VoxDev Development Economics
Hear about the cutting edge of development economics from research to practice.
Episodes
S7 Ep51: The critical minerals scramble
King Leopold II of Belgium told his envoy in London that he did not want to lose his slice of "this magnificent African cake". The cake was the Congo Free State. Today the Democratic Republic of Congo holds 70% of the world's cobalt reserves, and so the cake is back on the table.Christopher Adam (Oxford) is one of the editors of a special issue of the Oxford Review of Economic Policy on the new s
Ideas in Development: GiveDirectly's journey to scale
This is an episode from VoxDev's new podcast series, Ideas in Development. This series has a separate podcast feed, where you can find every episode of Oliver Hanney’s conversations on evidence.YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8eCnQy5fF4 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/givedirectlys-quest-for-scale/id1866874059?i=1000791048981 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episo
S7 Ep50: Evidence-based policy: Why one good trial isn't enough
Medicine has run rigorous clinical trials since the 1940s. Development economists borrowed the structure of the trials during the credibility revolution. Chris Cotton (Queen's University) argues that they misunderstood an important part of this revolution. One successful study is not a mature evidence base, and policies built on too little evidence tend to disappoint at scale. His answer is a fra
S7 Ep49: Follow the paper trail
In Uganda, every sale between two VAT-registered firms reaches the tax authority twice. The seller reports it, and so does the buyer. But the two numbers rarely match. In Turkiye, a supplier that installs its first industrial robot doesn’t make an announcement, but the administrative records can track when the firms automate, and what happens next.Justine Knebelmann and Nuriye Melisa Bilgin tell
S7 Ep48: How politicians co-opt bureaucrats
How can we cut corruption in government, procurement that generates kickbacks for local politicians? We could hire officials on merit. Across the developing world, many governments now do exactly that. So why do public contracts still go to political friends?In this week's VoxDev Talk, Sarah Brierley (LSE) tells Tim Phillips why merit-based hiring is not enough. If politicians cannot choose who g
Ideas in Development: How BRAC partners with governments to fight poverty
This is an episode from VoxDev's new podcast series, Ideas in Development. This series has a separate podcast feed, where you can find every episode of Oliver Hanney’s conversations on evidence.YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpOCMtfSF1A Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-brac-partners-with-governments-to-fight-poverty/id1866874059?i=1000788403797 Spotify: https://
S7 Ep47: No Taxation without Administration
Research on how to collect more tax in developing countries has focused on how information, especially administrative data, can help. But in Uganda for example, buyers and sellers report different amounts for the same VAT transaction in 79% of cases. The invoices exist ... but nobody in the tax administration is comparing them.In this week's VoxDev Talk Anders Jensen (Harvard Kennedy School) and
S7 Ep46: Rethinking development cooperation: The case for a 'balance sheet' approach
Many conversations about development for focus on aid: how much, from whom, and for how long. But aid has never been more than a small part of what pays for a country's development, and in 2025 it fell by 23.1%. The need to rethink our attitude to development has inspired the Future of Development Cooperation Coalition (FDCC). In this week's episode, Alexia Latortue and Radha Rajkotia of FDCC tal
S7 Ep45: Cape Town's day zero: How data rebuilt a city's water resilience
By 2018 the reservoirs supplying Cape Town were down to 20% of capacity. If they reached 13.5%, the city would need to shut down parts of the water network and send residents to collection points to fetch water. That was known as Day Zero, and the rain came just in time to avoid it.Hugh Cole (City of Cape Town) joined the city government in the middle of the crisis, and has subsequently driven th
S7 Ep44: Fifty years of Chinese growth: The gradualist reform strategy explained
In 1978, a farmer in rural China could not sell a sack of grain above the state quota, choose an employer, or move to the nearest city without a permit.In this week's VoxDev Talk, Kaiji Chen and Tao Zha (both Emory University and Atlanta Fed) explain how China dismantled barriers like this one at a time. Gradualist reform first gave farmers the right to sell surplus grain at market prices. Small
S7 Ep43: Caste, race, and power: The barriers to political inclusion
The ballot cast by a landless labourer counts the same as the one cast by the landlord whose fields he works. In this way, democracy can give excluded or subordinate groups access to political power.That's not what has happened, at least, not in large parts of the Global South. Amit Ahuja (UC Santa Barbara) calls those at the bottom of the social order "subaltern groups". Three barriers stand bet
S7 Ep42: Masculinity norms and their economic implications
Do economists treat what men do as normal human behaviour, and then study norms around women as a departure? If so, we need to pay more attention what we mean by masculinity.That's what Pauline Grosjean (University of New South Wales, CEPR) does. She argues that these masculinity norms carry economic weight of their own. What do men around the world think "being a man" means? The consistent answe
S7 Ep41: How global supply chains are built
This is an episode from VoxDev's new podcast series, Ideas in Development. This series has a separate podcast feed, where you can find every episode of Oliver Hanney’s conversations with leading development thinkers.YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgwcv4fyU28 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-global-supply-chains-are-built-and-how-to/id1866874059?i=1000774798943 S
