VoxDev Development Economics

The study of institutions and political power is a strand of development research that in recent years has taught us a lot about – in the name of the famous book – Why Nations Fail, but also what improves their chances of success. James Robinson talks to Tim Phillips about what he and his fellow researchers have discovered, and which directions for future research are the most exciting. Photo cred...

In the last 30 years many governments have attempted to shift service delivery away from a central bureaucracy to local administrations. How well has it worked, and what do we know about the right and wrong way to decentralise? Dilip Mookherjee talks to Tim Phillips. Photo credit: Julien Harneis

Most policies are one-size-fits-all. But in some cases, we can do better. How can we design an intervention that incentivises people to manage their diabetes and hypertension, and does it deliver better results for both the patient and the policymaker? Ariel Zucker of UC Santa Cruz tells Tim Phillips about an experiment to deliver personalised healthcare in India.

Poor air quality is a danger to children’s health, but most of what we know about the effects are from wealthy countries or large cities. A multidisciplinary study has estimated the impact of air quality on child health for many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, with surprising policy conclusions. Jennifer Burney talks to Tim Phillips.

The economies of Latin America and the Caribbean are facing some tough economic problems. What policies will improve prospects for people who live in the region? Eric Parrado, Chief Economist at the Inter-American Development Bank, talks to Tim Phillips about how IDB puts research into practice.

Multifaceted graduation programmes can permanently change the lives of desperately poor people. But which components of these programs are the most important? And would any of these single interventions work just as well if they were tried on their own? Robert Osei tells Tim Phillips whether individual facets might be sufficient to help people graduate permanently from poverty.

Should the community have a greater say in determining how aid is spent? Participatory development aid has the goal of making sure that governments can’t misuse aid to buy approval. It’s an important idea, but Kate Baldwin tells Tim Phillips that it may be much more complicated in practice than in theory. 

The challenge of creating evidence-based policy inspired Arianna Legovini of the World Bank to create an entirely new model of impact evaluation: The Development Impact Evaluation (DIME) group generates operationally relevant data and research that has vastly expanded our knowledge of which interventions work, how they work, and how best to implement them. She tells Tim Phillips how DIME puts rese...

Programs that incentivise rural workers to migrate to cities in Bangladesh for seasonal work have been successful. But why don’t more people migrate in this way, and why do some choose not to return to the city? Mushfiq Mobarak tells Tim Phillips about what the researchers discovered when they looked closely at the data, and how that should change policy to encourage migration.

Thinking about development as a ladder is a useful metaphor, but is it true? Can every country climb, or does trade push some countries up the ladder, and some countries down? David Atkin of MIT used this idea as a starting point to investigate the interaction between global trade and development, and he tell Tim Phillips what he discovered.

In the first of a series of podcasts recorded at the PSE-CEPR Policy Forum at the Paris School of Economics, Esther Duflo talks to Tim Phillips about how development economics can respond to the challenges of the 21st century, the link between climate justice and corporate taxation, and why development economics is like cooking a ragoût.

In a world of limited resources, which interventions to help kids learn offer the best value for money? A new report evaluates the evidence and gives some clear policy recommendations about what is, and is not, a policy “smart buy”. Rachel Glennerster talks to Tim Phillips.

Increasing access to education, specifically higher education, can lead to better life chances, particularly for women. But how large is the benefit, and what changes? Ahmed Elsayed talks to Tim Phillips about what we can learn from Egypt’s post-revolution expansion of public university education.

When dictators introduce local elections, more democracy at the local level may mean less control for the rulers. For a time in rural China, elected village leaders implemented government policy, favouring popular policies, while pushing back against those that villagers didn’t like. Nancy Qian tells Tim Phillips how even in a dictatorship, democratic choices can sometimes shape local lives.

When a country’s borders encompass several distinct ethnic groups, how does it create a national identity? A program in Nigeria assigns graduates to different ethnic regions for a year. Does this make them prouder to be Nigerian, and do they give up some of their ethnic identity if that happens? Oyebola Okunogbe talks to Tim Phillips.

How effective are workfare programs at achieving their goals? Do they provide a way for participants to change their lives, or just short-term extra income? Eric Mvukiyehe and Subha Mani have analysed the outcomes of recent programs, and they tell Tim Phillips what workfare does well, and whether the programs sustain their successes.

Public works programs – workfare – are used in many fragile and conflict-affected countries to offer a safety net to poor and vulnerable households. But how large is their impact, do men and women benefit equally, and do they have a wider social benefit? Arthur Alik-Lagrange tells Tim Phillips about the impact of one program in the Central African Republic.

El Salvador’s civil war ended a generation ago, but what is its legacy in the regions that were occupied by guerrillas? The economy can recover, but is there longer-lasting damage to institutions and trust? Mica Sviatschi talks to Tim Phillips about how El Salvador is still divided by conflict.

Better access to childcare may make it easier for women to get jobs outside the home, get better jobs, or make more money doing the job they have already. All desirable outcomes, but how easy are they to achieve? Selim Gulesci talks to Tim Phillips about a J-Pal Policy Insight that pulls together the research on these topics.

If we can provide better employment opportunities for women, in theory that could reduce domestic violence – but strong empirical evidence has been hard to find. Deniz Sanin tell Tim Phillips how government policy to boost coffee exports in Rwanda may have reduced domestic violence and why paid work has this effect.

Zulfiqar Bhutta of the Centre for Global Child Health is one of the global leaders in implementing large-scale public health programs in developing countries. He tells Tim Phillips about what he has learned about working with communities to improve their health, how failure can often be a positive learning experience, and what clinicians can learn from – and teach – economists.  Photo credit: DFID...

When there’s a successful agricultural extension program, how much of that success is sustained when it is discontinued? How long it takes to change behaviour, and whether change is permanent, can tell us a lot about whether the program is good value. Munshi Sulaiman tells Tim Phillips about a “reverse RCT” in Uganda that tested this question.

Managers often don’t know how much effort their workers are putting into a job. Technology offers a way to solve this problem by monitoring those workers automatically. But do all workers put in more effort when they are monitored? Golvine de Rochambeau talks to Tim Phillips about what happened when Liberia’s truck drivers had GPS trackers fitted to their trucks.

Are fathers more generous to their sons than their daughters? If that investment is in the child’s education and healthcare, then gender-based differences are not just unfair, they give sons a head start in the future. Rebecca Dizon Ross tells Tim Phillips about a new experiment to measure mother-father differences in spending, and to discover why it happens. Photo credit: Brian Wolfe/flickr

How does trade policy shape foreign direct investment in exporting countries, and how might this affect their structural transformation? Nina Pavcnik tells Tim Phillips about the long-run impact of a bilateral agreement between Vietnam and the US, with some surprising insights into the relationship between trade and job creation. Photo credit: Hien Phung, stock.adobe.com .