Michael Kevane

Reminder that publication bias is important… but seems not to have greatly affected results in a number of reviews.

I might have added that an important set of explanatory variables might be the “breadth” of the field, the likely incentives for publishing null results, and the “recentness” of the field… in other words, there is likely to be a lot more positive publication bias in a recent, faddish field where only a dozen papers have been published than in a mature, established field where there might be large returns to publishing negative results, in part because the implications of the results have immediate real-world consequences (i.e. as in medicine) rather than unlikely consequences (as in “my DSGE paper will convince the Fed to end quantitative easing in two months rather than 12 months”).

Publication or related biases were common within the sample of meta-analyses assessed. In most cases these biases did not affect the conclusions. Nevertheless, researchers should check routinely whether conclusions of systematic reviews are robust to possible non-random selection mechanisms.

via Empirical assessment of effect of publication bias on meta-analyses | BMJ.

Le train d’économies mis en place par la présidente du Malawi, Joyce Banda, se poursuit. Le pays va utiliser le produit de la vente de l’avion présidentiel, 15 millions de dollars, pour aider à nourrir les populations les plus pauvres et cultiver des légumes, afin de combattre la malnutrition, a indiqué jeudi un responsable gouvernemental.

«Il s’agit d’une décision collective du gouvernement pour que le produit de la vente de l’avion soit utilisé à l’achat de maïs sur le marché local et aussi à la culture de légumes», a déclaré un porte-parole du ministère Nations Msowoya.

L’avion de 14 places avait été acheté par le précédent président —Bingu wa Mutharika, décédé l’an dernier— pour 22 millions de dollars.

Mais après cet achat, la Grande-Bretagne, ancienne puissance coloniale et principal soutien bilatéral du Malawi, avait réduit son aide au pays de 4,7 millions de dollars.  En raison des coûts liés à l’entretien de l’appareil, la présidente Joyce Banda a finalement décidé l’an dernier de le vendre.

via La présidente du Malawi en fait peut-être un peu trop | Slate Afrique.

A new paper Cycling to School finds that bicycles are even better than cash transfers (HT: Marginal Revolution).

We find that the Cycle program was much more cost effective at increasing girls’ enrolment than comparable conditional cash transfer programs in South Asia, suggesting that the coordinated provision of bicycles to girls may have generated externalities beyond the cash value of the program, including improved safety from girls cycling to school in groups, and changes in patriarchal social norms that proscribed female mobility outside the village, which inhibited female secondary school participation.

Not to ring by own bicycle bell, but I argued/intuited something similar for South Sudan back in 2005 (eight long years ago… where has the time gone?) in a short opinion piece on the Joint Assessment Mission report for Forced Migration Review:

Why not give away the $8bn?  When we consider that reconstruction spending is to target around 20 million marginalised Sudanese (of a total population of around 32 million) then you have spending of about $160 per person. After subtracting modest bureaucratic, consultancy and other delivery costs, this amounts to an annual payment of $150 for each poor person in Sudan for the next few years. Most poor people would undoubtedly prefer to receive such a sum as an income supplement rather than as a bundle of services. Why did the JAM authors assume that they could plan more wisely, and government counterparts in the GoS or SPLM could spend more effectively, than poor citizens in Bahr al-Ghazal or the Nuba Mountains or the Red Sea Hills? Why should we not trust Sudanese to make strategic and livelihoods-enhancing choices – a farmer to buy a younger and stronger donkey, parents to send their children to a better school, or a tea-seller to invest in another set of tea glasses?
It is disappointing that no consideration seems to have been given to an income support scheme, at the least for elderly women and families with school-age children. Numerous studies have shown that these programmes can be just as effective as government spending, and they have ripple effects throughout the private sector.  Education and roads are at the core of the JAM budget. One has to ask whether the private sector cannot manage education successfully, especially in the south where Christian missionaries and NGOs are more than willing to subsidise schooling. Everybody likes the idea of building roads. But the poor, in Sudan and elsewhere, know that their benefits go disproportionately to the rich. No doubt they would rather have bicycles, yet bicycles merit no mention at all in the JAM documents. As Sudan rebuilds, there is a real danger that the smart and the rich will take advantage of public investment, while everyone else stays at the bottom of the well.

It is good to see the emphasis validated.  Sad, too, because the hyper-governmentalized vision that triumphed in South Sudan (apex: giraffe shaped new capital city) will take the new country (in a John Kerry “It’s a guarantee” kind of way) not to Rwanda but to C.A.R.   In Burkina Faso, BTW, bicycles are fast becoming second-hand news, and what everyone now wants is an Apsonic  motorized rickshaw.