Rachel Strohm

It's officially time to be done with X. Come join me on Bluesky! bsky.app/profile/rachel…

@British_Airways Hello! I'm meant to travel to Kenya on Thurs 19th on BA0065. I know that NBO is currently closed due to a strike. Do you know when you might take a decision to cancel the flight? (I don't want to turn up at the airport and wait hours only to find out then.) Thx!

"Police have consistently served as instruments of political order rather than neutral guardians of public security. Today’s officers operate (...) in a political culture that has never experienced a peaceful transfer of power." theconversation.com/political-poli… via @TC_Africa

The challenge of language-of-instruction policy in Malawi journals.udsm.ac.tz/index.php/jlle…

You cannot make this up.

From revolutionary to researcher: Leonard Wantchekon on African development, democracy & the African School of Economics 📢 In a previous episode of VoxDevTalks, @lwantchekon (@PrincetonSPIA @ASE_Africa) discussed his life of activism and scholarship: voxdev.org/topic/institut…

“Every empire, however, tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires, that its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate." ― Edward W. Said

I argued elsewhere that there is no rules-based order in int’l relations but that rather world powers select specific areas of the world as “bombable” and “unbombable”. What we are seeing in Venezuela is the US moving to put Latin America back in the “bombable” category

THREAD. Every year, I tell the story of Ezell Gilbert. It's the story of one of the most remarkable cases in U.S. history, and you’ve probably never heard of it. The story of what the U.S. government did to him is vital for understanding the current moment we are in.

A top read of 2025: an Israeli army database suggests that at least 83% of Gaza dead were civilians. trib.al/RSQQVrm

But like, we kinda do! American voters currently favor a statist, collectivist approach on virtually issue that matters, from the economy to immigration to healthcare to public safety to the social safety net. We have a libertarian cultural ethos but it’s basically just a LARP.

Unconditional cash transfers: Key lessons from 115 studies voxdev.org/topic/social-p…

Great news. Chickenpox vaccines are finally on the menu in the UK! My blogpost on the success of universal chickenpox vaccination in the US, and why the UK should have made the move sooner: scientificdiscovery.dev/p/13-the-succe… Chickenpox vaccines are really effective! They have massively reduced cases, hospitalizations and deaths from the disease in the US and other countries where they've been introduced. And the worries that it might increase shingles risks (which were honestly based on very limited data) turned out wrong. Adults benefitted as well, and shingles rates began to fall. In the first 25 years when vaccines were routinely provided, more than 91 million cases of chickenpox, 238,000 hospitalizations, and almost 2,000 deaths were prevented in the US. It was also cost-saving: with a net societal savings of at least 23.4 billion US dollars so far (conservative estimate). The vaccine has other benefits too. Since shingles develops from a reactivation of the chickenpox virus, vaccines prevent their development by preventing the initial neurological infection. And since chickenpox makes kids vulnerable to bacterial infections, vaccinating reduces antibiotic usage. The US was the first country in the world to offer the chickenpox vaccine universally in 1995, an example of the forward thinking decision making of the CDC. Since then, many countries have also offered universal vaccination. It's a huge shame that it's taken us so long to follow. But I'm very happy to hear that kids from now on will be protected!

Hard to imagine something more anti-kid, anti-family, and anti-worker than this. Not to mention anti-economy, since childcare subsidizes parental participation in the workforce. Just an all around horrific decision seemingly calculated to push people into desperation

2026 Africa Summer School in Economics (AFSS-2026) Application Deadline: January 7, 2026 theeconomicmisfit.com/2025/12/23/202…

Spencer Ackerman’s book Reign of Terror is one of the sharpest pieces of political analysis I’ve read in years. It makes a powerful case for dismantling entire anti-terrorism legal/political framework that has driven endless war and corroded our rights at home. Case in point👇

No beating around the bush with it anymore. Anyone who didn't flee El Fasher at the time was killed. We're talking about over 100.000 people here. Sudan 🇸🇩

@jamespstratton and I put out a working paper a few days ago on exactly this question! We propose a way to answer it using a simple causal analogue of the R² ("Causal R²").🧵(1/12). Paper: drive.google.com/file/d/1FWNLf7…

To understand how unprecedented this bombing campaign is in Somalia, check out this handy chart from New America. They do a good job of tracking the air war. Trump has bombed Somalia this year more than Bush, Obama, and Biden combined.

Three features of any wealth tax debate 1. Designing sensible wealth taxes is genuinely difficult 2. Many wealthy will fight tooth and nail against even sensible designs 3. Without a solution, wealth inequality will rise to levels we've never seen. This is unlikely to end well.