Author | Lightnews

Colin Aitken @colinaitken13.bsky.social · Aug 8

GPT5 having some trouble with the gold standard "can you draw me a spooky picture" benchmark

1 2

Reposted by Colin Aitken

Max Roser @maxroser.bsky.social · Feb 17

One thing I admired Americans for was they provided efficient and effective aid for people around the world.

I thought this made America great.

The PEPFAR program saved plausibly about 25 million lives and prevented at least 5.5 million babies from being born with HIV.

See: pepfarreport.org

5 70 200

Colin Aitken @colinaitken13.bsky.social · Feb 11

Most of the lives PEPFAR saved, like most HIV patients in Africa, were likely women and children.

The long answer on what exactly we learned and how we learned it can be found here:
pepfarreport.org

PEPFAR Report

The State Department, which administers PEPFAR, says the program has saved 25 million lives. We are an independent team of journalists, academics, and technologists who decided to investigate whether ...

pepfarreport.org

1

Colin Aitken @colinaitken13.bsky.social · Feb 11

For context: 7.5 million is roughly the population of Arizona. 30 million is roughly the population of Texas. These are *enormous* numbers of people who are alive who otherwise wouldn't be.

1 1

Colin Aitken @colinaitken13.bsky.social · Feb 11

It did so extremely cost-effectively: costing between $1,500 and $10,000 per life saved. (That's about three *thousand* times cheaper than the price the US government is willing to pay to save American lives.)

1 1

Colin Aitken @colinaitken13.bsky.social · Feb 11

Has the President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) actually saved millions of lives?

We weren't sure, so we spent the last two weekends looking deeply into multiple lines of evidence. The short answer: PEPFAR saved between 7.5 and 30 million lives in the first 15 years of its existence.

PEPFAR Report

The State Department, which administers PEPFAR, says the program has saved 25 million lives. We are an independent team of journalists, academics, and technologists who decided to investigate whether ...

pepfarreport.org

1 1 4

Reposted by Colin Aitken

Ben Golub @bengolub.bsky.social · Jan 15

The discussion ending at this tweet is very smart on both sides ( @lugaricano.bsky.social and @shengwuli.bsky.social ), reasonably spicy, and fun to read.

Luis Garicano @lugaricano.bsky.social · Jan 14

I don't think the argument for the price system rests on full information. I think it rests on Hayek 1945, hence precisely on dispersed local knowledge --i said that before. But let's leave it here. I think we clarified quite a bit, and I hope some of our readers (if there are any!) learned a bit.

4 23 110

Reposted by Colin Aitken

Jed Silver @jedsilver.bsky.social · Dec 10

Hello #econsky. I am building a grad-level course for next semester on Macro Development with a focus on agriculture and the environment.

Please share and shamelessly (self-)promote any JMPs, WPs, and underrated bangers that you think would be worth including in the syllabus.

2 3 8

Reposted by Colin Aitken

Robert Apel @bobapel.bsky.social · Dec 10

Here are some I have used from econ for teaching purposes aside from LaLonde: Fraker and Maynard (1987, JHR); Heckman and Smith (1999, JEP); Cook et al. (2008, JPAM). In other fields: Heineken and Shadish (1996, Psych Methods); Glazerman et al. (2003, Annals); Shadish et al. (2008, JASA).

2 2 8

Reposted by Colin Aitken

Drew Bailey @drewhalbailey.bsky.social · Dec 10

Here’s a nice one:

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Also, this person has cataloged a bunch of them:

gwern.net/correlation

LURKING INFERENTIAL MONSTERS? QUANTIFYING SELECTION BIAS IN EVALUATIONS OF SCHOOL PROGRAMS

This study examines whether unobserved factors substantially bias education evaluations that rely on the Conditional Independence Assumption. We add 14 new within-study comparisons to the literature,...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

2 2 11

Reposted by Colin Aitken

Jeffrey Wooldridge @jmwooldridge.bsky.social · Dec 5

Because I've seen the law of iterated expectations, Jensen's inequality, and the central limit theorem mentioned in the past few days, I'll migrate one of my early Twitter posts about the tools necessary to master econometrics -- which includes each of those. Here it is.

5 9 37

Reposted by Colin Aitken

Ryan Briggs @ryancbriggs.net · Nov 27

I literally showed that child mortality video this in class today. Everyone seems only vaguely impressed until I describe how my first born almost died shortly after birth (www.ryancbriggs.net/blog/2015/10...). It’s wild to me how much we need stories to even start to grasp something numerical.

7 22 130

Reposted by Colin Aitken

Rafe Meager (they/them) @economeager.bsky.social · Nov 24

best films about economics? i have lagaan, wonka (2023), seven samurai, dune, killers of the flower moon and it's a wonderful life.

100 7 130

Reposted by Colin Aitken

Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · Nov 13

I often say there's lots of low-hanging fruit where research could answer important qs with well-designed studies, but they don't happen bc of poor incentives, neglected areas, etc.

@ruben.the100.ci suggested writing a thread of 'studies I would fund in a heartbeat'. So here is an ongoing thread.

16 48 130