Seema Jayachandran
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seema.bsky.social
Seema Jayachandran
@seema.bsky.social
17K followers 1.1K following 470 posts

Economics professor at Princeton. I study environmental conservation, gender equality, and (too many) other topics in developing countries.
seemajayachandran.com

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Seema Jayachandran is an economist who currently works as Professor of Economics at Princeton University. Her research interests include development economics, health economics, and labor economics. .. more

Economics 30%
Environmental science 23%
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seema.bsky.social
Seema Jayachandran @seema.bsky.social · 15d
I argue in this piece that the nonprofit sector should be thinking more about the counterfactual when assessing fundraising success: winning a $2M competitive bid over capable peers advances the cause less than convincing someone to donate $1M they'd have spent on a yacht.
The Case for Counterfactual Thinking in Nonprofit Fundraising
When a nonprofit wins a major government contract or foundation grant, it’s cause for celebration. These wins reflect hard work and organizational strength. Yet beneath the success lies a subtle, ofte...
www.cgdev.org

Reposted by Raphaël Soubeyran

seema.bsky.social
Seema Jayachandran @seema.bsky.social · 1d
Brilliant little online tool: Spin the globe and see what your life would have been like had you gotten a different draw in the place-of-birth lottery

h/t @leightjessica.bsky.social on LinkedIn
Birth Lottery
If you were reborn today, where would you land? And how would that change your life?
www.givingwhatwecan.org

Reposted by Menzie Chinn, Seema Jayachandran

adamshap.bsky.social
Adam Shapiro @adamshap.bsky.social · 1d
Tariff offset tax

seema.bsky.social
Seema Jayachandran @seema.bsky.social · 3d
Laquan McDonald
jamellebouie.net jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 3d
watched part of a pod save interview with rahm emanuel and that guy is genuinely delusional if he thinks he is going to go anywhere in a democratic presidential primary

Reposted by Seema Jayachandran

jamalgreene.bsky.social
Jamal Greene @jamalgreene.bsky.social · 3d
As of today, I don't think it should be called the Streisand effect anymore. Congrats, Barbra, you're free.

seema.bsky.social
Seema Jayachandran @seema.bsky.social · 3d
How terribly sad. I only spent time with him once, for a couple of days many years ago, but he made a lasting impression on me as an incredibly good-natured person. RIP.

Reposted by Seema Jayachandran

jamellebouie.net
jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 3d
watched part of a pod save interview with rahm emanuel and that guy is genuinely delusional if he thinks he is going to go anywhere in a democratic presidential primary

Reposted by Seema Jayachandran

lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com
lauren @lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com · 3d
they're calling it The Second News Story That's Definitely Going Away

Reposted by Seema Jayachandran

michaelsderby.bsky.social
Michael Derby @michaelsderby.bsky.social · 3d
Trump is now trying to name while classes of Navy ships after himself: “Trump has for years advocated for revamping America’s fleet of warships, which he has said are ‘terrible-looking.’” Via WSJ
New Class of Warship to Be Named After President Trump — The Wall Street Journal
The new vessels, which the president calls battleships, will be the latest in what the White House envisions as a ‘Golden Fleet’
apple.news

seema.bsky.social
Seema Jayachandran @seema.bsky.social · 4d
Now do one for PhD advising
johnholbein1.bsky.social John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 4d
The networks of economists who frequently show up in the Economic Report of the President.

What stands out to you?

Reposted by Seema Jayachandran

johnmullahy.bsky.social
John Mullahy @johnmullahy.bsky.social · 4d
www.rte.ie/news/ireland...
'Family kept me going' - Irish woman after ICE detention
Irish citizen Donna Hughes-Brown, who had been held by immigration authorities in the US for almost five months, has said it is fabulous to be free but she is still feeling a bit overwhelmed since her...
www.rte.ie

Reposted by Seema Jayachandran

johnholbein1.bsky.social
John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 4d
The networks of economists who frequently show up in the Economic Report of the President.

