Matt Lowe

The contact hypothesis is a leading theory in social psychology--the idea is that interpersonal contact between groups, under favorable conditions, reduces prejudice. What do we learn from the new wave of pre-registered contact experiments? 🧵

Presenting a broad set of stylized facts about developing country labor markets, synthesizing the recent literature, and highlighting promising directions for future work, from @emilybreza and @supKaur nber.org/papers/w33908

👥 Does intergroup contact reduce prejudice? CEGA Faculty Affiliate @hmmlowe finds that: 📉 Effects smaller than previously thought 🧩 Meeting Allport conditions doesn’t guarantee success 💡 Stronger impact on individual perception than groups 📖: go.cega.org/MLigcontact

🚨Open Phil is hiring for some awesome roles to build out our >$120m Abundance and Growth Fund 🚨 Apply for a chance to work with @mattsclancy on accelerating scientific & technological progress and boosting economic growth x.com/mattsclancy/st…

J-PAL is once again accepting self-nominations to join our network and become an invited researcher. The application process is currently open and will close on August 1st. Learn more about the self-nomination process: j-p.al/invited-resear…

Children that work in markets in India are good at maths when a customer makes a complicated request, but bad when facing an abstract maths problem as presented in school. Children that don't work in markets show the opposite pattern. Very cool. nature.com/articles/s4158…

Cool paper in Nature using data for a few million kids in France: no gender gap in Maths test scores at the start of first grade, big gap by the end. nature.com/articles/s4158…

🚨 Thrilled to share that our paper, "Sexual Harassment in Public Spaces and Police Patrols: Experimental Evidence from Urban India," is now in print at the @QJEHarvard! 🇮🇳🚔👩🏽‍🦰 With Sofia Amaral, @g_borker, Nathan Fiala, Anjani Kumar, & @micasviatschi 🧵👇 @NUCSSH @NUEcon

New evidence on the intergenerational effects of intergroup contact: male civil servants exposed to female colleagues have daughters that are more likely to work. Link here: guoxu.org/docs/AFX_Beyon…, from Aneja, @SilviaFarins, @guoxu_econ

This is a very nice paper which clarifies something that many people working on close elections get wrong. Most of the time, close election RDs do not identify the causal effect of candidate characteristics.

We (me, @Jeff_Weaver_, @anahitark) are looking to hire a Gujarati-speaking field intern (paid) and RA to help with lab-in-the-field work on barriers to trade in rural Gujarat. Full details in the link, and feel free to help us by RTing! docs.google.com/document/d/1X-…

Conducting a field experiment in rural India to test whether effective communication training among married women impacts their labor supply, from Namrata Kala and Madeline McKelway nber.org/papers/w33747

James Robinson (@HarrisPolicy) and I are hiring one or more predocs starting Summer '25. Come work with us on political economy, economic history, and AI. Link: uchicago.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/External… @predoc_org

Recently accepted to #REStud, "Creating Cohesive Communities: A Youth Camp Experiment in India," from @arkdevghosh, @prerna394, @hmmlowe and Nellis: restud.com/creating-cohes…

When whites and minorities drive at identical speeds (according to objectively measured data from Lyft) Florida police are 24-33% more likely to issue speeding citations to minority drivers and charge them 23-34% greater fines. These are not small effects!

Dev Patel's interactive site describing how he estimates flooding in Bangladesh using satellites and ML is soooooo cool! Link in thread.

📣Now hiring: Predoc in Economics and Data Science @ellliottt Ash and I are hiring a predoc -- work @ETH_en Zurich on exciting projects in applied econ (education, political econ etc.), using AI, NLP, and causal inference. Apply here: econjobmarket.org/positions/11505 @econ_ra

Big kudos to this team for doing the work of uncovering what looks like large-scale research malpractice. Some highlights in this thread.

After being alerted about possible misconduct, the I4R are reproducing published papers that use data from a specific NGO (GDRI). This thread releases the first 2 reports and provides more information about the work and responses/statements from authors journals and journals. 🧵