Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak @mushfiq_econ Twitter profile | Pikagi

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

@mushfiq_econ

36,062

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Professor of Economics at Yale University ( @YaleEconomics & @YaleSOM ) | Director, @YaleRISE | Development Economics 🇧🇩 🇰🇾

New Haven, CT

https://t.co/KaZuhAQ1Ed

Joined October 2010

Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.

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@mushfiq_econ

Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

2 years

The pandemic made clear the importance of understanding human behavior. I intentionally avoided speaking about covid at @WHO because behavioral science will not diminish in relevance when pandemic ends. We need a systemic change in thinking at bio-medically focused organizations

@YaleSOM

Yale SOM

2 years

Prof. @mushfiq_econ speaks at @WHO ’s World Health Assembly about his field work testing public health interventions informed by behavioral science. Read more and watch video from the event:

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@mushfiq_econ

Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

3 years

A thread about the derivative of ln(x) 1/x

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

3 years

What "development" actually looks like

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@mushfiq_econ

Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

15 days

Nemat Shafik - @Columbia Prez only has 1 well-cited publication in her life, in Oxford Econ Papers 1994. This paper is lifted almost entirely from a 1992 report coauthored with consultant not credited in the publication. This is wholesale intellectual theft, not subtle plagiarism

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

5 years

My 10-year-old asked "what's wrong?" so I told him that getting a journal rejection still stings even after 17 years of being a professor. So he says "of course it's going to sting a bit" and he gave me a tight, tight hug. Now it's all okay. Wisdom doesn't only come with age.

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

2 years

As a professor of economics, I spent 20 minutes writing a thesis on elitism in our society based on my interactions with a coffee machine. I hope this blows your mind. (Not wasting any more time making it into a nice twitter thread, so just read the picture please)

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@mushfiq_econ

Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

15 days

I'm an academic, and this is NOT okay to do. You cannot remove an author and claim intellectual property for yourself. When a grad student tried this, we referred him to Dean for disciplinary hearings. And this is worse because of power imbalance - she removed a *junior* person

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@mushfiq_econ

Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

15 days

This is not a close call. Table 1s are the same. Fig 1s are the same. Massive overlap in text. She stole the junior author's intellectual property and simply removed his name from published version. If he contributed enough to be an author in 1992, how can she delete him in 94?

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

5 years

My thoughts on Bangladesh’s economic progress relative to India/Pakistan, in response to @AtifRMian 's question posed to me. 13-tweet thread follows.[Warning: these thoughts are of Twitter-length & depth, not the level at which academics normally engage on such complex questions]

@AtifRMian

Atif Mian

5 years

Bangladesh is expected to be richer than India by 2030. Last 10 years have been impressive, strong export growth, consistent current account surplus / macro stability, reigning-in extremism. Any insights @mushfiqmobarak ?

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

2 years

For my current and former students wondering... Yes, this is exactly how economists estimate demand curves

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

9 months

Our daughter did service and research on children's mental health in high school, and won a public service scholarship for college. Sorry for bragging, but I'm proud that she found an interest that will benefit society. That's all I had asked of my kids.

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@mushfiq_econ

Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

3 years

My son is not thrilled that this joke I made is more popular than my tweet about him. FWIW, my tweet about him is the one I'll look back on in my old age

@mushfiq_econ

Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

5 years

My 10-year-old asked "what's wrong?" so I told him that getting a journal rejection still stings even after 17 years of being a professor. So he says "of course it's going to sting a bit" and he gave me a tight, tight hug. Now it's all okay. Wisdom doesn't only come with age.

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

15 days

The stolen paper has been cited 2395 times. Her next most cited paper: 115 cites - not very presidential. This is the *only* publication of note in her portfolio. You'll find both the coauthored report and the OEP pub at this link - check for yourself

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

4 years

A #Pakistan newspaper asked me why it is doing poorly relative to neighbors like Bangladesh. The answer might be simple: If you refuse to let your young generation learn from one of the world's top economists bc of your deranged religious beliefs, perhaps your future is bleak

@AtifRMian

Atif Mian

4 years

Sorry to report that my zoom economics seminar at IBA Karachi has been cancelled due to threats that the university administration was facing from extremists. My very best wishes and prayers are with the students of IBA.

