CEGA’s Best of 2020

Featuring funded research, policy impacts, and news coverage, as well as our favorite tweets and events.

A woman slices ripe, sweet persimmon in preparation for sun-drying in Dolakha, Nepal. Credit: Sitara Grewal

As we close out one of the more challenging years in living memory, we celebrate the progress we’ve made towards improving the lives of people living in poverty. Below we’ve compiled a series of “best of 2020” lists featuring funded research, stories of impact, media mentions and events. Please also enjoy our new digital annual report — CEGA at a Glance.

In one of the more challenging years in living memory, we are grateful for our diverse community of scholars, partners, and supporters. In 2020, new ideas and insights — backed by rigorous research and integrating strengths from partners in low- and middle-income countries — proved more important than ever for tackling the world’s most complex problems. From all of us at CEGA, thank you for your ongoing support of our work!

Through competitive grant-making, CEGA funds actionable research that can be used by policymakers to transform the delivery of social services, design of public policies, and quality of life for millions of people. In 2020, CEGA awarded over $2.3 million to 73 projects taking place in 20 countries around the world (with a little over $500,000 directly supporting research led by CEGA-affiliated faculty).

Targeting Aid Better

• Using AI and digital data to target cash transfers in Togo — Josh Blumenstock, Emily Aiken ($146,431) Leveraging mobile phone and satellite data to help identify Togo’s most vulnerable individuals and disburse cash transfers to them through the government’s flagship social protection program, Novissi.
• Combining Satellite Imagery and Machine Learning to Target Social Protection in Pakistan — Sean Fox, Rashid Memon, Levi Wolf, Felix Agyemang ($81,160) This project aims to assist the newly established Sindh Social Protection Strategy Unit (SPSU) in designing a dynamic, shock responsive targeting system for their interventions.
• Using IMUE to Improve Targeting to LEAP Beneficiaries in Ghana — Ethan Ligon, Carly Trachtman, Angela Owusu-Ansa ($57,948) This project allows the Government of Ghana to identify vulnerable households to receive cash transfers through the country’s flagship Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) social protection program.
• Quantifying the benefits of better targeting in employment programmes — Simon Quinn, Stefano Caria, Eva Kaplan, Maximilian Kasy, Soha Shami, Alexander Teytelboym ($55,912) A novel algorithm that adaptively targets policy interventions to maximize the precision of treatment effect estimates and the welfare of experimental participants, deployed as part of a field experiment to help Syrian refugees and local job seekers in Jordan find wage work.

Agriculture Technology Adoption Initiative (ATAI)

• Measuring the Gains from New Infrastructure: Evidence from Randomized Bridge Rollout — Kevin Donovan, Wyatt Brooks ($458,261) This project studies the impact of market access on agricultural productivity and rural welfare by randomizing the roll out of 229 footbridges designed to connect otherwise isolated rural Rwandan villages to peri-urban markets that include the opportunity to sell crops, labor opportunities, schools, and health clinics.
• Quality Upgrading and Pass-Through in Uganda’s Coffee Sector — Ameet Morjaria, Lauren Falcao Bergquist, Jie Bai ($414,713) This project studies how market structure affects incentives for quality upgrading along agricultural supply chains in international coffee markets.
• The effect of information on bargaining, corruption and trade: evidence from small agriculture traders in Kenya and Uganda — Eleanor Wiseman, Elisabeth Sadoulet ($163,105) Tops up a previously funded project allowing researchers to carry out high frequency calls tracking traders and exploring how the COVID-19 pandemic affects Kenyan agriculture traders.
• The Value of Forecasts: Experimental Evidence From Developing Country Agriculture — Fiona Wilkes Burlig, Erin Kelley, Gregory Lane, Faraz Hayat, Amir Jina, Harshil Sahai ($80,432) The pilot in 21 villages across Tamil Nadu and Telangana will measure (a) farmers’ willingness to pay for monsoon forecast information, (b) the impacts of forecasts on farmers’ willingness to pay for insurance, and © how these approaches interact, and the extent to which they impact farmers’ investment choices.
• The Impact of Information on Counterfeit Markets in Kenya — Eric Hsu, Ted Miguel ($70,592) This project randomizes small rural markets in Kenya into an information campaign that helps area residents detect substandard quality maize seed and seek recourse after encountering such a product.
• Mission Kakatiya: Impact Evaluation of Minor Irrigation Tank Rehabilitation — Aprajit Mahajan, Manaswini Rao, Anup Malani, Xavier Gine ($49,207) This top-up funding allows for an additional post intervention survey studying the effect of repairing and restoring a large number of currently under-used/disused “water tanks” throughout the state for local agricultural uses such as aquaculture.
• The Impact of Formal Mechanization Access on Agricultural Productivity and Informal Rental Markets — Namrata Kala, Julieta Caunedo ($30,073) This project will run a randomized evaluation to understand how the availability of formal rental markets for mechanization affects agricultural productivity and informal rental service providers.
• Exploratory work: In addition, 5 other teams received small amounts of funding (less than $10,000) for exploratory work focusing on agricultural technology adoption in Kenya, Uganda, and Zambia.

