The Case for Building Roads in Haiti

Bangladesh halved its poverty rate and grew its economy by as much as 7% in recent years. Yet many challenges remain, from malnourishment in rural districts to air pollution in the capital Dhaka. To help the government tackle the nation’s biggest problems, the Bangladesh Priorities Project asked scores of economists how best to respond.

It is almost universally agreed that more education is good for society. But it turns out that some popular educational policies achieve very little, while others that are often overlooked can make a huge difference.

Reducing class sizes would seem to be an obvious improvement; but by itself, smaller class size has not been shown to boost educational performance. Likewise, extending the school day seems an easy way to ensure that pupils learn more; but research finds that time spent in school matters considerably less than what happens there.

The latest global climate summit in Poland has generated familiar predictions of doom and disaster from environmental activists. Climate change seems to freeze our capacity for critical thinking: we are too eager to believe the problem is far worse than science shows, and – conversely – that our solutions are far easier than reality dictates.