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Ranil Dissanayake

@scepticalranil.bsky.social
2.4K followers 872 following 400 posts

I think you'll find it's a little more complicated than that. "Office-talking monster" - my 4 year old. Deputy Chief Economist (FCDO), DPhil (BSG).

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Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
RIP to a true hero. www.theguardian.com/music/2026/a...
theguardian.com
Dolly Parton, country star, actor and philanthropist, dies aged 80
Songwriter of I Will Always Love You, Jolene and 9 to 5 also invested millions in child literacy, Covid-19 vaccine development and other causes
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Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Genuinely devastated. The greatest centre back I ever saw play. When he lined up alongside Maldini, Costacurta and Tassotti, you may as well have inked in a 0 on the match report before kick off. A genius and properly tough (his knee surgery to WC final in 94!). www.theguardian.com/football/202...
theguardian.com
Franco Baresi, iconic Milan and Italy legend, dies aged 66
Baresi, who captained club and country, was one of the most recognisable players of the ⁠golden era of Italian football in the 1980s and 1990s
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Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
The primary weakness here is that it was only once a month.
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Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
An intervention by Michal Kalecki to the UN conference on the Application of Science and Technology for the Benefit of Less Developed Regions in 1963. Amazing how much, even as the characters and methods change beyond recognition, the fundamental issues we argue about remain similar.
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Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
Maybe it’s square today.
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Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
The ball is round. The game lasts ninety minutes. And everything else is theory.
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Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Nooooooooooo
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Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Apropos of nothing, do people remember how good peak Rakim was? The third verse here might be the greatest in rap history; the whole song is dense with brilliant, unexpected rhymes and rhythm changes. The difference between 'greatest' and 'great' is sometimes huge. www.youtube.com/watch?v=95gP...
youtube.com
Eric B. & Rakim - Follow The Leader (Official Music Video)
YouTube video by EricBAndRakimVEVO
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Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
Showing my five year old the mechanics (and policy implications) of exponential growth and he understood it better than some adults I knew during Covid.
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Michael Clemens @mclem.org · 01/06/2026
Remember that recent paper claiming to show that "ideological bias" determined the results obtained by immigration policy research teams? A careful, open-code reanalysis by @kauspurg.bsky.social & Josef Brüderl finds that the result arises from a coding error. —> doi.org/10.31222/osf...
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Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 10/05/2026
Jane Jacob’s in 1969 in The Economy of Cities. I know it hardly needs restating, but she was a genius. This is still basically it.
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Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
Paging Paul Romer.
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Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 13/04/2026
LeBron James is the greatest athlete I have ever seen. The only near comparison I can make is Serena. Just so physically superior to everyone else it’s absurd. Add that to their obvious intelligence and it’s not a surprise they were so dominant for so long.
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Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 21/03/2026
I often wonder how being an economist affects the way I communicate with my family. Today my five year old, in the middle of eating a bowl of noodles, told me “I’m an outlier because I love the rain so much.” So I might need to rein it in a little.
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Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
I last (seriously) wrote for Aid Thoughts around 15 years ago. It's kind of amazing, reading back, how I've changed (both how little and how much) since then. I often tell people I manage to write as much and as often as they can--you only get good at it through trial and error. I miss blogging.
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Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
What amazing news. Another great public policy school at a time when we most certainly need to shine a light on public policy and the role of governments worldwide.
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Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 06/02/2026
A lesson: no matter how talented, working on the basics matters. True across basically all disciplines.
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Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 31/01/2026
Yes, everything sucks. But: www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...
theguardian.com
The Muppet Show: this thrilling return is so great I can’t even count how many times I laughed
Sabrina Carpenter fangirling Miss Piggy, Beaker losing his eyes … yes, Kermit and co are back for a trip down memory lane – and it’s a perfect, saucy joy
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Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 06/12/2025
Nothing says Christmas like the Australians traumatising 11 visiting Englishmen over a small wooden urn full of ashes.
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Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 05/11/2025
Really looking forward to reading this update.
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Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 27/09/2025
This is going to bankrupt me
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Royal Economic Society @resmedia.bsky.social · 10/09/2025
📢 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: ProgrammesOfficer@res.org.uk 🔗 bit.ly/466tIur #Economics #EDI #EconSky
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Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 16/09/2025
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Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 15/09/2025
Tolstoy and his confidante (a lizard). From Gorky’s Fragments from My Diary
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Oliver Hanney @olihanney.bsky.social · 21/08/2025
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...
voxdev.org
What is development economics?