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

15 days

The journal should investigate this. here are the names of the editorial board members. Would appreciate it if folks can tag or email them this thread:

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@mushfiq_econ

Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

15 days

Nemat Shafik - @Columbia Prez only has 1 well-cited publication in her life, in Oxford Econ Papers 1994. This paper is lifted almost entirely from a 1992 report coauthored with consultant not credited in the publication. This is wholesale intellectual theft, not subtle plagiarism

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

4 years

A @dawn_com op-ed accuses me of valuing #Pakistani lives less than American lives because our paper () uses VSL. The following 3 tweets explain in plain English (as the writer requests) why this is a gross misrepresentation.

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Poor Countries Need to Think Twice About Social Distancing

Policies imposed in rich countries to fight the coronavirus could have adverse effects in low-income nations—potentially endangering more lives than they save.

foreignpolicy.com

@KhurramHusain

Khurram Husain

4 years

The Yale study that Asad Umar cites to buttress his case literally argues that the dollar value of the lives that lockdowns in South Asia save is less than the foregone economic output that result from these lockdowns.

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

3 years

Some misinterpretation of our #Bangladesh Mask RCT by those who don’t read research, which I’ll ignore, but also some parochial/racist reactions, which I must respond to

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Largest study of masks yet details their importance in fighting Covid-19

Scientists conducted a randomized trial across 600 villages and more than 340,000 people in Bangladesh and found that even some adoption of surgical masks made a difference.

www.nbcnews.com

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

4 years

My son and I visited MCG - an important temple of cricket - before shutdown. He asked me which bowler in history I respect the most. Without pause, my reflexive answer was Wasim Akram of 🇵🇰, with leftie inswinging yorkers that cut batsmen in half. (I used to bowl left arm pace)

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@mushfiq_econ

Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

2 years

My twitter feed is full of Ph.D. admissions decisions. Let me instead share with applicants and letter-writers what I learned after reading ~250 files this year, and then spending 18 hours in meetings with my colleagues on the Ph.D. admissions committee discussing those files.

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@mushfiq_econ

Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

3 years

This is too funny not to share

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

19 days

The protestors' encampment at Yale looks like a peaceful gathering of people from diverse backgrounds (middle America, Korea, South Asia, Jews, Muslims, non-religious) concerned about thousands of children being murdered in Gaza. Books not bombs. Even pathways to bldgs are clear.

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

2 years

Apparently my parents used to get this jam in Lahore in the 1960s and remember it fondly, so I decided to try it today. (can anyone from Pakistan confirm whether this was available in Lahore in the 1960s, or am I making that up?)

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@mushfiq_econ

Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

3 years

My new paper: "Differences in labor productivity between the United States and Bangladesh: Regression Discontinuity evidence from a pair of photographs"

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@mushfiq_econ

Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

5 years

You've heard about the Econ Nobelists’ contributions, but I’d like to share anecdotes on the personal impact that the trio have had on so many. Their humanity should not get overshadowed by their brilliance. They are excellent humans, first and foremost.

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The Nobel Prize in economics goes to 3 groundbreaking anti-poverty researchers

In the last 20 years, development economics has been transformed. These researchers are the reason why.

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

4 years

Our next Vice President will be half South Asian, half Caribbean, exactly like my children. I just love how (I hope) this will affect my kids' beliefs about what is possible.

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

2 years

Should we celebrate or be concerned about the fact that @amazon / @Uber etc. now hire many Ph.D. economists? A perspective from an academic investing time in training both Ph.D.s and MBAs [1/7]

@TheEconomist

The Economist

2 years

Amazon now has some 400 full-time economists on staff, several times as many as a typical research university. Meanwhile, last year Uber hired a fifth of Harvard University’s graduating PhD class

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

2 years

I'm trying to remember how we all reacted to the footage of U.S. "shock and awe" bombing of Baghdad in 2003. Was your reaction different to what you're feeling about Ukraine now? If so, why?

