A scholarship covering tuition, cost of living, and travel is available for applicants to the M.Sc. in Climate Change and Development at the Institute for Development Studies at the University of Sussex for next fall:
“The applicants must:
1. Be nationals of (or permanently domiciled in) a Commonwealth developing country, and not currently be living or studying in a developed country (please see the booklet for a list of eligible countries)
2. Hold a first degree at either first or upper second class level;
3. Be sufficiently fluent in English to pursue the course
4. Have not previously studied for one year or more in a developed country
5. Not be employed by a government department (for this purpose the Commission counts this as being employed by a Government Ministry).
6. Be able to confirm in writing that neither they or their families would otherwise be able to pay for the proposed course of study
7. Be willing to confirm that they will return to their home country as soon as their period of study is complete.”
This is a great opportunity to study in a place where there are many development experts.
(HT: @txtpablo)
24
Jan 12
Contributing to Public Goods: My 20 Rules for Refereeing
The development economics blogosphere has been abuzz with talk of refereeing lately. Here are some words of advice from Quarterly Journal of Economics editor Larry Katz in an interview with Berk Özler on the Development Impacts blog, here is David McKenzie on the same blog, and here is Chris Blattman.
I cannot possibly claim to be among the best referees, but by my count, I have refereed
5657 papers and two book manuscripts since 2005, and I do take pride in my refereeing, which might explain why I was asked to become associate editor at the American Journal of Agricultural Economics for 2012-2015.As such, I figured I should chime in with my own advice about how to referee papers. I cannot say I always follow every single one of the 20 rules that follow but those are, by and large, the rules I try to live by as a referee. Some of those rules are derived from a similar list by Chris Barrett, who gave the students in his graduate empirical development micro class a list of such rules.
Because the following list is highly idiosyncratic, I would be very happy to hear about your own rules in the comments. And because this is a specialized post, I’m placing the list under the fold. Continue reading →