Digital Credit Observatory (DCO)

• Gender-Differentiated Credit Scoring Algorithms using Call Detail Records and Machine Learning — Sean Higgins, Lisette Luciano, Laura Chioda, Paul Gertler ($52,325) This funding allows the project to pivot due to COVID restrictions and continue constructing a gender-differentiated credit scoring model using machine learning to jointly optimize objectives on two stratified populations (men and women).

East Africa Social Science Translation Collaborative (EASST)

• Implementing Supportive Supervision and Behavior Change Communication at private health facilities in Uganda — Ronald Mulebeke, Stefano Bertozzi, Brigid Cakouros ($75,000) Tests two different methods for improving public health, combining supportive supervision with community-wide behavior change communication messages to improve community understanding of malaria.
• Do financial incentives change beliefs? — Sarojini Hirshleifer, Ketki Sheth, JonBosco Asiimwe ($75,000) BRAC and the Ministry of Health in Uganda are testing how mobilizing community health practitioners to sell micronutrient powder powder door-to-door reduces malnutrition.
• A piece of paper? The benefits of a secondary school certificate in Tanzania — Chad Hazlett, Christina Fille ($70,000) Measures the effects of earning a secondary school certificate measured ten years later, including livelihood and employment, tertiary education, cognition, delay of early parenthood/pregnancy, physical health, and status within society and the household.
• Missing Markets in Burundi — Nick Swanson, Luisa Cefala, Michel Ndayikeza ($53,295) This project studies two sources of market failure that may be preventing farmers from engaging in agricultural markets: asymmetric information and incomplete contracts.
• Understanding Gender-Specific Constraints to Agricultural Technology — Muthoni Ng’ang’a, Carly Trachtman, Ethan Ligon ($14,985) This pilot examines the feasibility of a randomized evaluation to measure the relative impact of providing female farmers with easy access to cassava seeds versus accessing extension information provided by female lead farmers.
• Trust and Mobile Savings — Eyoual Tamrat, Paul Gertler, Sean Higgins ($15,000) Measures whether cash transfer beneficiaries in low-income urban areas in Ethiopia are more likely to save if they receive a training session designed to build their trust in financial institutions and receive weekly text messages with information on their current balances.

Developing Impact West Africa (DIWA)

• Impact of NRGP on Small Holder Farmer Welfare in Upper West Region of Ghana — Philip Osei Duku, Paul Kwame Nkegbe, Grace Alenoma, John Gambo ($48,864) This study attempts to assess the impact of the Northern Rural Growth Programme (NRGP) in the Upper West Region of Ghana on farmer productivity, food security, and higher income.
• It takes a village: Encouraging Women to Use Maternal Care through Community Involvement — Aaron Asibi Abuosi, Aleksandra Jakubowski ($49,995) Explores whether the implementation of community meetings (or durbars) to communicate the importance of obstetric care, combined with phone messages and household visits to discuss birth preparedness plans with pregnant women, their partners, and mothers-in-law, increases the use of maternal health services and improves health outcomes in northern Ghana.
• Understanding and Developing Accountability in Ghanaian Schools — Angela Owusu-Ansa, Ketki Sheth, Julius Ruschenpohler ($49,968) Using a survey, the project team will identify the role of three potential explanations that reduce parental engagement in school accountability: (i) informational constraints regarding school quality, (ii) expectation of sanctions by the school, and (iii) social norms on holding schools accountable.
• An Evaluation of Ghana’s National Service Scheme — Samuel Agyei-Ampomah, Pascaline Dupas, Levi Boxell ($37,605) In a typical year, 75,000–100,000 tertiary graduates are placed into a 12-month posting via Ghana’s National Service Scheme (NSS) and this project will examine the effects of variation in the NSS postings, including the ethnic composition and labor market potential.
• Pilot Projects: Additionally, DIWA seeded five pilot projects in Ghana, totaling nearly $75,000, led by teams of CEGA researchers and West African policymakers.

Working Group on African Political Economy (WGAPE)

• For the first time, CEGA’s Working Group in African Political Economy (WGAPE) awarded over $25,000 in research funding to teams led by junior African researchers. The seven funded projects span topics including online political communication in Kenya, political partnership during the COVID-19 pandemic in Benin, and youth criminality in Nigeria.

