Last month in bullets

Sorry, folks, here’s a belated update. In the last month:

• I’ve gone to the US to visit friends, meet colleagues and visit Yale University, where I’ll be spending my next 5 years or so on a PhD in economics. I’ll be focusing on development economics and will do research with the Economic Growth Center.
• I got offloaded by the Bangladesh immigration on my way to the US for not following two month old, unadvertised registration rules. My passport was confiscated and I spent the next two days at the police station in Dhaka getting a signature here and a stamp there, another signature and another stamp, etc.
• Bird flu came to Bangladesh and has spread throughout the country, including our study area. So, no more chicken curry for a while.
• My friend Baldur got the readers vote (with another guy) as the Best DJ in Boston in the Boston Phoenix.
• I submitted my first scholarly article for publication to the journal Psychological Methods. It has the sexy title of “Estimating a Complete Space of Structural Equation Models”.
• Al-Q bombed train stations in Bangladesh. This actually happened this morning, fortunately only one was injured.

Qualitative me

I went to the field yesterday and did a small — believe it or not — qualitative study. Well, maybe you can’t call it a qualitative study, but at least I went and attempted to get a sense of the validity of the Living Standards Index that I’ve been working on.

Human capital and development

In an effort to shed light on the role that the quality of education plays in economic growth, Dennis Kimko and I studied international differences in mathematics and science knowledge, as evidenced by testing since the 1960s. We found that school quality indeed has a remarkable impact on differences in economic growth.

Here’s the link

Anybody seen the TV series Alias?

Are you also following the Valerie Plame trial? A larger picture is here.

Take the actress playing the evil CIA agent Laura Reed, add another fifteen years.

Striking!

podcasting Cowen

As I’ve said before, if you are not reading and listening to Tyler Cowen then you’re missing out. That second link is to a new podcast: french dining, german noise music, how to run a latin american country, global warming, medieval art and more plus of course the economics of it all.

I just

.. finished The Worldly Philosophers by Robert L. Heilbroner and bought a ticket to the US. The book has a summary of the biographies of famous early economists, some historical context and touches on their ideas but doesn’t go very deep. Pretty good, though, as a first introduction to these thinkers. The ticket is for NY on the 26th, back on the 10th of April. Will do some university visiting and drop by Baltimore.

I3E

I hope they’ll still have meetings in small italian villages when I’ll be (hopefully) a all grown up development economist… in any case, here’s a report from the CGD on an exciting new institution focused on impact evaluation for develoment:

Bellagio, Italy, may be far removed from the government offices in developing countries where policymakers seek evidence to guide large social and economic programs. Nevertheless, a couple of weeks ago important strides were made at the Rockefeller Foundation’s conference center there toward the launching of a new entity that will promote learning for social and economic development across the globe. At a meeting convened by CGD, representatives from India, Mexico, Uganda, the UK Department for International Development, the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the African Development Bank, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Hewlett Foundation agreed to move forward with an ambitious new effort to promote and strengthen the measurement of the impact of development programs on individuals and communities. It is expected that this work will lead to the creation of the provisionally-titled “International Initiative for Impact Evaluation” (3IE), which will contribute to more high quality studies of how development programs affect poverty reduction, health and education outcomes. The design of this new independent entity will be finalized over the next several months, and other governments, development agencies, NGOs and foundations will be invited to join the initiative.

More here.

Psychology digest

Here’s an interesting blog, a digest of new psychology research (pointer from MR).

Random update

I’m now in Dhaka at the Annual Scientific Conference (ASCON) at the ICDDR,B. I’m also trying to push out a draft of a paper I’m writing and hence the slow updates over here. Responses from graduate schools have started to drop in; four by now, so a few to go. From what I gather now it looks like I’m heading back to the East Coast but more on this later.

Design & Development

I’m looking for a good website/graphic designer who’s also interested in international development and is up for working with me on a small but very interesting project. I wouldn’t be able to pay anything but the designer could have his/her name on what I hope is going to be a really cool website and I’m hoping it would only be about one or two days of work (for a skilled web designer). So I’m thinking this might be good for somebody still in school or just anybody interested in this sort of stuff. The basic idea is connecting research data with photos I have taken (or will) from rural Bangladesh. There are still some approvals and other contingencies before this can go forward but if you or anybody you know might be interested, let me know (sgunnste at jhsph dot edu).