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@mushfiq_econ

Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

2 years

The Nobel committee called early, but asked me to get an iTunes gift card and send them the code before they can award the prize. I'm going to Walgreens to buy, will have a big announcement soon.

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

15 days

The other author is thanked in a footnote in OEP for their "research assistance" This in some ways is even worse. You are now undermining them even further in their authorship contribution to the earlier policy report - a background paper for the WDR.

@mushfiq_econ

Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

15 days

In response to the excuse some are making: If somebody was an author on a paper, you cannot simply take their name off and publish the paper. Just because they no longer contributed after some time, it does not mean that their prior intellectual contribution is worth nothing.

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

3 years

I've been working 16-hour days since the crisis hit India, but I took today almost completely off. It was the most wonderful Eid, because family is everything. And that's why I'll go back to 16-hour days from tomorrow. Family is everything, and we can't lose any more.

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

2 years

I tried the LinkedIn viral post generator. Now I'm worried that AI will indeed replace us, sooner than we think

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@mushfiq_econ

Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

3 years

Simple message from our 44,200 ppl/12 country survey: Vaccine hesitancy much lower in poorer countries than in USA/Russia. To maximize global coverage, send vaccines to LMICs NOW, before new variants emerge Much easier to get LMIC citizens vaccinated than last 30% of Americans

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

3 years

Brag: got a paper rejected today, but my teenaged daughter said she loved the food I cooked for lunch, and I overheard my dad telling someone that he was proud of the work I'm doing, in language I can't repeat. This will be a good father's day. I'll make him something he likes.

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

3 years

"Bangladesh is far richer than the depressed Indian states where Hindu nationalist politicians have been railing against Bangladeshi “termites.” It’s as if Mississippi were fretting about illegal immigration from Canada."

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South Asia Should Pay Attention to Its Standout Star

India and Pakistan have much to learn from their once-poorer neighbor Bangladesh.

www.bloomberg.com

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@mushfiq_econ

Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

8 months

Social media brings the worst out in people. This was the response by a professor of computer science at UW to a Vassar assistant professor's tweet. Regardless of the merits of her tweet, would he ever respond this way to her face-to-face, if they were colleagues? I hope not.

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

1 year

We put all our covid research in the public domain because it was the right thing to do, and most journals encouraged it. Now the American J of *Public Health* rejected our paper without review because we placed it in a standard research archive, medrxiv. How is this reasonable?

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@mushfiq_econ

Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

17 days

My Ph.D. advisor Prof. Roger Betancourt passed away. I can't compete with the stories about prominent academics I see here, so I simply want to tell you that he was a very good man. He gave me his time, kindness, and patience. He remained a friend, exchanging emails until the end

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

2 years

Sometimes the quiet part gets said out loud by accident. "...this isn't a place - with all due respect - like Iraq or Afghanistan...this is a relatively civilized, relatively European city, and I have to choose those words carefully...where you hope these things wouldn't happen"

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

3 years

On the occasion of today's #Economics @NobelPrize awarded for methodologies to uncover causality in non-experimental situations, I want to share a thought with other adjacent fields of academia that rely on empirical evidence: public health, medicine, other social sciences.

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

15 days

hi Noah, I think you have a degree in social science, so you probably know something about the importance of representativeness, and how we might collect data to ensure representativeness. Did you spend any time at any of the university protests before saying this is "standard"?

@Noahpinion

Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦

15 days

This kind of racism has become standard and normalized at the Palestine protests, which is one of many reasons the protests are a dead end for the Left.

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

4 years

I've been thinking hard about how to effectively respond to COVID in the developing world, and in Bangladesh in particular. What policies should we pursue, and what specific things we can do. Our team will share several outputs over the next few days

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Responding to COVID-19 in the Developing World

The mass social distancing strategy being used to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 in the United States and Europe doesn’t easily translate to a developing country like Bangladesh, which lacks the...

insights.som.yale.edu

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

5 years

3. Perhaps India and Pakistan should think more about encouraging female labor force participation? Religion and culture, and views about women's role in society, are likely relevant?

