Weekly Links —Cash Transfers Increase Trust in Local Government, Difference Between Expert and Creative Intuition + more

A roundup of what we’re reading, watching, and listening to this week.

Read

+Cash transfers increase trust in local government.

“Beneficiaries are more likely to report that local government leaders take citizens’ concerns into account, and that their honesty has improved over time. They report greater satisfaction with the work of the village council. They initially — after just 1.5 years — report increased satisfaction with schools and health services, although those effects disappear by the end of 2.5 years. Notably, this increased trust does not translate into political activity.”

+What have we learned about building a culture of data and evidence use in government?

J-PAL shares five early insights on how to help governments successfully make evidence a priority in policymaking. Here’s one: Help governments make better use of the data they already collect. “Creating user-friendly charts, maps, tables, and dashboards with key stats on program implementation, or combining previously disconnected datasets, can help officials see how their data can be useful in driving better program management decisions.”

+Scale X Design: Is this the accelerator the aid sector needs?

CARE’s Scale X Design Accelerator recently held a pitch night where six teams from country offices around the world presented their ideas. They awarded $100,000 in grants. Projects include providing forecasts and advice to farmers in Vietnam through an SMS and voice messaging system; supporting women in Ghana to create biogas and biofertilizer businesses; and providing farmers in Bangladesh with debit cards to purchase agricultural inputs from selected retailers.

+Exploring the unobvious: six principles to establish experimental practices

“They help change how we perceive and frame reality, and prompt us to explore different solution spaces and prepare for multiple futures. They offer various perspectives on an issue, and help to identify knowledge gaps, challenge assumptions and generate richer understanding in order to make better informed decisions.”

+That zero effect may not mean what you think it means, and other lessons from recent educational research.

A recent working paper by Glewwe and Muralidharan (2015) provides good insight on rigorous “high quality” evaluations and the broader implications of these results.

Listen

+Bill Duggan — You Can’t Rush Aha Moments

A 15 min episode from Hurry Slowly, a podcast by Jocelyn K. Glei, draws out the difference between expert intuition (fast-thinking and decision-making) and creative intuition (slow-thinking).

We throw around think pieces, podcasts, research, and news in our Slack channels, and we wanted to open up the conversation to our readers as well. Please note that anything we post here is not an endorsement, we just hope these weekly digests will give you something to chew on over the weekend.

We’d love to hear from you! Feel free to start a discussion below, or reach out to us on Twitter or email us at airbel@rescue.org.