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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]