Psychology and Economics of Poverty (PEP)

• In early 2020, CEGA’s Psychology and Economics of Poverty (PEP) initiative awarded over $50,000 in student seed funding to 13 new projects aiming to better understand the ways poverty impacts cognition and decision-making and subsequent downstream implications for health, development and economic outcomes.

Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences (BITSS)

• In December, the BITSS program awarded over $10,000 to 10 “BITSS Catalysts” to advance work promoting open science practices at their local institutions.

CEGA Core Funding

• Mask Up! Testing strategies to increase mask use in Uganda — Aleksandra Jakubowski, Ronald Mulebeke, Dennis Egger, Rhoda Wanyenze, Noah Kiwanuka ($54,305) Researchers investigate whether greater access to face masks paired with education and behavioral nudges encourages mask use and reduces the spread of SARS-CoV-2.
• Can Biometric Tracking of Attendance Reduce Health Worker Absenteeism? — Aleksandra Jakubowski, Elizeus Rutebemberwa ($20,750) This study gathers nuanced data from healthcare workers and managers to assess their views about using biometric technology to track attendance, as well as ways in which the government could address their intrinsic motivations and the structural issues that contribute to absenteeism.
• Graduate Student Research: CEGA awarded nearly $120,000 to 12 UC Berkeley PhD student projects spanning 9 countries on topics such as taxation, corruption, and secondary schooling.

Scaling Gender-Based Civics Programs for Women In India

In an effort to address the underrepresentation of women in Indian politics, Soledad Prillaman (Stanford University) and local NGO Pradan, designed and piloted a new “gender training” to inform women in rural India of their rights and encourage them to participate in local politics. Findings from the pilot, which was funded by CEGA’s Economic Development and Institutions (EDI) Program, have inspired the Indian government to consider scaling these trainings nationwide.

“Cash Benchmarking” Studies Drive Evidence Revolution at USAID

A series of landmark “cash benchmarking” studies conducted through the Development Impact Lab (DIL), in partnership with GiveDirectly and Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), are the latest in USAID’s growing commitment to using more rigorous evidence on both the impacts and costs of its programs in its resource allocation decisions. Most recently, CEGA affiliate Craig McIntosh and coauthors released results from a study in Rwanda suggesting that cash was relatively more cost-effective than a workforce readiness program at improving certain outcomes.

Long-term Effects of Deworming Children in Kenya

A new 20-year follow-up study, led by CEGA Faculty Co-Director Ted Miguel, Michael Kremer, and colleagues, shows that a small investment in medication to treat worm infections (< $0.50 per child per year) in young Kenyan students has had dramatic impacts decades after the fact. This landmark research adds to a growing body of evidence on deworming, which has informed national school-based deworming programs in several countries.

Scaling primary school capitation grants in Tanzania

In 2013, Constantine Manda returned from CEGA’s East Africa Social Science Translation (EASST) fellowship to work on a randomized evaluation testing complementarities between resources and incentives in Tanzanian schools. The study, in collaboration with CEGA affiliate Karthik Muralidharan, influenced how public primary and secondary schools administer capitation grants.

CEGA Research Inspires Agriculture Start-Up

Together with One Acre Fund, CEGA affiliate Marshall Burke, faculty director Ted Miguel, and Lauren Falcao Bergquist found that post-harvest loans allow Kenyan farmers to store maize so they can sell it later at higher prices — ultimately increasing their revenue. The published results inspired the launch of Taimaka, a nonprofit supporting farmers in Northeastern Nigeria.

Labor Reform in Mexico

Researchers Joyce Sadka, Enrique Seira, and Christopher Woodruff found that providing free legal advice to workers led to higher case resolution rates and eased the strain on the Mexican labor court system. With support from the U.K. Aid-funded Economic Development and Institutions (EDI) program, these findings contributed to one of the biggest labor law reforms in Mexican history.

Even when the research CEGA supports is both rigorous and relevant, it is only impactful to the extent that it is shared with the right decision-makers, in the right format, at the right time. One small, yet critical piece of this goal is circulating our work in the media. Myriad research projects and policy changes backed by CEGA were featured throughout the news in 2020. See our picks for most influential media coverage last year.

Targeting cash transfers with non-traditional data

Policymakers in Togo, Nigeria, and Bangladesh partnered with CEGA Faculty Co-director Josh Blumenstock and collaborators to improve the targeting of emergency aid for people affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Nature detailed their approach, which leverages readily available mobile phone and satellite data.

Using machine learning to expedite COVID-19 detection

Machine learning could make group testing for COVID-19 possible, according to a working paper and corresponding MIT Technology Review article co-authored by CEGA affiliate Ziad Obermeyer and colleagues at UC Berkeley. Related research by Obermeyer and others explored whether machine learning can be used to predict respiratory distress, the most severe symptom and primary cause of death for COVID-19 patients.

