Center for Effective Global Action
November 2015 - Impact Note
IMPACT
     
CEGA Affiliates Speak at Delhi Economics Conclave  
Affiliates Karthik Muralidharan (UC San Diego) and Paul Niehaus (UC San Diego) presented before Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Delhi Economics Conclave (DEC) on November 6th. The theme of the DEC this year was "Realizing India's JAM (Jan-Dhan Aadhaar Mobile) Vision," a cash transfer system that uses government-issued identification cards that allows aid organizations to better understand and target beneficiaries.
 
BITSS Replication Workshop at MozFest
Mozfest

Garret Christensen (BITSS) and Nicole Janz (Cambridge University) led a workshop on replication of published research at Mozilla's MozFest in London on November 8. Attendees learned to use R and R Studio, Harvard's Dataverse, and the Open Science Framework to replicate a pair of recent economics and political science studies.
 
EASST Research Symposium 
 
On Monday, October 19th, CEGA affiliates and East African researchers came together at UC Berkeley for a mini-symposium sponsored by the East Africa Social Science Translation (EASST) Collaborative. Visiting fellows and CEGA affiliate Karthik Muralidharan presented on evaluations of primary education, child health, land rights and tax compliance interventions.
 
CEGA IN THE NEWS
 
Secondary Education Yields Major Benefits, Especially for Girls
 
New findings by Pascaline Dupas (Stanford) show that when financial barriers to secondary
education are eliminated, poor Ghanaian youth increase cognitive abilities. Young women especially benefit, as they are more likely to delay childbearing and have higher earning potentials.  
 
 
 
Contradicting the Critics of Cash Transfers

Results of a study by Karthik Muralidharan (UC San Diego) and Paul Niehaus (UC San Diego), along with Sandip Sukhtankar, indicate that there are significant benefits of using biometrically authenticated payment infrastructures in terms of leakage and corruption reduction.

What's the Best Way to Measure Crop Productivity? Glowing Plants and Satellites  
credit: Jenny Downing (Flickr)
 
David Lobell (Stanford) uses satellite technology to look at solar-induced fluorescence in plants. This exciting new approach could lead to a better understanding of agricultural stresses and could be a valuable tool to monitor and assess global food production. Read more here.
 
 
PEOPLE
 
CEGA Affiliates at Stanford Global Health Conference
On October 29th, four CEGA affiliates (Katherine Casey, Paul Gertler, Ted Miguel, and Grant Miller) joined former USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah and World Bank President Jim Yong Kim at Stanford University for a conference on Shared Prosperity and Health. The event highlighted the role of governance and institutions in improving global health and development outcomes.
EASST Researchers and CEGA staff attend the Shared Prosperity and Health conference on October 29.
OPPORTUNITIES

Call for Papers and Registration now open for PacDev 2016 at Stanford
  
The 2016 Pacific Conference for Development Economics (PacDev) will be held on Saturday, March 5, 2016 at the Stanford Center for International Development (SCID). Register online or submit a paper by November 30th.
  
Submit to "Development Engineering" 
    
Development Engineering is a new open access, interdisciplinary journal that applies engineering and economic research to the problems of poverty. The journal is now open for submissions, with manuscripts accepted on a rolling basis.