On 1-2 March CPPF convened a meeting on Sudan and the region at the request of the UN Eastern Africa Division of DPPA, the meeting aimed to reflect on national developments and regional trends and on the role of the UN.
US employers are segregated by race, which likely contributes to racial inequalities in earnings. While the composition of an employer’s workforce is shaped by powerful social and economic forces, it is not inevitable. This talk reviews recent evidence from around the world on how policy can influence the demographic composition of an employer’s workforce.
About the Lecture It has been challenging to establish how health investments in childhood affect individuals' life trajectories, especially in low- and middle-income regions of the world, due to pervasive data limitations. This talk discusses a new project that leverages recent methodological innovations in development economics and a unique dataset tracking thousands of Kenyans over two decades (the Kenya Life Panel Survey). The evidence indicates that investments in child health radiate out over time and across generations in multiple, and perhaps surprising, ways. Event Recording About Edward Miguel Edward Miguel is the Oxfam Professor of Environmental and Resource Economics and …
On 24-25 April 2023, CPPF hosted and facilitated the retreat of the Conventional Arms Branch (CAB) of the UN Office of Disarmament Affairs (UNODA).
On 18 May 2023 CPPF convened a meeting on energy transition risks and opportunities in the MENA region at the request of the UN Northern Africa Division of DPPA. The meeting aimed to inform the UN Inter-Agency Task Force on climate, peace, and security in the MENA region and considered the implications of the accelerating energy transitions on the MENA region.
About Recent investments in clean energy R&D have led to remarkable innovations in clean energy technology. These innovations hold the promise of slowing and perhaps even reversing decades of anthropogenic climate change. But in order to fully realize the promise of clean energy innovation, we also need policy innovation: social and behavioral science R&D aimed at finding interventions, programs, and policies that effectively mobilize decision makers to act in climate-protective ways. Join us for an important conversation with leading social and behavioral scientists and climate thought leaders to discuss: what we know about potentially scalable interventions to increase climate-protective behaviors; …
On 21 March 2023, CPPF convened the 14th meeting in a series of meetings on the situation rule of law, corruption, and impunity in Guatemala.
Solutions to many of today’s key development challenges hinge not on creating new technologies and solutions, but in understanding why the poor do not adopt seemingly beneficial technologies that already exist. Throughout the developing world, there are countless examples of technologies that appear to be welfare enhancing but are adopted by the poor at very low rates. Examples span health, finance, and agriculture sectors, and include cleaner cook-stoves, anti-malarial bednets, toilets, fertilizer, weather insurance, and improved seed varieties. To make progress on these problems, we need to understand the sources of behavioral or structural barriers to new technology adoption, in order to devise policies and marketing strategies to address those barriers. This talk will highlight economic analysis and randomized-controlled-trial based field experimental methods applied in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa to make progress on these questions.
On 9,12, and 13 June 2023 CPPF hosted a series of three half-day virtual workshops on PEA in Central Africa. The sessions took stock of political analysis-related work within both the United Nations and World Bank and discussed methodologies. The meeting aimed to enrich both organizations’ understanding of the political economy trends related to oil exporting states and the Congo Basin rainforest in Central Africa.
The inaugural African University Seminar Series in Kenya (AUSS-Kenya) was held at the University of Nairobi, Kenya from June 12-13, 2023. The Kenya-based current and former fellows of the Social Science Research Council’s (SSRC’s) African Peacebuilding Network (APN) and Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa (Next Gen) organized the event fellows, under the guidance of the co-chairs of the APN-Next Gen Advisory Board, Dr. Steve Akoth (former Next Gen fellow) and Prof. Rita Abrahamsen. The AUSS-Kenya Local Organizing Committee (LOC) is led by the co-chairs, Jacinta Maweu (former APN fellow) and Rahma Hassan (former Next Gen fellow), and the members …
In this virtual convening of the College and University Fund for the Social Sciences, Arthur Lupia, executive director of the Bold Challenges Initiative at the University of Michigan, and Jeremy Weinstein, faculty director of Stanford Impact Labs, talked about their work to support faculty and graduate students pursuing ambitious applied and socially relevant research, in partnership with public, private, and nonprofit organizations.
Public and private funding organizations, state legislatures, and donors increasingly expect universities to produce socially impactful and policy-relevant research. However, publication and promotion incentives may undermine efforts to mobilize the social and behavioral science research community to pursue policy-relevant research. This series of virtual convenings is an opportunity for member institutions of the College and University Fund for the Social Sciences (CUF) to share what works–and what doesn’t–to mobilize social and behavioral science that is both policy-relevant and scientifically rigorous. These virtual convenings are intended to be an opportunity for cross-institutional learning and networking across CUF member institutions, and we …
