Annette N. Brown

GBR!

TWISS #49: The Paradox of Self-Interest Why we expect selfishness in a world built for reciprocity.

Easy to read summary of very interesting research by @egap.bsky.social researcher Chris Grady.

TWISS #49: The Paradox of Self-Interest
open.substack.com/pub/twisswee...

That amusement when you're told to bring your presentation on a thumb drive and you search your office frantically for one, to see that the only file on the drive you find is dated 2011. Time flies!

⏰ REMINDER: Applications for AREN's Local Network Leads program are open through March 16.

This program trains researchers & research professionals in #Africa to become #openscience leaders who can establish a community of practice at their institution.

Learn more & apply:

Call for Proposals: Data Collection for Replication+Novel Political Science Survey Experiments Alexander Coppock and Mary McGrath January 27, 2026 We invite proposals for a survey experiment replication+novel design competition. Se- lected replication+novel design survey experiments will be conducted on large samples of American respondents, quota sampled to match U.S. Census margins and filtered for quality and attention by the survey sample provider Rep Data (repdata.com). Each proposal consists of two parts: (1) a replication study of an existing, previously published survey experiment, and (2) a novel experimental design on a topic of the authors’ choosing. The replication studies and reanalyses of the existing studies will be combined into a meta-paper to be co-authored by all authors of accepted proposals along with the princi- pal investigators (Coppock and McGrath). As a condition for acceptance, authors commit to sharing the data and producing a write-up of the findings from their novel design for submission to a scholarly journal, and public posting of a working paper pre-publication.

🎺 Call for proposals 🎺

1️⃣ replicate an existing experiment
2️⃣ run a novel experiment

on repdata.com

3️⃣ coauthor with Mary McGrath and me to meta-analyze the replications and existing studies
4️⃣ publish your study

details: alexandercoppock.com/replication_...
applications open Feb 1

please repost!

On the first prediction, stay tuned for forthcoming @nature.com article by Andrew Tyner and @briannosek.bsky.social of @cos.io (and almost 300 coauthors including me) on the replicability of published findings in the social sciences. Due out mid-March.

A big thanks to @justinwolfers.bsky.social, Joshua Hill, and MacMillan Learning for a great webinar today on "AI won't replace econ professors, but it will change the way we teach." I left a little less scared of AI and much more curious about what I can create!

There's something very special about Harrison Ford and Michael J. Fox sharing the screen.

Thank you for sharing this finding! We would *hope* that many of our hypotheses are based on good theory or intended to cumulate evidence on prior findings. So, it shouldn't be 50-50, right? But there are still many empirical questions (theory can go both ways) or true equipoise experiments.

It must be very hard to publish null results Publication practices in the social sciences act as a filter that favors statistically significant results over null findings. While the problem of selection on significance (SoS) is well-known in theory, it has been difficult to measure its scope empirically, and it has been challenging to determine how selection varies across contexts. In this article, we use large language models to extract granular and validated data on about 100,000 articles published in over 150 political science journals from 2010 to 2024. We show that fewer than 2% of articles that rely on statistical methods report null-only findings in their abstracts, while over 90% of papers highlight significant results. To put these findings in perspective, we develop and calibrate a simple model of publication bias. Across a range of plausible assumptions, we find that statistically significant results are estimated to be one to two orders of magnitude more likely to enter the published record than null results. Leveraging metadata extracted from individual articles, we show that the pattern of strong SoS holds across subfields, journals, methods, and time periods. However, a few factors such as pre-registration and randomized experiments correlate with greater acceptance of null results. We conclude by discussing implications for the field and the potential of our new dataset for investigating other questions about political science.

I have a new paper. We look at ~all stats articles in political science post-2010 & show that 94% have abstracts that claim to reject a null. Only 2% present only null results. This is hard to explain unless the research process has a filter that only lets rejections through.

The State Department Needs More International Development and Humanitarian Expertise | Annette Brown Great post by Paul Weisenfeld, in the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network (MFAN) blog on critical needs for U.S. foreign assistance! Paul's post compares the traditional skills and expertise of Sta...

Cross posting from LinkedIn where I introduce and comment on a great post by #PaulWeisenfeld in the @modernizeaid.bsky.social blog, in which Paul explains the challenges US State has for staffing humanitarian and development programming. www.linkedin.com/posts/annett...

Oren Cass Uses Good Economics in Attacking Finance in NYT Oren Cass is right to criticize a bloated financial sector that drains the economy through excessive trading, private equity abuse, and financial waste.

Oren Cass uses serious economics to trash finance in the NYT cepr.net/publications... Why don't all economists?

tweet: “as English speakers we have to sort out the 'had had' situation. it's frankly embarrassing to the language” Merriam-Webster Quote Tweet: “But, it’s not wrong that that occurs.”

There, there…

I just listened to the @voxeu.org podcast with #GiancarloCorsetti about this research. Great insights and evidence about what is going on with the dollar exchange rate right now. #econsky cepr.org/voxeu/column...

