Executive Summaries and Blogs

We've scoured the web to bring you the latest and best of development blogs and posts.

Are there any we're missing? Send us suggestions for blogs, whether in English or another language, by emailing Chrispine at crl2 (at) williams (dot) edu, and we'll put them up!

Our Latest Recommendations

Prof. Shore-Sheppard recommends this blog post on “What Are We Estimating When We Estimate Difference-in-Differences?”

Professor Shore-Sheppard recommends this World Bank blog post from Pam Jakiela, an incoming member of the Williams faculty, that discusses the finer details of just what “differences in differences” means. If you’re missing your 502/503 lectures, or just want a refresher of your econometric methods, this post provides a great description.

Blog: Open Letter to G20 Countries

This blog post on VoxEU is an open letter from late March to the leaders of the G20 countries, asking for greater involvement on helping the developing world handle the covid-19 crisis.

Course Text (Blog): Three New Papers on Measuring Stuff that is Difficult to Measure

This blog post has been assigned as required reading for the CDE spring elective, Program Evaluation

Prof. Caprio recommends: “Prudential Regulation Can Help in Tackling Climate Change”

This blog post from the Council on Economic Policies discusses the shortfalls in the current regulatory framework for dealing with climate change, and how regulation can be a tool in helping deal with it.

News Article: “A Ticket for Corruption”

This clever study by Raymond Fisman and Edward Miguel explored how “culture” affected whether or not diplomats from other countries obeyed parking rules in Manhattan.

New from the Source:

Infrastructure Ideas

  • From Bernard Sheahan of the World Bank, a blog about the newest updates and ideas in the rapidly changing world of infrastructure.
  • Bernie visited the CDE for a CDE seminar in February, 2020.

Our favorite sources for the latest research

En Español

Nada es gratis

Nada es gratis is a Spanish-language blog with some of the most prominent Spanish-speaking economists as regular contributors. They focus a little more on the European situation, but there’s a lot of good general content for the hispanohablantes.