rugby

Friday links: Night lights, monsoons, and guns.

I'm going to be away on my honeymoon next week, so no blog posts (by order of the totally-has-her-priorities-in-the-right-place fiancee). I'll leave you with one extra post this week, featuring some interesting tidbits from around the web.

India's border with Pakistan utilizes enough lighting to be seen from space.

Early map of the monsoon advance (from here).

Early map of the monsoon advance (from here).

India's weather forecasters did a much-better-than-usual job (take that, Quartz!) of forecasting the monsoon this year. (Though it's a little hard to know whether this was luck or actual improvements in the forecasting process, as the government suggests.) Getting these forecasts right is crucial: take a look at this really neat paper by Mark Rosenzweig and Chris Udry (two of my favorite authors in development economics) at Yale for reasons why.

Planet Money featured Berkeley economist David Card on the current influx of migrants to Europe. His results from Miami in the 1980s suggest that many peoples' fears about immigrants are unfounded.

A new paper in October's AEJ:Applied has a depressing title.

Economist Ryan Briggs has a moving piece on what development means in the wake of his newborn son's illness.

Cool maps (with really ugly color schemes) about the spatial organization of cities.

Trevor Noah has three great pieces: two on guns, and another on the one and only D. Trump.

Also, the Springboks are officially moving into the quarter finals of the Rugby World Cup (and Bryan Habana is now the all-time RWC leader in tries scored)!