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Sam Asher
@thesamasher
development economist. assoc prof @imperialcollege london. cofounder @devdatalab. india, open data, urbanism, mountains, and @celtics.
London, UK
Joined June 2013
Posts
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    Are night lights (NL) a reliable proxy for local GDP? An answer, in our paper “Development Research at High Geographic Resolution” aka the SHRUG paper (forthcoming at WBER). 🧵1/14 TL;DR: don’t trust existing GDP elasticities. With @paulnovosad @tobiaslunt @ryu_matsuura
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    🚨Announcement!🚨 Since 2020, @devdatalab has been working with @NITI Aayog to address last-mile data delivery challenges in India. Today NITI launched NDAP, a paradigm shift in the world of govt open data platforms. Check it out! ndap.niti.gov.in @OTSi_India @IDinsight
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    Hive mind I need your help! Need to finally learn R to teach an intro metrics course in it in the fall. What're the best materials to help a Stata user like me (and for my students who will be learning from scratch)? @PaulGP @KhoaVuUmn @SeanKHiggins
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    Eight years after graduating, another dissertation chapter finds a happy home...
    When mining rents go up in India: More criminal politicians elected; leaders get richer, commit crimes. Just accepted new paper by Paul Novosad (@paulnovosad) Sam Asher (@thesamasher). direct.mit.edu/rest/article/d…
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    Really grateful for support from @ERC_Research to build up the work we're doing at @devdatalab on the relationship between long-run cultural and economic change, combining so many of my favorite topics: urbanization, climate, gender, caste, LLMs, old British Raj docs, etc
    Congratulations to Dr Sam Asher for winning a major research grant from the European Research Council [@ERC_Research] 👏 💫 Sam aims to research the relationship between economic development and cultural change in India. Find out more ⬇️ imprl.biz/4gieYvJ
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    🚨🚨@devdatalab has just added district-level vaccine data to our India Covid platform. HUGE variation by state. In the midst of this terrifying new wave, we hope that this is useful to researchers and policymakers. See our blog post for more details devdatalab.medium.com/open-data-for-…
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    After nearly ten years of gathering as much high resolution data as we could find on India, we built a collaborative open platform so that when anyone invests in data, all researchers, policymakers, etc can benefit. All feedback welcome!
    The SHRUG: A new high-resolution data platform for research on India - Samuel Asher @thesamasher @JohnsHopkins Tobias Lunt @tobylunt @DevDataLab Paul Novosad @paulnovosad @dartmouth ideasforindia.in/topics/miscell…
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    This is very worrying. Unfolding situation so I don't have much to add at the moment but all of us who are committed to a robust and open marketplace of ideas in India and around the world should be following this (and others like it) very closely
    Sabyasachi Das, an assistant professor of economics at Ashoka University, has resigned from his position. Das has been in the news for a paper he wrote alleging the possibility of electoral ‘manipulation’ in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. #Education thewire.in/education/auth…
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    🚨PhD alert! In light of everything happening in the world, the Econ Department at @ImperialBiz is conducting a second lightning round of admissions for fall 2025! Applications due April 30, offers in mid-May. Please spread the word! More details:
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    🚨📊🚌Migration data now available on our COVID-19 India open data hub (github.com/devdatalab/cov…), contributed by/thanks to @clem_imbert @John_S_Firth. Blue map shows migrant destinations currently sending people home, green map shows migrant origins they’re returning to. (1/2)
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    I'm assembling a list of online math classes that predocs can take before applying to grad school. Many either aren't at universities or don't get free classes. Important to have a lot of good, affordable options throughout the year @predoc_org @cblatts @paulnovosad @tylercowen
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    🚨Faculty job alert!🚨 The Economics and Public Policy Department @imperialbiz in London is hiring for multiple positions, open rank. Great colleagues and students, wonderful broader community, amazing city. We're looking for a diverse applicant pool. imperial.ac.uk/jobs/descripti…
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    Super excited that my partner in research @paulnovosad and I just got funded to build out our data platform for India. Congrats to all the other winners and thanks to @tylercowen for supporting us!
    The fourth cohort of Emergent Ventures winners: marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolu…
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    After nearly a decade of talking about how we should make our data public, @paulnovosad and I (and @tobylunt and @ryu_matsuura) have finally done it! Our ambition is for this to not only be the first place researchers go to do quantitative work on India... 1/2