.

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Jason Kerwin @jkerwin.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

Hey remember when everyone in econ was doing flowcharts (“directed acyclic graphs”) for like three weeks? That was fun.

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Esteban J. Quiñones, Ph.D. @estebanjq.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

What happened to USAID is now slated to happen to the Millenium Challenge Corporation (MCC): www.mcc.gov What I am hearing is consistent with these screenshots! 😤😤😤 The dismantling of US Foreign Aid continues…

SCOOP!!! DOGE terminates all Millennium Challenge Corporation programs, sources tell me

“All MCC programs will be closed. No new programming is expected,” according to an email sent to MCC staffers moments ago

“The agency will effectively be shut down.”

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For the countries that received an exemption and that have active construction the MCC has requested a 4 month wind down (Ivory Coast) and 3 month wind down (Mongolia, Senegal, and Nepal)

Staffing levels will be maintained for statutory requirement which is expected to be bare minimum (eg just a few), according to the email.

DOGE will draft a resolution for the board as soon as next week. No board resistance is expected.

Staff have until next Tuesday to decide to take deferred retirement/fork or RIF. The RIF process timing is unknown but expected to start as soon as next Wednesday.

MCC contracts will start being terminated tomorrow (via dodge)
MCAs in non-exempted countries have already issued stop work notices and will be told to terminate. RCMs have been given green light to communicate closure with host country governments/counterparts today.

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Audrey Dorelien @audreydorelien.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

The #PAA2025 Karaoke session is no joke! @jkerwin.bsky.social you would have loved this.

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David Evans @daveevansphd.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

A remedial education program in India worked well when teachers were given strict implementation guidelines. It worked just as well when teachers had discretion to adapt. www.nber.org/papers/w33242 by Beg, @annefitz13.bsky.social, @jkerwin.bsky.social, @profalucas.bsky.social, & @kwrahman.com

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Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias.bsky.social · 06/04/2025

There are a lot of interesting details for scholars to explore about basically everything, but for practitioners you get the most value out of the basics: — Moderates do better at elections — Free trade makes most people better off — The past was poorer

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CJ @cjeanmartini.bsky.social · 06/04/2025

One more incredibly creative protester ... #HandsOff #SaveOurDemocracy #LFG

They're eating the checks, they're eating the balances. Sign held by a Bill

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VoxDev @voxdev.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

🆕 People think it’s easy to contract HIV. That might not be a good thing. Today on VoxDev, @jkerwin.bsky.social (@uwnews.bsky.social) discusses how providing information on actual (often lower) HIV transmission rates helped curb risky sexual behaviours in Malawi: voxdev.org/topic/health...

voxdev.org

People think it’s easy to contract HIV. That might not be a good thing.

Despite the high HIV prevalence in Malawi, individuals do not seem to adjust their behaviour to avoid infection—this may be due to the perceived transmission risk being so high that people become fata...

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Jason Kerwin @jkerwin.bsky.social · 05/04/2025

All of us owe an enormous debt to the late Susan Watkins, who was the godmother of social science in Malawi. She was an incredible mentor to me. None of this exists without her.

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Emaan Siddique @emaansiddique.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

In light of recent cuts to global HIV programs like PEPFAR, today on VoxDev, we are featuring not one, but two, research studies on HIV prevention in Malawi—both of which touch on fatalism: the belief that contracting HIV is inevitable, leading individuals to engage in riskier sexual behaviour. 1/3

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David Evans @daveevansphd.bsky.social · 05/04/2025

I just heard from someone that used this paper in a class they teach. Yay! "How Big Are Effect Sizes in International Education Studies?" journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3102/...

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John Hollinger @johnhollinger.bsky.social · 05/04/2025

Knicks up by 22, Hawks call timeout to discuss the fact that the other team seems to be scoring a lot more than they are.

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Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias.bsky.social · 26/03/2025

I don’t think “academia is extremely left-wing” and “academia is full of people who find Matt Yglesias unacceptably right-wing” are actually competing hypotheses at all.

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Jason Kerwin @jkerwin.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

USAID is an incredible brand and source of soft power. Killing it off would be a disaster for US foreign policy and for millions of the world’s poorest people.

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Dr. Larissa @rissarwx.bsky.social · 27/02/2025

All probationary federal employees at NOAA’s EMC that’s responsible for keeping all US weather model systems running have been fired with 1 hours notice. And that includes me and colleagues. We will not go quietly because we care about the NOAA mission to protect the public.

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Jason Kerwin @jkerwin.bsky.social · 27/02/2025

Your slides should avoid having tons of extra junk on them, but the default Beamer themes make that hard. So I made my own .sty file that fixes all the standard issues and put it on my website for everyone to use:

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Emilia Tjernstrom @econemilia.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

I'm so thrilled to share that I'll be starting as Associate Professor in the Economics department at Macquarie University's Business School in May. Excited for this next step and very much looking forward to getting to know my new colleagues 😊

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Jason Kerwin @jkerwin.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

Are you picking controls for your RCT based on which variables have "significant" differences in your balance table? Don't do that.

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Esteban J. Quiñones, Ph.D. @estebanjq.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

🚨🚨🚨 Urgent Message to Share WIDELY 🚨🚨🚨 Federal employees that are dismissed as part of the Musk & Trump assault should appeal on the grounds that they were fired for partisan political reasons‼️ ➡️ Make an appeal to MSPB following these procedures: www.mspb.gov/appeals/appe... 💪🏼👊🏼✊🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

mspb.gov

U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board

MSPB Mission: To protect the Merit System Principles and promote an effective Federal workforce free of Prohibited Personnel Practices.

