Center for Effective Global Action
July 2016 - Impact Note
IMPACT
 
Technology to Reduce Corruption in Developing Countries  
  
James D. Long
In a recent TEDx Talk, CEGA affiliate James D. Long (University of Washington) discusses the use of technology as a means to empower citizens, reduce institutional corruption and improve the quality of governance through increased accountability. Long discusses the use of apps and social media to engage citizens in South Africa in monitoring elections, and to involve communities in monitoring health care facilities in Cameroon.
 
 
 
 
Energy Policy Workshop in Tanzania
 
 
Photo: Carson Christiano 
On July 14, CEGA hosted an energy policy workshop in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania to inform the research agenda for a new multidisciplinary research program on Energy for Economic Growth (EEG), funded by the UK government. The event, co-organized with Oxford Policy Management, engaged 40 senior policymakers, practitioners, and energy researchers from East Africa and beyond, to discuss access to electricity, energy demand, and technologies for energy sector planning and grid optimization.
 
SPOTLIGHT 
 
Tanzania hosts Annual East Africa Evidence Summit
 
Photo: Kuranda Morgan
CEGA and the East African Social Science Translation (EASST) Collaborative, in partnership with the World Bank Strategic Impact Evaluation Fund (SIEF) and the University of Dar es Salaam, hosted the 2016 East Africa Evidence Summit on July 12-14 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The event convened 120 policymakers, academics, and partners to showcase locally-led, rigorous policy research in the region. The event also featured a half-day workshop on research transparency, to help social scientists make their work more open and reproducible.
 
 
CEGA Welcomes New Affiliates
Michael Callen
Jennifer Burney
Two UC San Diego faculty members have joined CEGA this month: Michael Callen (Rady School of Management) is a leader in the use of technology to address accountability and service delivery failures in the public sector. Jennifer Burney (School of Global Policy & Strategy) is an environmental scientist whose research focuses on global food security and mitigating climate change.
 
 
Psychologist Etienne LeBel joins CEGA Research Transparency initiative
 
Etienne LeBel
As part of the Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences (BITSS), social psychologist Etienne LeBel will be joining CEGA, where he will coordinate a longitudinal study of researcher behavior. He is a leader in the open science movement in psychology and is founder and lead of PsychDisclosure.org and CurateScience.org, initiatives that aim to increase the reliability and cumulative nature of empirical findings in the social sciences.


 


SSMART 2016 Grant Recipients Announced
 
CEGA's research transparency initiative recently announced a second round of Social Science Meta-Analysis and Research Transparency grants. Eight teams of researchers were selected to receive awards of up to $30,000 focusing on three broad categories: (1) developing methods to improve the transparency and credibility of research findings; (2) producing new findings through innovation in meta-analysis; and (3) studies of researcher norms and strategies to promote the practice of open science. All 18 projects are now online.
 
 
IN THE NEWS
 
Positive Effects of War
 
The Washington Post covers recent work in post-war Sierra Leone suggesting that survivors of violent conflict are more engaged in their communities, more trusting, and more altruistic than neighbors who did not experience as much conflict. The study was co-authored by CEGA Faculty Director Ted Miguel, along with Joseph Henrich and Chris Blattman.
 
 
 
 

 

The Past, Present and Future of Agriculture
 
Smithsonian Magazine explores the ever evolving relationship between humans and agriculture, as new technologies and globalized food markets shape what we eat. CEGA affiliate Mary Kay Gugerty (University of Washington) contributes to the discussion, highlighting the challenges facing small-scale farmers in developing countries.
 
 
Rwandans urged to go for early checkups
 
Jeanine Condo 
AllAfrica reports on an international scientific conference in Kigali organized this month by the Rwanda Ministry of Health and the World Health Organisation (WHO), in which former EASST fellow Jeanine Condo participated. At the event, Rwandan government officials urged the public to adopt lifestyle changes to prevent non-communicable disease (NCDs).




Meet The Moringa Tree, An Overqualified, Underachieving Superfood  

The New Yorker features CEGA affiliate David Lobell
(Stanford) in an article about Moringa, a tree that could become a nutritional and stable food source in dry tropical regions all over the world. 
RESEARCH

Private sector doctors have more incentives to increase effort in India
 
A working paper co-authored by CEGA affiliate Karthik Muralidharan (UC San Diego) uses an innovative audit data set to study the quality of public and private health care in a low-income setting (Madhya Predesh, India). The study finds that private providers are relatively unqualified, but spend more time with each patient than their public sector counterparts. These and other results suggest that the accountability provided by private sector markets may provide better incentives for provider effort. Further, it may explain why the private sector remains the primary provider for health services, despite the availability of a free public option.
 

Legal Ivory Sale Drove Dramatic Increase in Elephant Poaching
 
Photo: USFWS Mountain-Prairie 
The Guardian covers a new study suggesting that a one-time legal sale of ivory, intended to flood the market and reduce poaching, actually caused a sharp spike in elephant deaths. In their evaluation, CEGA affiliate Solomon Hsiang and Nitin Sekar (Princeton) find that legal sales can undermine the stigma associated with the ivory trade and provide cover for the smuggling of illegal ivory. 

OPPORTUNITIES
Call for Nominations: Leamer-Rosenthal Prizes for Open Social Science

CEGA's BITSS program announced its Call for Nominations for the 2016 Leamer-Rosenthal Prizes for Open Social Science. If you or someone you know is working to advance research transparency and reproducibility, consider submitting a nomination by September 16th.






Call for Papers: Behavioral Economics and Global Health Conference
Courtesy of Jonathan Torgovnik/Getty Images Reportage. Some rights reserved.
On September 23, CEGA and the Initiative for Behavioral Economics and Finance will host a Behavioral Economics and Global Health conference. The conference aims to bring together leading academics and practitioners from economics, psychology, and behavioral sciences to present ongoing research and discuss innovations in the field. Click here 
to register for the event.
 
 
CEGA Working Paper Series
CEGA Working Paper Series showcases the work of affiliated researchers on diverse development topics. The Series is intended to encourage feedback and discussion within the development community. Visit the library at eScholarship.