What stands out to you?

seema.bsky.social
Seema Jayachandran @seema.bsky.social · 7d
The Govt of India is dismantling the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, and that's a real shame.
P B Mehta writes: MNREGA was the ground beneath our feet. It’s slipping away
One of the principal arguments advanced against the MGNREGA is that it raises wages. This concern underlies the clamour to restrict the scheme to the agricultural off-season. But in the context of the...
indianexpress.com

Reposted by Anna O. Law, Tom Clark, Seema Jayachandran , and 5 more

moiradonegan.bsky.social
Moira Donegan @moiradonegan.bsky.social · 7d
I don’t know how it works at the New York Times, but my editors at The Guardian would never let me publish this if they knew that I was one of the elites who spent time with Epstein. And if I published it without telling them, I would be out of a job.
Opinion column from David Brooks: The Epstein Story? Count Me Out. I have been especially startled to see Ro Khanna, a House Democrat and one of the most impressive politicians in America, use the phrase “the Epstein class” in his public statements. In an interview with my colleague David Leonhardt this week, Khanna explained that he had gotten the phrase from voters who asked him if he was on the side of “forgotten Americans” or “the Epstein class.” Photo of David Brooks at dinner with Jeffrey Epstein, from files released by the House Oversight Committee.

Reposted by Richard S.J. Tol, Brendan Nyhan, Steve Peers , and 13 more

donmoyn.bsky.social
Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 7d
These are the people who are willing to go on the record.
www.nytimes.com/2025/12/18/u...
Tina Davis, who modeled for Ford in the mid-1990s, said in an interview that her Ford booker instructed her to get dressed up and attend a Mar-a-Lago party in late 1994. Just 14 and new to Miami, she was told to “dress sexy,” according to her mother, Sandra Coleman, who had accompanied her to Florida. Eight or nine other models came along on the bus. “All the girls were really young,” Ms. Coleman recalled in an interview. “Some of them could have been in training bras.” When they arrived at Mar-a-Lago, Ms. Coleman said, her daughter was promptly handed a glass of champagne. She took it away, but waiters kept offering more. Each time one of the middle-aged men at the party approached her daughter, Ms. Coleman would walk over and introduce herself as Ms. Davis’s mother. During a trip to the bathroom, they ran into Mr. Trump’s new wife, whom they had met earlier. Ms. Maples clasped her hands, Ms. Coleman recalled, and looked her in the eye. “Whatever you do, do not let her around any of these men, and especially my husband,” she told Ms. Coleman. “Protect her.”

Reposted by Seema Jayachandran

dggoldst.bsky.social
Dan Goldstein @dggoldst.bsky.social · 8d
We need better ways to tell computers and humans apart

Article: The potential existential threat of large language models to online survey research

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Reposted by Seema Jayachandran, Georg Weizsäcker

chrisadamsecon.bsky.social
Chris Adams @chrisadamsecon.bsky.social · 9d
May her memory be a blessing. Here are some obits for Kate Ho. www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2025...
Economics professor Kate Ho passes away after long battle with cancer
Professor Kate Ho made seminal contributions to the economics of modeling competition in the healthcare sector and taught well-loved courses in industrial organization.
www.dailyprincetonian.com

Reposted by Diane Coyle, Seema Jayachandran, Joshua Goodman , and 3 more

paulnightingale.bsky.social
Paul Nightingale @paulnightingale.bsky.social · 9d
There is a growing problem of big name natural-science journals publishing social science that is "problematic".

This reflects a inability to accept the statistical standards and skills in social science are often much much higher than in many areas of the natural sciences.

(I'm a chemist btw).
dingdingpeng.the100.ci Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 9d
You remember that Nature Aging paper about how multilingualism protects against accelerated aging? Well…

