Jason Kerwin

@jkerwin.bsky.social

2.6K followers 1.2K following 350 posts

Development Economist @ UW. Hawaiʻi born, Stanford alum, Michigan PhD. Views my own. My website: http://jasonkerwin.com

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Economics 47%

Education 39%

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Jason Kerwin @jkerwin.bsky.social · Jun 3

Last Thursday I gave this quarter's Paul Heyne Seminar. My talk was about why USAID is great for America and also the world, why we should keep it, and how we can make it even better.

A key point is that it is the best brand in the industry, by far.

Reposted by Jason Kerwin

Jason Kerwin @jkerwin.bsky.social · Jan 27

The calculation is identical if you make the MDE bigger. Doubling the sample size gets you from 80% to 99% power.

Since most interventions have d=0.1, powering studies to detect differences of half that size is reasonable.

Reposted by Jason Kerwin

Jason Kerwin @jkerwin.bsky.social · Apr 5

Awesome to be featured back-to-back with these other results. Rebecca Thornton was my advisor and the MDICP (now MLSFH) laid the foundation for basically all social science research in Malawi, including mine. I built on their work in innumerable ways.

Reposted by Elena Stancanelli, Jason Kerwin

Seema Jayachandran @seema.bsky.social · Nov 27

Most people my age seem to prefer Dropbox + Word or Excel for shared docs w/in a team; it's easier to keep the files organized than w/ Google docs. Younger folks prefer Google docs, even when there won't be any simultaneously editing and everyone has Office installed. Sincere question: Why is that?

Reposted by Dan Goldhaber, Caroline Krafft, Julián Messina , and 9 more Dan Goldhaber, Caroline Krafft, Julián Messina, Feng Hu, Gema Zamarro, Aaron Sojourner, Jason Kerwin, Todd Pugatch, Étienne Ollion, Simon Wiederhold, Danila Serra, Jake Anders

Joshua Goodman @joshua-goodman.com · Jun 11

Re-upping my advice about how to write a good title and abstract for an academic paper, appropriately called:

"How to Write a Title and Abstract"

Feel free to share this thread, which will focus on titles.

#EconSky #AcademicSky

Jason Kerwin @jkerwin.bsky.social · Jun 3

A fun side note: the seminar is named in honor of the late Paul Theodore Heyne, who was a long-time lecturer at UW. He was one of the undergraduate advisors for Jeff Smith, who was one of my own Ph.D. advisors. Jeff now holds the Paul T. Heyne Distinguished Chair in Economics at (the other) UW.

Jason Kerwin @jkerwin.bsky.social · Jun 3

Here's a brief blog post about the talk: jasonkerwin.com/nonparibus/2...

And here are the slides: jasonkerwin.com/Slides/Paul_...

Comments welcome!

Why USAID is Great for America and the World - Jason Kerwin

Last Thursday I was invited by UW’s Economics Undergraduate Board to give this quarter’s Paul Heyne Seminar—a public lecture about economics aimed at a general audience. My talk was about why USAID is...

jasonkerwin.com

Jason Kerwin @jkerwin.bsky.social · May 7

The highly-touted flowchart revolution didn’t really pan out. Turns out that if you run a garbage can regression with a DAG you’re still just doing a garbage can regression.

Jason Kerwin @jkerwin.bsky.social · May 7

Hey remember when everyone in econ was doing flowcharts (“directed acyclic graphs”) for like three weeks? That was fun.

Reposted by Jason Kerwin

Esteban J. Quiñones, Ph.D. @estebanjq.bsky.social · Apr 23

What happened to USAID is now slated to happen to the Millenium Challenge Corporation (MCC): www.mcc.gov

What I am hearing is consistent with these screenshots! 😤😤😤

The dismantling of US Foreign Aid continues…

SCOOP!!! DOGE terminates all Millennium Challenge Corporation programs, sources tell me

“All MCC programs will be closed. No new programming is expected,” according to an email sent to MCC staffers moments ago

“The agency will effectively be shut down.”

1/2

For the countries that received an exemption and that have active construction the MCC has requested a 4 month wind down (Ivory Coast) and 3 month wind down (Mongolia, Senegal, and Nepal)

Staffing levels will be maintained for statutory requirement which is expected to be bare minimum (eg just a few), according to the email.

DOGE will draft a resolution for the board as soon as next week. No board resistance is expected.

Staff have until next Tuesday to decide to take deferred retirement/fork or RIF. The RIF process timing is unknown but expected to start as soon as next Wednesday.

MCC contracts will start being terminated tomorrow (via dodge)
MCAs in non-exempted countries have already issued stop work notices and will be told to terminate. RCMs have been given green light to communicate closure with host country governments/counterparts today.

Jason Kerwin @jkerwin.bsky.social · Apr 12

poast pics

Reposted by Jason Kerwin

Audrey Dorelien @audreydorelien.bsky.social · Apr 11

The #PAA2025 Karaoke session is no joke! @jkerwin.bsky.social you would have loved this.

