International Environment and Development Studies (Noragric) at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences is calling for applications for PhD positions. The positions are fully funded, and are enumerated as full time job according to Norwegian regulations. Full details of all the positions here. One...
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Category: Data revolution
Power of indicators: an emerging literature
There is a rise of indicators. The so called data revolution is finding its feet, so I do not expect it to let up anytime soon. The Economist provided one overview in their report on 'How to lie with indices'. As one would expect...
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A reading list for the data revolution
If you have sat through more than two conferences and workshops on the post-2015 development agenda or the Sustainable Development Goals (or tracked #SDGs or #data2015 on Twitter) you will be aware that there is a certain repetition of ideas. The same soundbites are...
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What did we learn from measuring the costs of monitoring the SDGs?
In response to my costing estimate of the MDGs, UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network took the initiative to host a group of 'experts' to come up with a collective estimate. The group first met in October in Paris and New York, and the final...
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Development by Indicators: Knowledge and Governance
In this workshop organized at Nantes by Boris Samuel and me on May 5 and 6, 2015 we will investigate the role of indicators in economic development. We will explore how numbers structure knowledge about economic development and how they give rise to social...
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Why so grumpy? The datarevolution and its discontents
In "Big Questions for Big Data and what it can do for African Economic Development" I wrote about some of the basic knowledge problems that remain in development statistics, and concluded that, as of yet, Big Data does not seem well equipped in addressing...
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Missing and old MDG data
There is some good news, search and there is some bad news. The bad news is that the MDG report is based on old and missing data. The good news is that Keiko Osaki-Tomita, chief of the demographic and social statistics branch of the...
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What if everything we know about poor countries’ economies is totally wrong?
The results of a phone interview with Dylan Matthews at VOX. Read the full interview here.
Economic data ‘came out of thin air’
No, this is not another reflection from my research on economic data on African economies, but the allegations by Chris Giles in the Financial Times against the inequality data used in Thomas Piketty's bestselling book. Giles shows that Piketty has indeed made some questionable...
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Someone robbed the databank (at the World Bank)
More specifically, Justin Sandefur (with Sarah Dykstra and Benjamin Dykstra) at the Center for Global Development have been running a script to get full access to the data in the Povcalnet database maintained at the World Bank (by Shaohua Chen; Prem Sangraula and Martin...
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