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Virtual Lecture | Repeated Evaluation Can Make Better Policy: The Case of Summer Youth Employment Programs

Virtual Lecture | May 22, 2:00 PM Eastern, via Zoom

Researchers often pursue ideas because they are novel and innovative. Breaking new ground is clearly important, and being “first” can help a paper get published. But the drive to be new can also push researchers away from the kinds of iterative research questions that help decision-makers implement effective policy (and towards surprising results that can be hard to replicate). This talk will tell the story of a policy-research partnership that started with a new and surprising finding—that summer jobs programs don’t actually help future youth employment, but do reduce violence—then kept iterating to explore how, why, and for whom. The result highlights what can come from repeated evaluation: an evidence base that is more convincing, illuminating, and practical than any single study can be.

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Repeated Evaluation Can Make Better Policy: The Case of Summer Youth Employment Programs

Virtual Lecture | May 22, 2:00 PM Eastern, via Zoom

Researchers often pursue ideas because they are novel and innovative. Breaking new ground is clearly important, and being “first” can help a paper get published. But the drive to be new can also push researchers away from the kinds of iterative research questions that help decision-makers implement effective policy (and towards surprising results that can be hard to replicate). This talk will tell the story of a policy-research partnership that started with a new and surprising finding—that summer jobs programs don’t actually help future youth employment, but do reduce violence—then kept iterating to explore how, why, and for whom. The result highlights what can come from repeated evaluation: an evidence base that is more convincing, illuminating, and practical than any single study can be.

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Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence

Virtual Lecture | April 24, 3:00 PM Eastern, via Zoom
What if everything we understood about gun violence was wrong? In 2007, economist Jens Ludwig moved to the South Side of Chicago to research two big questions: Why does gun violence happen, and is there anything we can do about it? Almost two decades later, the answers aren’t what he expected. This seminar describes how and why everyone’s conventional wisdom about gun violence is at best incomplete, how behavioral economics gives us a better way to understand the problem, and how a sustained partnership between the University of Chicago Crime Lab and the city of Chicago have helped identify and scale new solutions.

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Globalization, Trade and Labor, and the Distribution of Wealth and Resources in Japan and the United States

Recent elections in the United States, Japan, and Europe have shown public dissatisfaction with global society and the economy. Commentaries on United States electoral politics have argued that globalization’s impact on the domestic economy—most significantly, the offshoring of manufacturing and subsequent loss of well-paying manufacturing jobs—was the key factor in shaping a polarized society, characterized by a large underclass that has not shared in economic prosperity. In Japan, although political polarization has not been as extreme, the last several decades have seen an increased precarity of labor. In this 2025 session of the Abe Fellows Global Forum, four leading experts

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Re-Engineering Health Decision-Making Environments

On June 2, 2025, the Social Science Research Council will convene leaders of pioneering research labs from across the country who are working in partnership with health providers to re-engineer provider and patient decision-making environments to improve health outcomes. Researchers will share emerging findings as well as high-value opportunities for decision-making interventions to improve patient health. The symposium will provide a roadmap for health research funders to help guide new investments in health decision-making research. Registration is open now.

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Neighborhood Effects, Housing Mobility, and Place-Based Policies: Evidence from Experiments and Quasi-Experiments

The inaugural lecture in the Council’s 2025 lecture series on government innovation will cover Professor Lawrence Katz’s pathbreaking work with federal and local housing agencies to learn how public housing policy might more effectively support economic opportunity. This lecture will discuss three landmark projects: Moving to Opportunity, enabling residents of public housing to move to lower-poverty neighborhoods; Creating Moves to Opportunity, providing additional support to families considering leaving high-poverty neighborhoods; and HOPE VI revitalization grants, investing in mixed-income developments in neighborhoods with distressed public housing.

APN Panel with panelists standing together
African Peacebuilding Network (APN) Event

Trendlines and Transformations in African Democratic Governance: Lessons for 21st-Century US-Africa Relations, Part 2

January 14, 2025 | Washington DC  The second session of the Trendlines and Transformations in African Democratic Governance: Lessons for 21st-Century US-Africa Relations series took place on January 14th, 2025, at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC. This collaborative effort between the Social Science Research Council’s (SSRC) African Peacebuilding Network (APN) and Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa (Next Gen), and the Wilson Center’s Africa Program brought together experts to discuss the geopolitical shifts and increasing prominence of middle and emerging powers on the African continent, particularly its implications for democratic governance, security issues, and Africa-US relations.   Cyril Obi, Program

African Peacebuilding Network (APN) Event

Trendlines and Transformations in African Democratic Governance: Lessons for 21st-Century US-Africa Relations

November 13, 2024 | Washington DC On November 13, 2024, the Social Science Research Council’s (SSRC) African Peacebuilding Network (APN) and Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa (Next Gen), in partnership with the Wilson Center’s Africa Program, hosted a policy dialogue at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC. This inaugural session of the “Trendlines and Transformations in African Democratic Governance: Lessons for 21st-Century US-Africa Relations” series brought together African and US scholars and experts to discuss political developments across Africa, exploring strategies for strengthening democracy in the region.   Robert Litwak, Senior Vice President and Director of International Studies of

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2024 SSRC Katznelson Fellow Lecture: The Economist as Plumber

In this lecture, Esther Duflo shares her experience working in collaboration with policymakers in the developing world, and highlight the critical role of bringing a “plumbing” mindset to policy-relevant research: a mindset where policymakers realize that any program has so many dimensions that it is very difficult to get them all right, and where there is a need for constant experimentation and tinkering for policies to reach their full potential.

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