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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20220606T101500
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SUMMARY:Research Seminar: Detection of Artisanal and Small-scale Mines
DESCRIPTION:The Growth Lab Research Seminar series is a weekly seminar that brings together researchers from across the academic spectrum who share an interest in growth and development. 	Speaker: Mathieu Couttenier\, Professor\, University of Lyon and Ecole Normale Superieur 	Abstract: Artisanal and small-scale mines (ASM) are on the rise. They represent a crucial source of wealth for numerous communities but are rarely monitored or regulated. The main reason being the unavailability of reliable information on the precise location of the ASM which are mostly operated informally or illegally. We address this issue by developing a strategy to map the ASM locations using a convolutional neural network for image segmentation\, aiming to detect surface mining with satellite data. Our novel dataset is the first comprehensive measure of ASM activity over a vast area: we cover 1.75 million km² across 13 countries in Sub-Tropical West Africa. Our procedure is remarkably robust\, which makes us confident that our method can be applied to other parts of Africa or the World\, thus facilitating research and policy opportunities on this sector. 	Whether attending in-person or over Zoom\, please register in advance. Room attendance in WEX-434 is limited to the Harvard community only. Contact Chuck McKenney with any questions. 	About the speaker:  	Mathieu Couttenier obtained his PhD in Economics in 2011 at the University Paris 1 Sorbonne\, Paris School of Economics. Before joining the University of Lyon and Ecole Normale Superieur (September 2018)\, he was Assistant Professor at the University of Geneva. He was also post-doc at the University of Lausanne\, visiting researcher at the department of political sciences at Stanford and at the economic department at Sciences Po Paris. His research is filled with interactions between economics and political sciences but also cultural\, institutional and geographical issues. He focuses on microeconomic questions\, in particular in the field of applied political economy. His main research interests are in the understanding of violence and civil wars. He has published many academic papers on the role played by income shocks\, natural resources or climate on the diffusion of conflicts over space and time. Some of his present research agenda also studies the political economy aspects of media coverage or of international economics. He has published in many leading peer-refereed journals\, such as the American Economic Review\, Economic Journal\, Review of Economics and Statistics\, Journal of the European Economic Association\, Journal of Development Economics and the Journal of Comparative Economics. 	 
URL:https://growthlab.hks.harvard.edu/event/research-seminar-detection-of-artisanal-and-small-scale-mines/
LOCATION:WEX-434 & Zoom (registration information below)
CATEGORIES:Academic Research Seminars
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20220607T101500
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DTSTAMP:20260426T205733
CREATED:20220601T174100Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250910T003916Z
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SUMMARY:Research Seminar: Land Quality
DESCRIPTION:The Growth Lab Research Seminar series is a weekly seminar that brings together researchers from across the academic spectrum who share an interest in growth and development. 	Speaker: David N. Weil\, James and Merryl Tisch Professor of Economics at Brown University 	Abstract: We develop a new measure of land quality by estimating weights in a Poisson regression of population in grid cells on a vector of geographic characteristics and country fixed effects. Aggregating to the level of countries\, we construct average land quality (ALQ) and quality-adjusted population density (QAPD). We establish several novel facts. First\, current income per capita is positively correlated with ALQ. Second\, while income today is unrelated to conventional population density\, it is strongly negatively related to QAPD. Third\, this negative relationship was not present in 1820 and emerged because today’s lower income countries have experienced faster population growth since then. Fourth\, countries with higher average land quality began sustained modern economic growth earlier\, and this earlier takeoff largely explains the ALQ-modern income relationship. We posit a framework in which higher land quality led to denser populations in Malthusian equilibrium and\, via agglomeration effects\, an earlier takeoff from that equilibrium. Less dense countries that took off later experienced larger multiplications of their populations over the course of the demographic transition due to the import of health technologies from countries that took off first. 	Paper co-authored with J. Vernon Henderson and Adam Storeygard 	Whether attending in-person or over Zoom\, please register in advance. Room attendance in R-304 is limited to the Harvard community only. Contact Chuck McKenney with any questions. 	About the speaker: 	David N. Weil is James and Merryl Tisch Professor of Economics at Brown University\, director of the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Wealth and Income Inequality Project at Brown\, and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Weil has written widely on various aspects of economic growth\, including the empirical determinants of income variation among countries\, the contribution of health improvements to growth\, the geographic determinants of development\, the measurement of income inequality\, the accumulation of physical capital\, international technology transfer\, population growth\, and the use of satellite observation as a measurement tool. His textbook on growth has been translated into six languages. He has also written on assorted topics in demographic and health economics including the economic impacts of malaria and salt iodization\, population aging\, Social Security\, the gender wage gap\, retirement\, and the relationship between demographics and house prices. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1990.
URL:https://growthlab.hks.harvard.edu/event/research-seminar-land-quality/
LOCATION:R-304 & Zoom (registration information below)
CATEGORIES:Academic Research Seminars
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