Jishnu points out India did have world class institutions but they have deteriorated. Zimbabwe saw the biggest increase in education ever sern as soon as the British left. It's not the lack of aid. LMICs have to self fund universities and importantly create academic freedom.

Jishnu says most common question he gets at conferences from students is not "how can I work on questions that are relevant and important to LMICs" but "will this question get me a paper in QJE or other top journal"

Oriana Bandiera points out that we need to move conferences on development economics so that they happen in LMICs. She has done this and it's been a great success.

We need to set up world class institutions on the African continent. Leonard Wantchekon did this by setting up the African School of Economics.

Jishnu Das, economics is the most concentrated/monopolistic disciplines.

Leonard Wantchekon points out never been African on editorial board of Journal of Development Economics.

This is reflected in a mismatch between the problems policy makers in Africa care about and what academics write about.

And even fewer papers with coauthors from Africa.

If you are looking for more careful analysis of the impact of the US aid cuts on lives, my colleagues @charlesjkenny.bsky.social and (now ex colleague) @justsand.bsky.social recognize the challenge that aid may crowd in or crowd out other financing. 4/
www.cgdev.org/blog/how-man...

I did find it interesting that their estimated impact of US assistance is much higher for HIV and malaria--areas of specific US focus--than for other diseases. Has anyone done this disease specific analysis more appropriately? 3/

Authors "control" for things like health expenditure & hospital beds which US funding can directly impact. Why is that bad? One criticism of aid is that it displaces domestic spending. By "controlling" for health spend you are ruling out crowding out. However......2/

thanks, that makes slightly more sense but still surprised its that high on the list

@dylanmatt.bsky.social covers how the team—Jim O’Neill, Michael Kremer, @rglenner.bsky.social, Chris Snyder, Akhil Bansal, @siddhharia.bsky.social (and more!)—is working to tackle this problem in @voxdotcom.bsky.social:
www.vox.com/future-perfe...