Yesterday (January 16th) we started in Santiago de Chile an International Workshop on Surveys and Impact Evaluation. This is a joint effort of the IDB, the Public Health School at the University of Chile and Sistemas Integrales. This workshop is also supported by the World Bank and the Spanish Fund for Impact Evaluation. The 100 participants come from more than 20 countries … [Read more...] about Chile: the place to be today to learn about evaluation of public policies!
Crime, emotions and gender: from fútbol to football
I just finished reading a fascinating paper on soccer and crime in Uruguay (4th in the 2010 World Cup), by Ignacio Munyo and Martín Rossi from the Universidad de San Andrés in Argentina. Rossi is also the author of another interesting paper on conscription and crime where he showed that participation in the Argentinian military service increases the likelihood of developing … [Read more...] about Crime, emotions and gender: from fútbol to football
Randomized Control Trials vs. Structural models: sometimes a question of life or death (and millions of dollars….)
I ran into this Wired article that tells the interesting story of the Pfizer failure in launching torcetrapib, a potentially revolutionary compound for cardiovascular treatment. Although the conclusion is too skeptical and the article gets a little bit lost on the “correlation vs. causation” argument, I believe it’s a good example of what can happen when people become … [Read more...] about Randomized Control Trials vs. Structural models: sometimes a question of life or death (and millions of dollars….)
The top ten blogs and sites for 2012: a randomized list
As 2012 slowly starts, and this being our first blog of the year, here are ten blogs and sites that are fun and interesting, in eclectic and random(ized) order. Roving Bandit is probably the best economics blog in South Sudan, according to its author Lee Crawfurd, who also blogs at the Innovations for Poverty Action site. If you like Thaler’s and Sunstein’s Nudge, then … [Read more...] about The top ten blogs and sites for 2012: a randomized list
Failing successfully
By Belissa Rojas The race for accountability, transparency and clear results is creating incentives to report the positive: demonstrating that project outputs were delivered, and in the best case, that the interventions had the desired impact. A quick look at the monitoring, evaluation and reporting systems from the MDBs shows that there are clear incentives to … [Read more...] about Failing successfully