S7 Ep40: Using mobile phones to support teachers, parents, and students
More households in low-income countries own a mobile phone than have electricity or clean water. So why is education one of the last places it has been put to work?Jenny Aker (Cornell) and Noam Angrist (Oxford) are the academic leads on a J-PAL Policy Insight that reviews 30 studies of mobile phone programmes in education. They tell Tim Phillips that the cheapest option, blasting out SMS message
S7 Ep39: Ideas in Development: Moving billions to evidence
This is an episode from VoxDev's new podcast series, Ideas in Development. This series has a separate podcast feed, where you can find every episode of Oliver Hanney’s conversations on evidence.YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-e0GAFGaJ0 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/moving-billions-towards-evidence/id1866874059?i=1000772910756 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/ep
S7 Ep38: How AI can put 20 years of development evidence to work
A farmer in rural Ghana can use her phone to take a picture of a blighted leaf, upload it, and within seconds she gets a diagnosis that takes account of the soil, the weather, and the other local conditions. Score one for AI. We don't have enough human experts because they are hard to train, and harder still to retain, so apps like this have huge potential. But it doesn't mean they will succeed.I
S7 Ep37: Why businesses stay small in emerging markets
If you walk down a street in a low-income country, count the businesses you can see, you will miss many entirely. Someone who cooks at home and sells at the roadside never appears in a registry. What we know about businesses in developing countries has always been incomplete. In this week's VoxDev Talk, Marcela Eslava (Universidad de los Andes Bogota) talks to Tim Phillips about two decades of re
S7 Ep36: Climate Change Politics in Developing Countries
A river dries up. The soil turns salty. A harvest fails. Farmers across the developing world feel climate change constantly and personally, they rarely blame their government, or demand action.Guy Grossman (University of Pennsylvania) is one of three authors of a new review of the politics of climate change in the developing world. He tells Tim Phillips that almost all of the existing research on
S7 Ep35: Ideas in Development: Has development economics lost its way?
This is an episode from VoxDev's new podcast series, Ideas in Development. This series has a separate podcast feed, where you can find every episode of Oliver Hanney’s conversations on evidence.YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EacHFVRt9p4 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/has-development-economics-lost-its-way/id1866874059?i=1000775748550 Spotify: https://open.spotify.
S7 Ep34: Why farmers struggle to adopt new agricultural technology
How many maize seeds should farmers plant in each hole? Ask the farmers and they say two or three. Agronomists can show them more reliable seeds, where they only need one. But change the seed and everything else changes too; the fertiliser, the spacing, the whole system. This is why getting better technology into the hands of African farmers, and helping them to find ways to improve their profits
S7 Ep33: Interpersonal violence costs the world more than war
Wars get the headlines. A civil war can wreck a country's economy and dominate its news for a decade. But if you assume war is the most costly form of violence a society faces, you would be wrong.In this week's VoxDev Talk, James Fearon (Stanford) joins Tim Phillips to argue that the violence happening quietly inside homes and on ordinary streets does far more damage than war and terrorism combin
S7 Ep32: Courts in the Global South
How do courts work when they work well? You would expect them to be impartial, neutral, and consistent. In much of the Global South that is a tall order. So when courts fall short of it, are they failing?Development institutions ask states to build strong courts on the North American and Western European model. Good governance follows, they argue. This model treats poorer, less democratic systems
S7 Ep31: Nonelite Women's Participation in Politics
The usual way to measure women's power in politics is to count the seats they hold in parliament. But most women who take part in politics never stand for office. They vote, attend meetings, petition, protest, or try to get the water supply fixed. In this week's VoxDev Talk, Soledad Artiz Prillaman of Stanford talks to Tim Phillips about her new review of the research into non-elite women's parti
S7 Ep30: The end of aid dependency
This episode follows a wide-ranging panel convened at Stanford's King Center on Global Development, featuring Gyude Moore, as well as Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman, former USAID Administrator and Ambassador Mark Green, and Chair and Founder of the Liquidity and Sustainability Facility Vera Songwe - The future of global development: Approaches and partnerships for a new reality.Bilateral aid to
S7 Ep29: What the $1-a-day global poverty line gets wrong
It's 1990. A young staff economist walks into a director's office at the World Bank and says the number he's about to publish is "crazy". The director tells him not to worry about it. The number was the dollar-a-day poverty line. Lant Pritchett, now of LSE, was that economist. More than three decades later, he's still worrying about it. In this week’s episode he argues that the dollar-a-day line
S7 Ep28: Why civil service reform fails (and what actually works)