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Reversing women’s decline in the Indian labour force

If more women did paid work, India's national income would rise dramatically

www.livemint.com

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

4 years

Received query from USAID: "We'd like to implement some of your COVID response research in Mali. Can we chat?" My response: "We haven't had electricity for 3 days since Hurricane Isaias, on top of our COVID mess. Can you instead ask experts from Mali to help us here in U.S.?

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

4 years

Richer people can afford to stay at home. Both this journalist and I can work from home, and even if not, we're willing to sacrifice our economic livelihoods to avoid the risk of contracting COVID. Because even with pay-cuts, we can still easily put food on the table

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

4 years

We will never forget. After Pakistan had lost the war, and only two days before they surrendered, they decide to assassinate Bengali intellectuals, simply to cripple the new nation. We must continue to work hard to honor those who sacrificed everything

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

2 years

I like @RottenInDenmark 's comment on this article, and what makes it even more surprising is that I spent 90 min with the author and spoke about how Sierra Leone's Ebola experience led to more effective government responses to COVID early in the pandemic

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Opinion | This Country Fought Ebola. It May Beat Another Disease. (Published 2020)

How to combat Covid-19 in a developing economy.

www.nytimes.com

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@mushfiq_econ

Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

3 years

3. “Why are we talking masks when vaccines are available?”. Vaccines are available for YOU, but not in rural Bangladesh. Until you stop withholding vaccines from LMICs, masks remain an important line of defense to limit COVID spread.

@mushfiq_econ

Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

3 years

Simple message from our 44,200 ppl/12 country survey: Vaccine hesitancy much lower in poorer countries than in USA/Russia. To maximize global coverage, send vaccines to LMICs NOW, before new variants emerge Much easier to get LMIC citizens vaccinated than last 30% of Americans

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

3 years

The 'Structural Transformation & Economic Growth' program @cepr_org has put together a fabulous course on macro-development, open to all econ Ph.D. students and faculty. Macro-development is a small field with scattered faculty, so this is a brilliant idea

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

2 years

This is amazing

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

1 year

Tonight I celebrate although I hardly accomplished anything today. All 3 of my Ph.D. students on the market now have job offers. The market isn't done for them, but unemployment risk is now eliminated, so I celebrate tonight. I hope everyone else waiting will get good news soon.

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

3 years

I perked up last night (after a journal rejection), on receiving news that 3 of my students on the market are now employed. But also forced me to reflect on how bad a job market this is. Can we use this as a thread to post all the post-docs people are advertising? I'll start...

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

9 months

This is a careful paper documenting evidence of electoral manipulation by BJP in 2019. The author, @sabya_economist , is a Yale Ph.D., currently at Ashoka Univ in India. I didn't tweet about his paper myself because I was genuinely concerned for his safety. Now the word is out.

@sharanidli

M.R. Sharan

9 months

The BJP won the 2019 parliamentary elections in India: but was it ALL fair and square? This astonishing new working paper by @sabya_economist provides scientific evidence that suggests vote(r) manipulation by BJP. And no, this is NOT about EVMs. Thread🧵

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

5 years

13. I am heartened to see the innovative spirit and public mindedness of many young Bangladeshis. But people can only innovate when they have freedom of expression. Our govt should take note, and resist any authoritarian temptations that have trapped other countries in poverty.

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

3 years

1."Americans experimenting on Bangladeshis to inform Americans”. Sorry, not all work is done to service Westerners. I [co-lead (clearly signaled as last) author], am Bangladeshi. We conducted study to primarily benefit LMICs. Study sites included districts where my family resides

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

3 years

English is my second language. I've learned that we sometimes use different words for the same concepts or actions. For example, white people = protestors brown people = terrorists black people = thugs

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

1 year

This is a fabulous story you should read, but I really, really want a South Asian with creativity and time to write a parallel fiction on how things would turn out if a brown or black person was trying to pull this off in India instead of a white person.