Reposted by Jason Kerwin

David Evans @daveevansphd.bsky.social · Apr 9

A remedial education program in India worked well when teachers were given strict implementation guidelines. It worked just as well when teachers had discretion to adapt. www.nber.org/papers/w33242 by Beg, @annefitz13.bsky.social, @jkerwin.bsky.social, @profalucas.bsky.social, & @kwrahman.com

Reposted by Jason Kerwin

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias.bsky.social · Apr 6

There are a lot of interesting details for scholars to explore about basically everything, but for practitioners you get the most value out of the basics:

— Moderates do better at elections
— Free trade makes most people better off
— The past was poorer

Reposted by Jason Kerwin

CJ 🦋 @cjeanmartini.bsky.social · Apr 6

One more incredibly creative protester ...
#HandsOff
#SaveOurDemocracy
#LFG

They're eating the checks, they're eating the balances. Sign held by a Bill

Jason Kerwin @jkerwin.bsky.social · Apr 5

All of us owe an enormous debt to the late Susan Watkins, who was the godmother of social science in Malawi. She was an incredible mentor to me. None of this exists without her.

Jason Kerwin @jkerwin.bsky.social · Apr 5

Reposted by Jason Kerwin

John Hollinger @johnhollinger.bsky.social · Apr 5

Knicks up by 22, Hawks call timeout to discuss the fact that the other team seems to be scoring a lot more than they are.

Reposted by Jason Kerwin

David Evans @daveevansphd.bsky.social · Apr 5

I just heard from someone that used this paper in a class they teach. Yay!

"How Big Are Effect Sizes in International Education Studies?"

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3102/...

Reposted by Jason Kerwin

Emaan Siddique @emaansiddique.bsky.social · Apr 2

In light of recent cuts to global HIV programs like PEPFAR, today on VoxDev, we are featuring not one, but two, research studies on HIV prevention in Malawi—both of which touch on fatalism: the belief that contracting HIV is inevitable, leading individuals to engage in riskier sexual behaviour. 1/3

Reposted by Jason Kerwin

VoxDev @voxdev.bsky.social · Apr 2

🆕 People think it’s easy to contract HIV. That might not be a good thing.

Today on VoxDev, @jkerwin.bsky.social (@uwnews.bsky.social) discusses how providing information on actual (often lower) HIV transmission rates helped curb risky sexual behaviours in Malawi: voxdev.org/topic/health...

People think it’s easy to contract HIV. That might not be a good thing.

Despite the high HIV prevalence in Malawi, individuals do not seem to adjust their behaviour to avoid infection—this may be due to the perceived transmission risk being so high that people become fata...

voxdev.org

Reposted by Jason Kerwin

Hakeem Jefferson @hakeemjefferson.bsky.social · Mar 26

Yglesias types once felt they had the upper hand in political discourse. Now that others—often unlike them—take up space and tell the truth about their politics, it’s suddenly “academic social science is just ideological.” No, you’re just being challenged.

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias.bsky.social · Mar 26

I absolutely regret my role in this — it turns out that academic social science is shot through with dramatically more ideological bias than I realized 20-15 years ago and all the stuff you guys churn out should come with huge warning labels before it’s presented to laypeople.

Jason Kerwin @jkerwin.bsky.social · Mar 6

From this post by Leah Bevis & @annefitz13.bsky.social: u.osu.edu/aede/2025/03/0…

https://u.osu.edu/aede/2025/03/0…

Jason Kerwin @jkerwin.bsky.social · Mar 6

USAID is an incredible brand and source of soft power. Killing it off would be a disaster for US foreign policy and for millions of the world’s poorest people.

Reposted by Jason Kerwin

Esteban J. Quiñones, Ph.D. @estebanjq.bsky.social · Mar 2

Here are updated forms for Federal Cuts Tracker Map project, live later this week

🙏🏼 Help share and crowdsource!!!

www.linkedin.com/posts/abigai...

Abigail André on LinkedIn: #data #federalgovernment #federalworkers #usaid #noaa #federalcuts #stories | 21 comments

Here are updated forms for Federal Cuts Tracker Map project, live later this week. If you're new to the project, it is an interactive map that is tracking… | 21 comments on LinkedIn

www.linkedin.com

Jason Kerwin @jkerwin.bsky.social · Feb 27

Link to kerwin.sty: jasonkerwin.com/Code/kerwin....

Color options: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/C...

Blog post: jasonkerwin.com/nonparibus/2...

A LaTeX .sty file for making clean, clear slides - Jason Kerwin

If you’re using Beamer to make slides, your slides have way too much extra crap on them. Built-in navigation buttons at the bottom left, multiple layers of header and footer bars, dots that count the ...

jasonkerwin.com

Jason Kerwin @jkerwin.bsky.social · Feb 27

Your slides should avoid having tons of extra junk on them, but the default Beamer themes make that hard. So I made my own .sty file that fixes all the standard issues and put it on my website for everyone to use:

Reposted by Larry W. Horowitz, Ankur R. Desai, Tanya Heikkila , and 2 more Larry W. Horowitz, Ankur R. Desai, Tanya Heikkila, Jason Kerwin, Melissa Whitman

Dr. Larissa @rissarwx.bsky.social · Feb 27

All probationary federal employees at NOAA’s EMC that’s responsible for keeping all US weather model systems running have been fired with 1 hours notice. And that includes me and colleagues. We will not go quietly because we care about the NOAA mission to protect the public.

Reposted by Jason Kerwin

Emilia Tjernstrom @econemilia.bsky.social · Feb 25

I'm so thrilled to share that I'll be starting as Associate Professor in the Economics department at Macquarie University's Business School in May. Excited for this next step and very much looking forward to getting to know my new colleagues 😊

Jason Kerwin @jkerwin.bsky.social · Feb 21

What should you do instead? Use design-based reasoning, plus the double lasso:

Jason Kerwin @jkerwin.bsky.social · Feb 21

Link to post: jasonkerwin.com/nonparibus/2...

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