Amol Singh Raswan

New working paper with @AmolRaswan and Chris Udry: "The Sisyphean Pursuit of Evidence for Poverty Traps." A central idea in development economics is that poverty can trap people. We went looking for the cleanest evidence. Here's what we found – and didn't.

🚨New @nberpubs WP🚨 📉How Poverty Fell📉with @PaulFNiehaus and Tom Vogl From 1990 to 2015, the share of the world in extreme poverty fell from 36% to 9%. We use household surveys from five countries, together accounting for 75% of that decline, to ask: how did it happen?

@tolly_xyz Actually, we are all for this. If you can find a used, repairable laptop that meets your needs, that is the most environmentally friendly option.

@rduartegonzalez @HLarreguy @VinPons @MelissaLDell Congrats, Raúl!

🎓 Defended my dissertation today! I’m deeply grateful to my committee @HLarreguy, @VinPons, @MelissaLDell, Alisha Holland, and Anders Jensen, and to everyone who supported me along the way

[BREAKING] Delhi High Court asks Police to remove videos of Arvind Kejriwal arguing before Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma report by @prashantjha996 barandbench.com/news/delhi-hig…

FWIW, here's my advice for econ PhDs: it's currently extremely difficult to know what and how fundamental the changes will be that result from the expansion of AI. Trying to figure out the "right path" under such large uncertainly may be futile and can lead to paralyzing anxiety. The best strategy IMHO: Work on something you're genuinely interested in. This increases your chances to end up working on something you're interested in in the long term (as you acquire experience in that area), plus it reduces the risk of regretting ex post having spent years doing something you don't like and that ended up being unnecessary. Overthinking in the face of genuine uncertainty like this is a real risk here. In such situations, it makes sense to follow to some degree your gut and to weigh heavily in your choice what you personally enjoy.

Khap Panchayat

📢DevPEC 2026 will be held at Stanford on April 9-10! PhD students in development & political economy —apply to present and get feedback from @Stanford and @UCBerkeley faculty and peers. 📷 Submit by Feb 15 at tinyurl.com/devpec2026! #EconTwitter

Econ seminar culture is built on the assumption that the audience knows something that the speaker doesn't, and that the speaker values that information. A very important thing the audience knows and the speaker doesn't: Is the speaker making any sense at all? If nobody has any idea what you are saying, it's very helpful to be interrupted on slide 3. If you leave confusion for too long, you will lose your audience entirely. To publish a paper / nail a presentation, you need to nail the elevator pitch perfectly. In a paper, this is the introduction, in a presentation it's the preview. If you get 50 questions in your paper preview, it's often a signal that you have work to do. It's a sign you're at risk of losing the reader in your introduction, it's not good. If someone asks "are you going to address endogeneity?" Don't roll your eyes because it's coming on slide 12. The feedback is: "It's very hard to interpret the things you are saying without clarity on how you are thinking about endogeneity." It's normal that junior presenters should face more questions. They have less presenting experience and the audience knows more relative to them as compared with a senior talk. (Though often juniors have better presenting skills) After a presentation where I get bogged down at the beginning, I ask myself what were the key stumbling points, how can I make things tighter the next time. Of course, the audience also has a responsibility to keep their interruptions value-adding. A good audience member assesses whether their interruption will add to the whole group's understanding more than remaining silent. Some audience members are bad at this and waste others' time, and seminar organizers need strategies to prevent these people from being destructive. But in most econ seminar settings, policies that reduce interruptions on average (without discriminating low- vs. high-quality interruptions) are throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Questions and interruptions are good. They keep everyone engaged and on their toes. They result in better understanding for everyone. The good econ seminars are the best seminars in the social sciences, and the good overwhelmingly outnumber the bad.

TIL James Scott (of Seeing Like A State) switched to a political science PhD because James Tobin told him he had to take a second year of calculus

@soumitrashukla9 couldnt find the confidence intervals for these, but the overlap bw the two must be substantial (at least leading to stat insignificant diff). right?

Revelio says + 60,000 jobs added ADP says -32,000 jobs added Private sector options for BLS are working out great so far!

@oliverwkim You can run Nesstar on a windows emulator such as Wine winehq.org

Do any experts on the NSS have tips on opening on Nesstar files on a Mac?

@MatildeFaralli Congrats, Matilde!!

I successfully passed my PhD defense on Tuesday, what a journey these past five years have been. I can now officially say that I am a Doctor!

Glad to be able to share the findings from my job market paper in Microeconomic Insights! microeconomicinsights.org/bidding-for-fi…

There's no Indian growth story without trade and cooperation with the US. This is hopeful news 》

@rduartegonzalez Congrats! All the best for the market - I am confident you'll do well!

I'm glad this is finally out after several years in the works! I’m also on the academic job market this year and happy to connect with anyone to discuss potential opportunities

@scottlincicome A good illustration how high the steaks are in this tariff disaster

Weird system in India that has the judiciary trying to exercise all of these executive or legislative powers

@EconBerger @EconElan Plus, I expect letters to be edited by The Economist for flow and clarity. I remember mine was as well

@EconElan All letters to the editor can be fake, of course, but as a parent of a grade school kid, it’s quite plausible to me that a 5th grader would write something like this

This is adorable.

@MoharirAdvait Ah sorry, I am not aware of the intl warranties of diff brands, except for that Apple has one :/ I suppose you could get insurance for any laptop bought from Amazon or Croma at least...

@AmolRaswan Immediately. In a week or so

Hello friends, I need a new laptop for research work. 1 TB+16/32 GB ,i7/i9, lightweight, windows and 14 inches are the main requirements. Budget: Upto 1.2 lakh max Was thinking of Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro. Please drop your suggestions in the comments! Thanks!