@cblatts

Chris Blattman

1 year

In 2001, a Harvard professor hired me to run a survey of Indian villages in rural Tamil Nadu. He and I travel to the nearest large town, Madurai, to meet the nonprofit organization we will work with. After a week orienting me, he bids me good luck and farewell.

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

4 years

My Ph.D. student received a job offer, and I feel strangely excited as if I myself just got a job. (not mentioning who or where because I don't want to steal the person's thunder. Just smiling vicariously on an otherwise difficult day)

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@mushfiq_econ

Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

3 years

Sharing this will come off as either a humblebrag or full-on brag (and I apologize), but I'm sharing because I was shocked that a female economist felt that this had to be written. Apparently by doing the bare minimum, we can do better. That's as easy as it gets!

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

5 years

4. What makes our workers productive? Investments in human capital. Social indicators for women and children (female school enrollment, maternal and infant mortality, fertility rate, early marriage, vaccination) compare favorably to richer states of India.

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Bangladesh ahead of India in social indicators: Amartya

Bangladesh has performed better than India in terms of economic and social development of women despite the latter’s faster economic growth, views Nobel laureate Prof Amartya Sen.

www.thedailystar.net

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

4 years

I was crying alone in my office on Nov 9 2016. It was spontaneous, and I never thought carefully about exactly why. I assumed I was worried about my half-Afro-Caribbean children with Muslim names, and others at risk. This week, on reflection, I realize there was a lot more to it.

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

3 years

Son fasting with me today so I asked him if there's anything special he'd like me to cook for Iftar. His request: Peanut butter sandwich. No fried food on an empty stomach? Is this kid even South Asian?

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@mushfiq_econ

Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

4 years

A poor day-wage laborer in Pakistan, in contrast, is willing to forego less of his economic livelihood, because staying at home in a shutdown means that his family may not have enough to eat.

@mushfiq_econ

Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

4 years

Immediately after #Nepal 's #COVID lock-down, we re-interviewed a sample of rural individuals we had been following since last year. We learned that labor hours have fallen over 50%, even relative to limited work hours people manage to get during pre-harvest lean "hungry" seasons

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

4 years

That difference explains why VSL is larger for the rich, who want the disease eliminated from their environment, than for the poor who must worry about their children going hungry. It’s a lives-lost vs lives-lost comparison in Sindh, not life vs money

@IRDGlobal

IRD Global

4 years

IRD, @WHO , and @PATHtweets on the BLN Webinar, discussed the role of Electronic Immunization Registries in the #COVID19 response, highlighting experiences from Tanzania and Pakistan.

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

2 years

Should you do a "pre-doc" (RA job) after undergrad, or should you apply directly for an Econ Ph.D. program after graduating? I get this question regularly from advisees, students, undergrad RAs, so I'll share my thoughts here, esp. for 🌍,🌏 students with less access to advice.

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

8 months

From the BU student newspaper

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

4 years

To friends in #Pakistan I'm suddenly interacting a lot with today - I don't know the journo and have nothing against him. We all care about saving lives even if we disagree on policy. My parents met in Lahore and shared fond memories, so I'll always have a warm place in my heart

@mushfiq_econ

Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

5 years

My thoughts on Bangladesh’s economic progress relative to India/Pakistan, in response to @AtifRMian 's question posed to me. 13-tweet thread follows.[Warning: these thoughts are of Twitter-length & depth, not the level at which academics normally engage on such complex questions]

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

4 years

...let's implement the solutions we highlight () that will save lives. Send economic relief to the poor quickly. Ban religious and social gatherings. Universal mask adoption. Data collection. @aikhwaja , @adnanqk , @CERPakistan doing great work for #Pakistan

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Response to Covid-19 COVID-19 has had a catastrophic impact across developed economies, shutting...

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

4 years

The question is not about what lives are worth, but how we can we save the most. In rich countries, incomes can fall a lot before people face subsistence risk. In poor countries, same policies inflict more pain on the poor. Instead of false dichotomies over lockdowns or not...

