VoxDev Development Economics

Why do trade barriers remain high in developing countries despite the significant potential to drive economic growth through trade? Advanced economies have mostly removed tariffs and other barriers to trade. By contrast, in many developing countries such barriers remain in spite of the huge potential to drive economic growth through trade. In this VoxDev talk, David Atkin and Amit Khandelwal discu...

Many development economists have advocated unconditional cash transfers as a crucial tool for reducing poverty, especially during the present COVID-19 pandemic. In this VoxDev talk, Karthik Muralidharan discusses the effects of a small unconditional cash transfer for India’s development goals. He argues that an inclusive growth dividend, pegged at 1% of GDP and paid to all citizens, would have maj...

Can investments in vocational training, contrary to the existing research literature, actually improve labour market outcomes?

Why do we still see high rates of child marriage in settings such as Bangladesh, despite significant improvements in women’s economic empowerment?

How do poor mental health and poverty interact, and how can we best ensure access to mental health services?

How can we best incentivise bureaucrats in a formal manner that avoids concerns over corruption?

Can policymakers speed up the adoption of modern agricultural technologies through peer-to-peer learning?

To what extent do the poorest rural households in sub-Saharan Africa benefit from residential electrification investments?

Do unconditional cash transfers increase welfare in communities as a whole, even within households that do not receive them?

How can governments in developing countries best ensure widespread and effective social protection in light of the COVID-19 pandemic?

How can we best protect the most vulnerable in the developing world during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Whilst rural to urban migration can improve the allocation of labour, can it have unintended consequences on risk sharing in rural communities?

Rickshaw drivers in India who randomly received sobriety incentives as part of an experiment significantly reduced their daytime drinking

Does easing the financial stress of short-term workers by paying them earlier lead to productivity improvements?

 Many researchers have suggested that increased sleep at night translates into improved working outcomes, such as higher productivity. But while these researchers have often focused on settings where sleep quality is high, workers in many developing countries suffer from low sleep quality due to factors such as noise, heat, and mosquitoes. In this VoxDev talk, Gautam Rao and Frank Schilbach discus...

Why do some countries have high rates of taxation and high compliance, while some failed states have neither?

Why has economic growth stuttered in Mexico despite, on the face of it, implementation of sensible economic policies by successive governments? Since the 1990s, Mexican governments have done a lot right economically speaking. Inflation has been brought down and the economy stabilised, while exports have also flourished. And yet Mexico has struggled to translate this into significant economic growt...

Some multinationals privately enforce labour standards among their suppliers in developing countries. But is this effective, and does it complement or replace other ways to improve working conditions? Laura Boudreau discusses a recent randomised controlled trial she conducted in Bangladesh to test whether multinational buyers can provide their suppliers in developing countries with incentives to i...

In Mexico in 1996, the extreme poverty rate had climbed above 30%, prompting the government to introduce a poverty reduction programme called Progresa, which turned the conventional wisdom on poverty reduction policies on its head. In this VoxDev talk, Santiago Levy, one of the main architects of the programme that was to become Progresa, takes us back to the 1990s to discuss the creation of the p...

Social science research seeks to improve the world we live in. Yet, there is little information on how much political leaders actually value this research when making policy decisions. In this VoxDev talk, Diana Moreira of the University of California, Davis discusses an innovative experiment which took place in more than 2,000 municipalities in Brazil and sheds new light on this topic. The findin...

Penny Goldberg is the World Bank’s Chief Economist. This means she manages the research department and is in charge of the research agenda. The World Bank has to continuously evolve to meet its ambitious agenda of eliminating extreme poverty and achieving shared prosperity. Its strength lies in its capacity to produce knowledge and convene policy makers and practitioners. Today, its greatest chall...

On our two year anniversary we asked a few experts to reflect over the last two years of development economics and discuss what they think have been the most important challenges and new evidence. In this VoxDev Talk, Bill Easterly, Co-Director of NYU’s Development Research Institute, discusses the backlash against globalisation, and the importance and challenge of conducting research on macroecon...

On our two year anniversary we asked a few experts to reflect over the last two years of development economics and discuss what they think have been the most important challenges and new evidence. In this VoxDev Talk, Daron Acemoglu, MIT, highlights the slide of democratic and broadly inclusive institutions.   Editor’s Note: This is part of our 2 year VoxDev anniversary series

On our two year anniversary we asked a few experts to reflect over the last two years of development economics and discuss what they think have been the most important challenges and new evidence. In this VoxDev Talk, Penny Goldberg, World Bank Chief Economist, highlights the trend of becoming more inward looking, and the emergence of new and compelling evidence on how mobile people are when hit b...

How can we combat the increasing trend that extreme poverty is not only confined to low-income countries, but also to middle-income ones?