Learning Days 18: EGAP West Africa Regional Hub Learning Days Workshop 2026 – EGAP En Français

REMINDER: Our West Africa Hub is hosting a Learning Days workshop at CERAP this June 🌍

We welcome applicants from Africa-based researchers & evaluation professionals from university, government, & civil society orgs.

Apply by: Feb 27, 2026

Learn more: buff.ly/9l0bdig

Testing the claim of greater project effectiveness: a systematic review of comparative evaluations of locally led development In the sphere of foreign assistance, there is a growing push for locally led development (LLD). One common argument is that LLD approaches are more effective than traditional approaches for produci...

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Limited but encouraging evidence about the relative effectiveness of locally led development also includes findings about agency By Annette N. Brown, February 2, 2026 One of the heralded expected outcomes from the drastic disruptions and reductions in foreign assistance over the last year is a greater shift toward locally led d...

New blog post summarizing my and coauthors' recent #systematicreview of the comparative effectiveness of #locallyleddevelopment approaches. Post includes additional analysis of agency-related outcomes as reported in the included studies. Journal article in comments.
www.linkedin.com/pulse/limite...

Testing the claim of greater project effectiveness: a systematic review of comparative evaluations of locally led development In the sphere of foreign assistance, there is a growing push for locally led development (LLD). One common argument is that LLD approaches are more effective than traditional approaches for produci...

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Dario Amodei — The Adolescence of Technology Confronting and Overcoming the Risks of Powerful AI

I recommend that everyone read this new essay by Dario Amodei, CEO of @anthropic.com. It is sobering, especially as I think about what the future holds for my 20 yo daughter. I appreciate Amodei's transparency, which he says is the first defense. www.darioamodei.com/essay/the-ad...?

Done.

Thank you @dktrdr.bsky.social and Eddy Malesky for invite to be discussant for "Major Challenges in Development" panel at the upcoming @egap.bsky.social meeting at #Duke! Fab panel includes @nataliasbueno.bsky.social, @melinaplatas.bsky.social, & Eddy and co-discussant @danielnposner.bsky.social.

How to stay warm and safe in a winter power outage There’s a lot you can do to navigate cold-weather blackouts safely, much of which can be accomplished long before a storm hits.

Winter weather is set to impact many states in the U.S. this weekend.

If you do lose power, there are right and wrong ways to handle it. Here are six important tips from the experts.

Optimal use of remittance THE inflow of remittances by millions of Bangladeshis working abroad, which contributed to the foreign exchange reserves now exceeding $33 billion, has robustly propped the interim government since it...

Nice article about the Government of Bangladesh program together with @ifad.org and @iom.int to promote the use of #remittances for financing investment in start-ups. I'd love to see a formal evaluation of this program! www.newagebd.net/post/opinion...

Here is link to authors' manuscript: drive.google.com/file/d/1s9i5...

Chinese import competition makes large Indian manufacturers more innovative Import competition from China can increase productivity among Indian firms not by lowering costs, but by encouraging innovation through quality upgrading.

Interesting @restatjournal.bsky.social article by #ScottOrr & #MokhtarTabari - they use data on energy share of product lines to decompose prodctvty growth into 6 margins and use total Chinese exports as instrument for Indian imports to show competition leads to innovation voxdev.org/topic/firms/...

New post by @timhirschelburns.bsky.social of @gdp-center.bsky.social re IMF-WB Debt Sustainability Framework for LICs. "LIC DSF...must correct anti-investment bias...account for ...climate risks & benefits of climate investments and ensure...a pathway to meeting...needs." www.bu.edu/gdp/2026/01/...

Forecasting the Present in Developing Economies Nowcasting and new data sources can provide timelier and more frequent indicators

Great article by Jeff Kearns in #IMF's #Finance&Development magazine about using available data for nowcasting in low-income countries. Kearns interviews Domenico Giannone, one of the originators of nowcasting for economics, who is now at #JohnsHopkins. www.imf.org/en/publicati...

🆕 Free online course on private enterprise, productivity & economic growth by STEG & PEDL (@cepr.org)

Through 14 lectures, you can learn from leading researchers on one of the central questions of economic development, how to increase productivity.

Register here: cepr-org.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

Hello from 3ie’s official @bsky.app account!

We’re on a mission to improve lives in low- and middle-income countries through high-quality, policy-relevant evidence.

Follow us for updates on our work to support evidence-informed decision-making!
Learn more: www.3ieimpact.org

Best buys meet political realities: The political economy of education research Why do policymakers choose education reforms that aren’t supported by evidence? And how can researchers work with them to implement interventions with better outcomes? These are thorny questions often...

Wherein @gamblingondev.bsky.social quotes the Spice Girls and uses game theory to help researchers think about how to be more policy influential. Great @voxdev.bsky.social read with useful links. voxdev.org/topic/educat...