Chris Blattman, a political scientist and economist, writes about development economics, poverty, conflict and research methods.
HN commenters cite it on cash transfers to the poor, clinical trial preregistration and social science research practices.
Is corruption actually the problem?
Perhaps nations with high levels of corruption are lacking basic legal institutions that tend to allow open market economies to function effectively. That is, corruption is simply a side-effect of institutional deficiency.
Chris Blattman (http://chrisblattman.com/2012/11/05/corruption-and-development-not-what-you-think/) says: "Most of us fail to imagine that corruption can also grease the wheels of prosperity. Yet in places where bureaucracies and organizations are inefficient (meaning entrepreneurs and big firms struggle to transport or export or comply with regulation), corruption could improve efficiency and growth. Bribes can act like a piece rate or price discrimination, and give faster or better service to the firms with highest opportunity cost of waiting."
Likewise John Wallis (http://www.nber.org/chapters/c9977.pdf) wrote an informative economic history paper about American corruption in 2006. The conclusion? "No society with a systematically corrupt political system has limited government. The economic system is always at risk, entry is limited, competition is fettered, and economic policies are shaped by politicians to maintain their political control of the government. Crony capitalism is not a manifestation of venal corruption—it is a symptom of systematic corruption."
Note: I am an atheist, but "Jesus and The Disinherited"[0] was a very influential book for me. I read it after seeing this review[1] by Chris Blattman, social scientist at columbia.
It helped me understand the relationship between fear, oppression, hatred and crime.
It also gave me renewed disdain for the evangelical (as in, spreading of gospel) european and american tradition, a disdain which is probably shared by the author.
Before reading the book, I had never really "understood" Martin Luther King Jr. How could it be morally right to want to integrate, forgive and even love one's oppressors? I feel like I have a better understanding of the civil rights movement in the US, and perhaps a slightly more optimistic view of the future.
[0]: http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Disinherited-Howard-Thurman/dp/0807010294
[1]: https://chrisblattman.com/2015/09/29/fear-and-what-a-centuries-old-theologian-can-teach-the-modern-social-scientist/
0. I measure Show HN projects, some of which are startups. The dead/alive status as success is a proper measure for survival. For success, see the section on commercial success.
1. OLS works fine in classification problems. And it has advantages. For example, see http://chrisblattman.com/2015/07/22/statistician-neal-beck-just-justified-my-longstanding-hatred-and-loathing-of-logit/
And I purposefully included results from three models, not one. They all say the same thing.
2. Multicollinearity refers to perfect multicollinearity. Having correlated independent variables (as in score and comments) are okay. See http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/86269/what-is-the-effect-of-having-correlated-predictors-in-a-multiple-regression-mode
3. I mention R² as one measure of predictive power.
4. The regressions without GitHub-hosted projects return same results.
Another good read [1]. Here is a quote from the author of some key papers in favor of cash to certain poor, also the author of some pop articles on the idea:
"If I were an enterprising young researcher looking for an idea and experiments that will prove powerful in five years, I would try to find the stake I can drive into the heart of the cash transfer movement."
He states that giving cash is useful if the person is enterprising, such as trying to start a business, and direct cash is what is holding them back. I doubt this is most poor people, especially in the US. Otherwise, cash is not as useful as other poverty alleviation methods.
[1] http://chrisblattman.com/2013/06/27/why-cash-transfers-to-the-poor-are-not-the-next-big-thing/
There's some correlations I love that illustrate this. You have "Lack of Pirates Causing Global Warming":
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikaandersen/2012/03/23/true-fact-the-lack-of-pirates-is-causing-global-warming/
and one I hadn't seen before, "Internet Explorer vs. Murder Rate",
http://chrisblattman.com/2013/05/24/correlation-versus-causation-in-a-single-graph/
Not exactly the same - especially since water gets drawn out of reservoirs (typically) so there's already significant buffer, but here's a plot of water consumption in Edmonton during Canada's gold medal olympic hockey game back in 2010.
http://chrisblattman.com/2010/03/08/graph-of-the-day-canadians-pee-between-periods/