Reposted by Seema Jayachandran, Mark D. White, Ian Campbell , and 3 more

emilynussbaum.bsky.social
Emily Nussbaum @emilynussbaum.bsky.social · 10d
Virginia Heffernan wrote this shortly after the 2016 election and it still holds true
THIS is what makes my head spin: The president is not a moral figure in any idiom, any land, any culture, any subculture. I'm not talking about the liberal enlightenment that would make him want the country to take care of the poor and sick. I mean he has no Republican values either. He has no honor among thieves, no cosa nostra loyalty, no Southern code against cheating or lying, none of the openness of New York, rectitude of Boston, expressiveness and kindness of California, no evangelical family values, no Protestant work ethic. No Catholic moral seriousness, no sense of contrition or gratitude. No Jewish moral and intellectual precision, sense of history. He doesn't care about the life of the mind OR the life of the senses. He is not mandarin, not committed to inquiry or justice, not hospitable. He is not proper. He is not a bon vivant who loves to eat, drink, laugh. There's nothing he would die for - not American values, obviously, but not the land of Russia or his wife or young son. He has some hollow success creeds from Norman Vincent Peale, but Peale was obsessed with fair-dealing and a Presbyterian pastor; Trump has no fairness or piety. He's not sentimental; no affection for dogs or babies. No love for mothers, "the common man"" veterans. He has no sense of military valor, and is openly a coward about war. He would have sorely lacked the pagan beauty and capacity to fight required in ancient Greece. He doesn't care about his wife or wives; he is a philanderer but he's not a romantic hero with great love for women and sex. He commands loyalty and labor from his children not because he loves them, even; he seems almost to hate them — and if one of them slipped it would be terrifying. He does no philanthropy. He doesn't - in a more secular key - even seem to have a sense of his enlightened self-interest enough to shake Angela Merkel's hand. Doesn't even affect a love for the arts, like most rich New Yorkers. He doesn't live and die by aesthetics and health practices like some fascists; he's very ugly and barely mammalian. Am I missing an obscure moral system to which he so much as nods? Also are there other people, living or dead, like him?

seema.bsky.social
Seema Jayachandran @seema.bsky.social · 11d
We can't outrun the LLMs, but we can buy ourselves a little time!

seema.bsky.social
Seema Jayachandran @seema.bsky.social · 11d
I am still really mad that LLMs have co-opted — and hence ruined — the em-dash.

seema.bsky.social
Seema Jayachandran @seema.bsky.social · 13d
Very impressive public service! And I beg you for some additional public service -- given you are a role model for younger scholars -- which is make the font size and marker size larger relative to the plot region, for the sake of old folks 😀

Reposted by Seema Jayachandran

cgdev.org
Center for Global Development @cgdev.org · 14d
Nonprofits celebrate big grants, but @seema.bsky.social asks: how much new good did this funding create, & how much simply shifted between capable orgs?🤔

Her new blog shows how this type of counterfactual thinking can strengthen impact across the sector:
https://go.cgdev.org/4oSvqXn
The Case for Counterfactual Thinking in Nonprofit Fundraising
When a nonprofit wins a major government contract or foundation grant, it’s cause for celebration. These wins reflect hard work and organizational strength. Yet beneath the success lies a subtle, ofte...
www.cgdev.org

Reposted by Seema Jayachandran, Edgar Morgenroth, Scott A. Imberman

alexiakatsanidou.bsky.social
Alexia Katsanidou @alexiakatsanidou.bsky.social · 14d
If you do not have to go, you do not go.

Reposted by Monica G. Turner, Dan Goldhaber, Julie L. Lockwood , and 17 more

hormiga.bsky.social
Terry McGlynn @hormiga.bsky.social · 14d
You can do this right now:

Think of a person who wrote a paper you love, whose work influenced or helped you, or has made your professional life better.

Search up their email address. Shoot them a quick email of thanks. It means so, so much. This is a rough time of year, share some joy.

Reposted by Anna O. Law, Brendan Nyhan, Tom Clark , and 5 more

dadakim.bsky.social
kim yi dionne (she/her) @dadakim.bsky.social · 15d
Don’t look away. sahanjournal.com/immigration/...

seema.bsky.social
Seema Jayachandran @seema.bsky.social · 15d
That tweet was from October. Turns out it took SSIR 6 weeks to reject the piece, so I should have just straight away taken Dave's suggestion to publish it on the CGD blog!

seema.bsky.social
Seema Jayachandran @seema.bsky.social · 15d
Thanks so much, Laura. I didn't know about your handbook chapter, good to know!

Reposted by David K. Evans

seema.bsky.social
Seema Jayachandran @seema.bsky.social · 15d
I wrote the tweet below after I had lunch with @daveevansphd.bsky.social, shared a random thought with him, and he said, "That's so obvious in hindsight." That was enough of an endorsement for me to write it up.

www.cgdev.org/blog/case-co...
seema.bsky.social Seema Jayachandran @seema.bsky.social · Oct 23
Having a new insight that is ex post obvious is the best feeling.