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Esteban J. Quiñones, Ph.D. @estebanjq.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

What can you do about the assault on USAID? Share this far and wide. Do your part! Please do retweet 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

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Jason Kerwin @jkerwin.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

Here’s one answer to this question—more sample size wouldn’t actually help much in Econ RCTs. I find this surprising!

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Jason Kerwin @jkerwin.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

Why don’t we just double the sample size for every study and get 99% power instead of 80%? Seems like it would solve many problems #econtwitter #econsky

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UM Population Studies Center @um-psc.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

@jkerwin.bsky.social coauthors an @nberpubs.bsky.social working paper on secondary schools in Odisha, India. In a randomized intervention, giving teachers discretion did not lower the quality of implementation or induce shirking. #EconSky www.nber.org/system/files...

nber.org

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casey wichman @cjwich.bsky.social · 17/12/2024

one reason to post data and code for your papers is that maybe EPA will use that data and code to write a report to congress and define your data as an acronym in the report. very interesting EPA report on water affordability: www.epa.gov/system/files... thx for sharing, @willwheels1.bsky.social!

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @aoc.bsky.social · 17/12/2024

WE ARE STILL IN THIS. Wipe your tears. This is the difficult business of hope and defying expectation. We do not give up. We run through the tape. Y’all aren’t allowed to throw in the towel until I do. 😉 Big breath. Locked in. Let’s do this.

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Adrienne Lucas @profalucas.bsky.social · 17/12/2024

New @nberpubs.bsky.social working paper: "When Given Discretion Teachers Did Not Shirk: Evidence from Remedial Education in Secondary Schools" with #SabrinBeg @annefitz13.bsky.social @jkerwin.bsky.social @kwrahman.com Title summarizes it. We elaborate in the paper: www.nber.org/papers/w33242

Screen shot of title page from NBER website.
When Given Discretion Teachers Did Not Shirk: Evidence from Remedial Education in Secondary Schools

Sabrin A. Beg, Anne E. Fitzpatrick, Jason T. Kerwin, Adrienne Lucas & Khandker Wahedur Rahman

Working Paper 33242
DOI 10.3386/w33242
Issue Date December 2024

Public-sector organizations face a tradeoff: allowing workers discretion at the point of service to adapt to local needs, versus rigid harmonization to ensure uniform service delivery. We examine this tradeoff in the context of secondary schools in Odisha, India, where the centrally set curriculum is nearly 4 grades above the learning levels of the mean student. We conduct a randomized intervention that assigned schools to either a rigid or a flexible version of a remedial learning intervention that displaced the curriculum. We compare learning outcomes and teaching quality to the status quo. Both interventions increased learning by 0.11SD, about 60 percent of a year of learning, with gains throughout the learning distribution. We find no crowd-out of grade-level mastery, and no change in the likelihood of earning passing Board Marks one year later. Discretion did not lower the quality of implementation or induce shirking. Allowing teachers flexibility to adjust classroom content to student needs was beneficial and had limited downsides.

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Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias.bsky.social · 14/12/2024

I believe that this innovative technology will solve the bathroom issue

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eve6 @eve6.bsky.social · 14/12/2024

I wonder if it ever bums rage against the machine out that 90% of their listenership thinks their songs are about how guys who own parking lots or whatever shouldn't have to pay taxes

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Jason Kerwin @jkerwin.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

Is there some principled reason why universities never list final exam times in the time schedule?

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Technology Connections @techconnectify.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

Helped my parents pick out a new TV and the model they ended up going with (some cheap TCL Fire TV from Costco) had poor reviews mainly because its software is crap. So I took a gamble and decided to see how annoying it would be if I made it be a dumb TV and never got it online and... seems fine?

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Seema Jayachandran @seema.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

Question about std errors: In an RCT, treated people are randomly assigned to "pods" and interact (e.g., treatment = WhatsApp group membership). The norm (e.g. Cai-Szeidl) is to cluster on indiv for control group + on pod for treatment group. Why is clustering needed if any ICC is due to treatment?

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Seema Jayachandran @seema.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

Petitioning @aeajournals.bsky.social to change the default so that the downloaded article pdf doesn't have the list of papers that have cited the article. (Is there some financial incentive to use the current default? Because I'm sure most people share my preference.)

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Gina C. Pieters, PhD @ginapieters.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

#AcademicSky #EconSky New journal publisher (Sage) behavior encountered. I'm reading an article and want to store it for later reference. The journal does not allow me to either download a pdf, or print the article "at my current subscription level". Anyway. That's 1 article I won't be citing.

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James @gravitysra1nbow.bsky.social · 07/12/2024

I'd like to present my novel new theory of warfare called Highway-centric operations for consideration as the 6th generation of warfare. othermeans.io/p/war-is-a-h...

othermeans.io

War is a Highway

Just Drive Straight You Idiots

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Anna Gifty @itsafronomics.blacksky.app · 06/12/2024

It's official. I PASSED MY PROSPECTUS DEFENSE. NEXT STOP: DR. ANNA GIFTY. #phd #econsky #blacksky #bluesky #blackademic

A BLACK GIRL WHO IS ABOUT TO BE A DR. WOW

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Joanne Stocker @joannestocker.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

This map @akmckeever.bsky.social shared, which is backed up by a lot of footage I’ve verified today, is wild. The SDF may genuinely control a significant chunk of Syria by next week.

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