The effect of anti-contagion policies

Affiliate Sol Hsiang and co-authors published research in Nature evaluating the effects of anti-contagion policies on the growth rate of infections. While hugely disruptive, they found that mitigation policies are achieving “large, beneficial, and measurable health outcomes.” Hsiang was featured on CNN discussing the impacts of COVID response around the world.

What COVID-19 Means for Climate Change

An analysis by affiliate Marshall Burke found that the environmental impact of the coronavirus lockdown may have had some positive health consequences. Burke revealed that pollution reduction from the shutdown of factories in China may have resulted in tens of thousands of saved lives. His analysis was quoted in The New York Times.

Lessons from the 2014 Ebola Outbreak

A working paper by CEGA Director of Research Bilal Siddiqi, affiliate Darin Christensen (UCLA), and coauthors found that low-cost accountability interventions in Sierra Leone effectively improved confidence in the health system. When Ebola hit, this confidence translated to more effective containment, and 30% fewer deaths among Ebola patients. The research was covered in an episode of NPR’s Hidden Brain podcast.

The CEGA blog is a space to comment on key issues related to poverty alleviation and global development, chat with researchers about their latest work, and share insights from CEGA studies and events. Check out our seven favorite posts from 2020.

Investigating a History of Impact

Over the summer, we conducted a retrospective review into the policy impacts of CEGA-funded research. It sheds light on some of the key factors that go into measuring, tracking, and communicating the impacts of our work.

Treating children for worms yields long-term benefits, says new study

Originally published on Berkeley News, Media Relations Specialist Edward Lempinen detailed the landmark 20-year study reporting that a small investment in medication to treat worm infections in young Kenyan students has a dramatic impact decades after the fact.

Responding to COVID-19 in the Global South: insights from CEGA research

We recapped insights pulled from ongoing and completed research led by CEGA affiliates that would be useful to Global South decision-makers as they scrambled to devise effective mitigation strategies in the face of the dire social and economic impacts of COVID-19.

How to move a major conference online in five days

All the way back in March we detailed our efforts to transition the largest annual convening for development economics on the West Coast online in five days in response to COVID-19 shutdowns.

CEGA Celebrates International Women’s Day

We celebrated this year’s International Women’s Day by highlighting a handful of CEGA studies that address the rights and experiences of women in different contexts and around the world.

CEGA regularly convenes researchers, decision-makers, and implementing partners from around the world to forge new partnerships, discuss open research questions, share findings, and translate research evidence into effective policymaking. Below we share our favorite CEGA-organized events from 2020.

Geo4Dev 2020 Symposium and Workshop

On December 10–11, the Geospatial Analysis for Development (Geo4Dev) Initiative will host an online symposium to showcase cutting-edge tools, datasets, and applications of geospatial data for global development research, followed by a hands-on workshop for those interested in building or honing their skills in this space.

Evidence to Action 2020: Climate Change and the Global South

On November 16, CEGA’s 2020 Evidence to Action (E2A) series kicked off with a set of talks by CEGA researchers and colleagues on energy efficiency, forest conservation, climate migration, and climate resilient agriculture technology adoption in the Global South.

The Role of Cost Evidence in Global Development Research

On October 21, CEGA’s Cost Transparency Initiative (CTI) and associated Costing Community of Practice (CCoP) will host its inaugural “Cost-ober” webinar series. Virtual panels will engage front-line policymakers, donors, and journal editors in discussions about how cost evidence can boost the policy relevance of impact evaluation research.

DIWA Impact Evaluation Training

From June 22-July 15, CEGA’s Global Networks program hosted a series of online trainings to launch the Development Impact West Africa (DIWA) initiative with the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA). The workshop, designed for Ghanaian academics and policymakers, provided in-depth training on impact evaluation methods, virtual survey design, transparency best practices, and more.

Pacific Conference for Development Economics

On March 14, CEGA hosted the 13th annual Pacific Conference for Development Economics (PacDev) over Zoom. More than 70 researchers presented to over 300 participants on a variety of topics related to poverty and economic development. Gabriel Zucman of UC Berkeley delivered a keynote on “21st Century Tax Systems for Developing Countries.”

COVID-19 in the Global South: Economic Impacts and Recovery

On June 10, CEGA hosted a Berkeley Conversation reviewing research on the economic toll of the pandemic. The panel, moderated CEGA Executive Director Carson Christiano, featured Faculty Co-directors Ted Miguel (UC Berkeley) and Josh Blumenstock (UC Berkeley), and affiliates Supreet Kaur (UC Berkeley) and Paul Niehaus (UC San Diego, GiveDirectly).

Twitter is a medium for CEGA to share our work, events, and learnings, and to promote the work of others in our network. We’re closing out our “best of 2020” lists with 5 of our favorites below. Check them out!