I asked development economists for their definitions of development economics.
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Michael Clemens @mclem.org · 14/08/2025
This is a crucial point. Still relatively few economists are explicitly trained on this point, and too many econ papers show it.
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Jo Wolff @jowolff.bsky.social · 05/08/2025
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
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Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 31/07/2025
A wine that makes you think, @jowolff.bsky.social
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Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 30/07/2025
This is a truly mad review of Perrow's classic Complex Organizations:
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Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 29/07/2025
New entrant to the J-Rock song name hall of fame
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Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 28/07/2025
Cackling
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Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 27/07/2025
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.
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Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 22/07/2025
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.
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Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 10/06/2025
Japanese punk bands have the coolest song names
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Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 30/05/2025
help I'm under attack
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Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 25/05/2025
Today is the ten year anniversary of the fuckery tweet. Yes, the Lakers were knocked out in the first round, but this year, aged 40, LeBron James averaged 24.4 points, 7.8 rebounds and 8.2 assists per game. The fuckery shows no signs of abating.
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Eeshani Kandpal @eeshani.bsky.social · 15/05/2025
Took me over two years, but I have finally found my way to @cgdev.org’s London offices. Looking forward to reuniting with my former CGD colleague @scepticalranil.bsky.social and former WB colleague Sam Asher at an event gender equality tomorrow at RHUL.
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Seema Jayachandran @seema.bsky.social · 13/05/2025
Looking forward to presenting in this World Bank webinar tomorrow (5/13) at 9 am ET.
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Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 01/05/2025
Tom Mboya sailing close to an IV here, writing in the 1960s
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Eva Vivalt @evavivalt.bsky.social · 29/04/2025
Quite the quote.
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Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 22/04/2025
Bought this in 1996 in Nairobi, and getting down to reading it only now, not quite thirty years. What an excellent dedication, quite in tune with Mboya’s character.
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Seema Jayachandran @seema.bsky.social · 19/04/2025
I'm reminded of Heather Sarsons' work showing that female surgeons experience a career hit after a medical mistake, but male surgeons don't.
economist.com
Doctors judge female surgeons more harshly when patients die
And have a rosier view of male surgeons’ abilities when things go well
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Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 15/04/2025
My son requested I ask the internet if owls have noses. AI not exactly covering itself with glory here.
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Jim Pickard @pickardje.bsky.social · 12/04/2025
now *this* is the anecdote of the day
While many Chinese businesses are reeling from the trade war, Qi, the Maga merchandise maker, brushed off any suggestion his might suffer.
Trump supporters, he said, were willing to pay any price for items bearing the image of their beloved president - and US suppliers were making such a huge profit on them that they could afford to partially absorb the tariff impact.
A Trump baseball cap, for instance, cost only Rmb7.50 ($1) to produce. Tariffs might raise that cost to Rmb2o, but the caps were being sold for $50 in the US.
"American sellers could even use the tariffs as an excuse to raise the price to $60 - yet the extra cost will still be borne by the US consumers,
" said Qi.
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Oliver Hanney @olihanney.bsky.social · 11/04/2025
Important null results in development economics Despite the bias against publishing null results, they are important for policy, helping to kill bad ideas. I've highlighted some key examples we have featured on @voxdev.bsky.social: voxdev.org/topic/import...
voxdev.org
Important null results in development economics
Despite the bias against publishing null results, they are important for policy, helping to kill bad ideas.
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Charles Kenny @charlesjkenny.bsky.social · 10/04/2025
Come work with @markusgold.bsky.social and me on global development stuff. centerforglobaldevelopment.applytojob.com/apply/Yb82j2...
centerforglobaldevelopment.applytojob.com
Research Assistant - Center for Global Development - Career Page
Apply to Research Assistant at Center for Global Development in Washington, DC.
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Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 22/03/2025
RIP Big George.
theguardian.com
George Foreman, boxing champion and entrepreneur, dies aged 76
The death of the heavyweight champion boxer was announced by his family in a post on Instagram
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Oh No He Didn't @ohnohedidnt24.bsky.social · 20/03/2025
Luka: "I got 20, you talking about ball don't lie" LMAO
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Jeff Mosenkis @mosenkis.bsky.social · 26/02/2025
Why Dean Karlan, Chief Economist of USAID resigned yesterday: "I was ready to rebuild from wherever we ended up to identify the most effective programs, figure out how to get them back in place, and to recommend new awards. But I received no response. Zero engagement." www.npr.org/sections/goa...
npr.org
Why Dean Karlan, chief economist of USAID, resigned on Tuesday
He was hired in 2022 so the aid agency could get 'more bang for our buck' with its projects. He tried to reach out to help in the rebuilding of the agency. On Tuesday he tendered his resignation.
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David A. Jaeger (econ) @davidajaeger.bsky.social · 24/02/2025
It's a very sad day. Just notified that @iza.org is closing its doors as of 31 December 2025. At a time when labor is under attack and technological change moves at an ever-faster pace, I can't help but think that this is a short-sighted decision. My heart goes out to those folks who work there.
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