In Opinion The solution to mass starvation and mass rape isn’t just to provide more food and doctors, Nicholas Kristof writes from the Chad-Sudan border. “It’s to cut off the flow of weapons, force a peace deal and end the impunity for sexual violence.” nyti.ms/3ZzCcIK

In a new working paper, Jacobus Cilliers, Nour Elashmawy & I look at the use of PDS Lasso for selecting control variables in field experiments. This is an issue that in part came up through discussions a while back on Twitter, 1/5 blogs.worldbank.org/en/impactevalu…

My tribute to-& one critique of-the work of Acemoglu, Johnson & Robinson (AJR) in Business Standard "AJR’s answer to the big question (Why are some countries rich & others poor?) was doubly (constructively & destructively) mono-causal:It’s all about institutions and not about geography"

India's rural road construction program impacted women's economic empowerment by: - reducing mobility restrictions - improving household norms around agency and domestic violence - improving female education - positively impacting female employment, though men benefited more

Civil society and the institutions that comprise it are not a tech company. Things can break, people can die, and you can’t put it all back together with a hackathon.

Prevention of disease is basic healthcare. Whether infectious or non-communicable disease, prevention provides great return on investment. economist.com/leaders/2025/0…

The west’s shameful silence on Gaza on.ft.com/3Z2yQge | opinion

Turns out there are some pretty big issues with DHS data. A new study finds massive subnational differences in data quality across 35 African countries. Here's the breakdown:

Do corporate tax cuts boost economic growth? Nope. "There is evidence for publication selectivity in favor of reporting growth-enhancing effects of corporate tax cuts. Correcting for this bias, We cannot reject the hypothesis of a zero effect of corporate taxes on growth."

🚨 New blog out Center for Global Development RCTs revolutionized development. But if we only fund what’s measurable, we risk missing what’s transformational. Full blog👇 cgdev.org/blog/cost-effe… Let’s talk about why cost-effectiveness is not enough 🧵

Genes predict children's cognitive abilities. But an RCT of preschool + better nutrition erases any "genetic disadvantage"

A really productive meeting yesterday afternoon with Last Mile Health as Austin Demby smartly articulated his vision of providing quality healthcare for the people of #SierraLeone. Both parties expressed strong desire to fully collaborate and improve health outcome for all.

BREAKING: new study just dropped that shows compelling evidence that cell phone bans cause student grades to modestly increase. Grade increases are largest among low performing students.

NEW: Is the internet changing our personalities for the worse? Conscientiousness and extroversion are down, neuroticism up, with young adults leading the charge. This is a really consequential shift, and there’s a lot going on here, so let’s get into the weeds 🧵

AI leaders should spend more energy reckoning with this fact. A generation of kids is losing their best opportunity to learn how to read, write, and think, and they will pay the price for their whole lives. It’s not every student. Some students are becoming more empowered and

After the Liberation Day tariffs were announced, MAGA explainers said they knew how this would go. “Liberation Day Puts Main Street Ahead of Wall Street," Batya Ungar-Sargon wrote. “Trump’s tariffs make his commitment to America’s forgotten men and women clear,” Oren Cass said. Five

ZERO growth, possibly even negative growth, in farm productivity across 55,000 smallholder farms across 6 African countries (Ethiopia, Malawi, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Tanzani) in 2008-2019, despite substantial investments. pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.10…

What happens when the U.S. restricts H-1B visas? Firms don’t stop hiring talent, they just move jobs abroad. For every visa rejection, multinationals add ~0.4–0.9 foreign employees, especially in R&D hubs like India, China, and Canada.

Over the past 3 decades, high-skill migrants from Asia—especially India and China—have transformed the US economy, fueling innovation, tech, higher ed, and healthcare growth, from Gaurav Khanna nber.org/papers/w34449