#AcademicRunPlaylist - 4/1/25

I got to go on a very long run today, and while enjoying early Boston spring I was also able to listen to a bunch of talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was a great conversation about the effectiveness of vocational training programs in low and middle income countries with Oriana Bandiera, Stefano Caria, and Munshi Sulaiman on the VoxDev podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ll7VtrhhrSo

Next was a fantastic talk by Nobuko Nagase on women and the labor market in Japan. Nagase reviews the improving but still extremely poor state affairs, the effects of different government interventions, and longer term changes necessary to bring more fairness and equality to the Japanese labor market. Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ydF0RRztFY

Next was an intriguing talk by Evan Shelhamer on test-time adaptation for robust visual recognition at Ai2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyyMSjxbvII

Next was an excellent talk by Simran Arora on expanding the quality and efficiency of AI systems at UW https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8awefArJls

Last was "The Wealth of Refugees" by Alexander Betts. Betts has penned a tour de force, combining economic, historical, and deep qualitative analysis to provide a holistic look at how refugees build economies and societies. This book reviews broader trends and correlations, examines natural experiments for quantitative testing of different policies, reviews historical examples, conducts interviews, and more. This is really a one-stop-shop for understanding the state of knowledge on economic refugee policies, barriers to effective policy implementation, and understanding some of the more successful cases. This book is a must for folks in business, social sciences, and policy/government circles. Highly recommend https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-wealth-of-refugees-9780198870685