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

3 years

Important @WorldBank paper: COVID lockdowns produced net *increases* in mortality in low-income countries, but lowered mortality by a lot in upper-middle-income countries. We argued this early in the pandemic, and very useful to see this rigorous analysis

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

3 years

Chicken was on sale for $0.99/lb, so I bought a bunch, took a break from paper-writing (sorry coauthors!), and cooked it 3 different ways - Bangladeshi, Thai, Italian. Now I can feed my whole family for 4 days on $8-10 worth of chicken.

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

4 years

I accompanied my dad to vote in Dhaka one afternoon in the 80s, but we were turned away with a sly "don't worry, your vote has already been cast". So I took him to vote on Tuesday in person, to make sure it counted. This doesn't come easy, folks. It takes millions of tiny steps.

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

5 years

5. Why does BD outperform neighbors in social indicators? Impressive NGOs (BRAC and many others) partly responsible. NGOs operate with minimal interference. Provide healthcare, schools, banks, dairy collectives, phone service, public health campaigns like ORS, immunization drives

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

2 years

Fascinating paper in economics/ecology. And a beautifully written abstract.

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@mushfiq_econ

Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

5 years

11. Poor governance and political instability leaves much to be desired. But politics not nearly as messy as in Pakistan. Thankfully, more limited role for religion in politics. Govt acted decisively to root out terrorist threats, perhaps at the expense of curtailing civil rights

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

5 years

1. From macro data, the 2 proximate causes are our 2 biggest exports: (a) Garments and (b) Humans (i.e. remittances), both of which contribute large shares of GDP. [Not "exporting people to India", as trolls claim in Atif's thread, but remittance receipts from ME, SEA and Europe]

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

3 years

@mosenkis Hierarchy of engagement on my twitter: 1. Jokes 2. Stories about my kids 3. Pictures of wildlife in my backyard #FoxNews ... 991. My research results.

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

11 months

I felt extra frustrated at the news of academic fraud, because I was with Shobuj who runs the only moderately-successful crab hatchery in remote Sunderbans of Bangladesh 🇧🇩 while completing a Ph.D. in aquaculture. Amazingly talented researcher who earns, at best, $3000 per year

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

15 days

In response to the excuse some are making: If somebody was an author on a paper, you cannot simply take their name off and publish the paper. Just because they no longer contributed after some time, it does not mean that their prior intellectual contribution is worth nothing.

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

15 days

Powerful people retweeting me have played destructive roles that have made all my students - Jewish, Muslim, or non-religious *less* safe. They are NOT my allies. Ackman called for doxxing, blacklisting students, prompting fear instead of dialogue, aggravating confrontations.

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

15 days

Has development ecnonomics lost its moral compass? Required reading for every development economist. Please take 10 minutes to read and reflect.

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Did Development Economics lose its moral compass?

I. You shall not speak I grew up in a family, and more importantly, in a milieu where it was taken for granted that academia and the pursuit of justice were deeply intertwined.

www.linkedin.com

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

4 years

I cried, and then bawled for no apparent reason. I realized that there was phlegm interfering with my breathing for 4 years - a mix of frustration, fear, and disgust. I could breathe freely once it was expelled. My wife told me I had changed after 2016. I promise to be better.

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

6 years

I found this inspiring: Celebrations for Bill Nordhaus at Yale yesterday were delayed for a few hours because Bill refused to cancel his morning Intermediate Macro class. Don't ever let a তুচ্ছ বিষয় like winning the Nobel prize get in the way of the important work that you do.

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

2 years

Congrats to my friend @Prof_Nishith_P for a very nice offer and move to @Northeastern Economics. The enhanced resources and visibility are a better match for his energy and skills. Good for him, for Northeastern, and for the world.

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

2 years

Writing a referee report while watching my son, and decided that this paper was worth a conditional acceptance on first submission. Now wondering whether external, unrelated factors affect refereeing and scientific publication outcomes.

