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Writing for The Washington Post, Prof. Charles Stewart III provides evidence that hand counting paper ballots is less accurate than using ballot scanners to tabulate results. “Computers — which ballot scanners rely on — are very good at tedious, repetitive tasks,” writes Stewart. “Humans are bad at them. And counting votes is tedious and repetitive.”
Kealoha Wong ’99, Hawaii’s first poet laureate, shares his excitement at being selected to deliver the keynote address at the graduation celebration for the classes of 2020 and 2021. “It’s a huge honor, I never would have thought in a million years that something like this would happen,” says Kealoha. “I feel as if I am ready to let these words fly.”
A new report by researchers from the MIT Election Data and Science Lab “examines the federal government’s history of election spending—and suggests ways it could consider dispersing monies to help underfunded election administrators,” reports Talib Visram for Fast Company. “The federal government not being a full partner in the game, especially given its fiscal resources, contributes mightily to the underfunding of this area,” says Prof. Charles Stewart III.
VoxDev spotlights the work of Prof. Abhijit Banerjee, Prof. Esther Duflo and graduate student Garima Sharma in studying the long-term effects targeted programs have on helping poor households escape the poverty trap. “Using a randomized controlled trial that tracked these households four, seven and ten years after the intervention, the authors find that ten years later, treated households consume about 20% more than control group households and earn about 30% more,” writes VoxDev.
Prof. Joshua Angrist speaks with The Nobel Podcast host Adam Smith about his career in economics and how winning the Nobel Prize has impacted his life. “I never stop thinking about my work,” says Angrist.
Graduate student and violinist Lily Tsai recently performed in a benefit concert for the Newton Food Pantry and Community Freedge, raising over $1,000, reports Charlotte Howard for The Boston Globe. “Everywhere you go there are going to be people who love to play and give back to the community and bring joy through music,” Tsai said.
New York Times contributor Thomas B. Edsall spotlights Prof. Jonathan Gruber’s research that provides evidence that “lower costs of abortion led to improved outcomes in the form of an increased likelihood of college graduation, lower rates of welfare use, and lower odds of being a single parent.” Gruber noted, “The very states that oppose abortion rights are the ones that engage in poorly designed tax cuts that leave them without the resources to support their neediest citizens.”
Prof. Parag Pathak, U.C. Berkeley Prof. Christopher Waters and University of Chicago postdoctoral scholar Guthrie Gray-Lobe “tracked more than 4,000 students from preschool through high school, comparing the outcomes of those who won pre-K seat to those whose lottery number wasn’t high enough,” writes U.C. Berkeley Prof. and New York Times guest writer David L. Kirp. “Those who attended preschool were less likely to be suspended or become entangled with the juvenile justice system,” writes Kirp.
MIT President L. Rafael Reif and Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry discussed the urgency of addressing climate change during the Climate Grand Challenges Showcase event, reports Chris Lisinski for the State House News Service. “Climate change has been called a ‘super wicked’ problem. In Boston, that might sound like a local way of saying ‘really hard,’ but this phrase is actually a technical term,” Reif said. “It describes any enormously complex societal problem that has no single right answer and no clear finish line as well as multiple stakeholders with conflicting priorities and no central authority empowered to solve it.”
Prof. Emeritus Leo Marx - "a pioneering student and then teacher of American studies” - died on March 8 at the age of 102, reports Bryan Marquard for The Boston Globe. Marquard notes that Marx was “a professor so thoroughly engaged with his students that he took delight when, on occasion, one nudged him aside to offer an alternative view.”
Prof. Jon Gruber speaks with Boston Public Radio hosts Jim Braude and Margery Eagan about the current state of inflation and what to expect in the future. “I think a gradual increase in interest rates can get us there [combating inflation] without throwing us into a recession,” says Gruber.
MIT announced five projects "targeting the world's toughest climate riddles" that were selected following a rigorous two-year competition, reports Benjamin Kail for Boston Business Journal. “Climate Grand Challenges represents a whole-of-MIT drive to develop game-changing advances to confront the escalating climate crisis, in time to make a difference,” says President L. Rafael Reif.
Prof. Joshua Angrist speaks with Steven D. Levitt about natural experiments, the Talmud, and his path to winning the 2021 Nobel Prize in Economics on the Freakonomics Radio Network's podcast, People I (Mostly) Admire. “Natural experiments started to attract people like me, partly because it was interesting and fun, and we had the opportunity to actually say something concrete about the world,” said Angrist.
Prof. Jonathan Gruber speaks with Boston Public Radio hosts Margery Eagan and Jim Braude about his experience working on the Affordable Care Act over twelve years ago, and how he thinks health coverage can be improved moving forward.
Prof. Jonathan Gruber speaks with Boston Public Radio hosts Jim Braude and Margery Eagan about his latest research on a program designed to increase health care access to immigrants across New York. “We reached out through a variety of mechanisms through non-government organizations through social media and we offered them a program to improve their healthcare. We brought them in and what we did was basically just connect them with doctors,” says Gruber.