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

1 year

I read student evals to see what to do differently in subsequent years. This was my favorite comment this year: "I really appreciated it when Mushfiq would admit he wasn't an expert and refuse to answer questions in ignorance. I thought it was humble of him and beneficial to us."

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

4 years

@KhurramHusain @aikhwaja @CERPakistan I don't think dawn has a view either, but if that's your platform, and @dawn_com has reach, it's still important for dawn to get this right. (as an aside, this is a surprising response from you, given that you referred to my study as Yale study.)

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

5 years

2. Why did the garment sector take off? Our comparative advantage has been low-wage labor. Women, who had traditionally not worked outside the home, and therefore had poor outside options, work at lower wage in B’deshi factories than their counterparts in competing countries.

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

4 years

I'm working day & night on COVID responses in poor countries, but my relative Twitter engagement suggests that you all just want to instead see cute foxpup videos from our backyard. I give up. I'm just gonna give the public what it wants. Update: our family has grown to 8 pups.

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

3 years

My coauthors and I received a revise and resubmit request from a journal on Jan 1, 2020 and I thought, "hmm, maybe this will be a good year." The rest of the year didn't go as planned, but that paper just got accepted, just in time for my coauthor's impending tenure vote!

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

3 years

Bangladesh appears to have walked into a clever trap set by Modi. He visits a temple of importance to some West Bengalis voting in a closely-contested TMC-BJP state election. His visit spreads communal violence in Bangladesh.

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

4 years

If you don't like the protests spreading across the country and disrupting lives, would it be okay for us to quietly kneel at a football game to bring attention to the injustice? Or did you think that was a problem too?

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

3 years

Non-authors who have given their heart and soul to scale up this program to reach 100m+ and save lives deserve special recognition: @heidilinz , @NeelaSaldanha , @MahaRehman1 , Janani R., @PreetiAdhikary , @jose_pinillab , @GPGautamPatel , and many partners

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

2 years

Daron Acemoglu is an up-and-comer to keep an eye on. Not many people might know about him now, but I think the boy has a bright future.

@dandolfa

David Andolfatto

2 years

So, which economists are doing the best work in "Political Economy" today? 🤔

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

2 years

"Panchayat" on @PrimeVideo about life and politics in rural India covers half my CV within the first 2 episodes - open defecation, lean season transfers, political allocation of public goods,... Many other development economists will see their work reflected or refuted in it.

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

3 years

@akarve Not on #EconTwitter : n & x both used. I thought about this for 20 seconds before composing, and thought it was more important to give people cues to remember high school calculus where x is much more common. We can run an experiment: Post the n version on your wall and let's see

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

5 years

6. Impressive reach of NGOs (supported by int’l dev aid) complements govt. Not by providing microcredit, but other massive social programs. Microcredit largely used for consumption not investment. Makes people happier (which is important), but unlikely to produce much growth.

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

1 month

My mom would boil our unpasteurized milk in the morning, and save me the দুধের সর (is that cream in English?) to eat with sugar and roti. That's my treat for myself on Eid, with the milk from our ঈদের সেমাই। This is not a happy time in the world, but Eid Mubarak to everyone!

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

3 years

My impression is that PhD admissions and job market are both tight this year. Maybe it's covid, maybe a surge of talent. Applicants are stressed. I've received many rejections in my life, and only much later I could see that those decisions had little bearing on my happiness.

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

1 year

Mask research is in the news again with headlines like "mask mandates don't work". I'll write my views here on how we should think about mask-wearing based on the research summarized in #CochraneReview [Only minimum statistical literacy required to follow the argument]

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

2 years

If only there was a randomized controlled trial on the effects of community-wide masking so that the NYTimes wouldn't have to rely on inferences like "when you look across US cities where masks are more or less common, there doesn't seem to be a pattern"

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Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

2 years

I spoke about internal migration at the fabulous Urban Econ Assoc conference. I'll share photos of 2 slides that my Twitter family captured, because I hope more economists can work on these questions.

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