Every civil service reform plan opens with the same list of complaints: poor performance, low motivation, weak accountability. Across six African countries and three decades, governments launched 131 separate reform efforts; not one fully achieved what it set out to do.Martin Williams spent more than a decade working alongside Ghana's civil service before writing a book called Reform as Process t
S7 Ep27: The World Bank's East Asian Miracle
In 1993, the World Bank published a report on a remarkable development story.East Asia's post-war growth — Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and their neighbours — had lifted millions out of poverty in a generation. The report documented the influence of export subsidies, state-directed credit, land reform, and government-business dialogue. But the bank, constrained by the Washington Consensu
S7 Ep26: Ed Glaeser on the perfect city and the demons of density
This is an episode from VoxDev's new podcast series, Ideas in Development. This series has a separate podcast feed, where you can find every episode of Oliver Hanney and Kurtis Lockhart's conversations on cities.YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjXmiaMPabQ Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-perfect-city/id1866874059?i=1000767322240 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/
S7 Ep25: Roshaneh Zafar on 30 years of microfinance and mindset change in Pakistan
Wherever Roshaneh Zafar went in Pakistan in the early 1990s, documenting World Bank social development projects, women told her the same thing: the water and sanitation are fine, but what about economic opportunity?Zafar tells Tim Phillips how that question led her to train with Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank, and then back to Pakistan to found Kashf Foundation in 1996 — the country's first
S7 Ep24: Leonard Wantchekon on youth and governance in African cities
This is an episode from VoxDev's new podcast series, Ideas in Development. This series has a separate podcast feed, where you can find every episode of Oliver Hanney and Kurtis Lockhart's conversations on cities. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOPG6UmOHGUApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cities-of-opportunity-not-powder-kegs/id1866874059?i=1000766172534Spotify: https
S7 Ep23: How killing sparrows contributed to the Great Chinese Famine
Between 1959 and 1961, between thirty and forty million people starved to death in China. The Great Famine had many causes, and one of them was a campaign to eradicate sparrows.Shaoda Wang of the University of Chicago tells Tim Phillips about Mao Zedong's 1958 Four Pests Campaign, which led to the mass killing of sparrows, set off a chain of consequences that scientists had warned about, but poli
S7 Ep22: Chris Blattman on how organised crime takes over cities
This is an episode from VoxDev's new podcast series, Ideas in Development. This series has a separate podcast feed, where you can find every episode of Oliver Hanney and Kurtis Lockhart's conversations on cities.YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKF3aJ96L2o Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-crime-takes-over-cities/id1866874059?i=1000763970538 Spotify: https://open.s
S7 Ep21: Boosting farmers' profits
Decades of agricultural development policy have chased yield. Bigger harvests, better seeds, more fertiliser. But how can we make farming more profitable? Craig McIntosh of UC San Diego is academic lead on a J-PAL Policy Insight covering twenty-three randomised evaluations of credit and grants for farmers in low- and middle-income countries. He tell Tim Phillips that although yields and revenues
S7 Ep20: Argentina’s 2017 tax reform
In 2017, Argentina had the highest corporate income tax rate in Latin America. Reducing it was politically popular and economically desirable. Getting it through a Congress where the governing coalition held just 19% of Senate seats, while the fiscal deficit ran at close to 8% of GDP, was a harder problem. A package of reforms was planned, revenue-neutral and phased over five years: corporate tax
S7 Ep19: Can digital credit unlock investment in smallholder farms?
At the start of every planting season, smallholder farmers needs seeds and fertiliser, but the income from the harvest that would pay for them is many months away. With no credit history and no collateral, banks aren’t going to give credit to farmers.They cope by selling livestock, pledging part of the harvest to a trader at a discount, or turning to neighbours.Can we do a better job of lending t
S7 Ep18: The complex link between poverty and health
Rich people live longer than poor people in every country that researchers have studied. In the United States today, the gap in life expectancy between the richest and poorest 1% of individuals exceeds ten years. The relationship between money and health is steepest at the bottom of the income distribution, where additional resources buy the most: when people are poor, there is a great deal that
S7 Ep17: The long shadow of British rule: India's colonial legacy
Eighty years after Indian independence, the economic fingerprint of British colonial rule is still visible at the district level. Two institutions in particular left scars: whether a district was governed directly by British administrators or by one of India's roughly 680 Indian princes, and what kind of land tax arrangement the British put in place. For example, by 1991, directly ruled districts
S7 Ep14: Ideas in Development: Raghuram Rajan on AI, India, and service-led growth
This is an episode from VoxDev's new podcast series, Ideas in Development. This series has a separate podcast feed, where you can find the entire AI series.Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ideas-in-development/id1866874059Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6sIdIKctE8frdWaz9iyfl2Everywhere else: https://audioboom.com/channels/5165629-ideas-in-developmentYouTube: https://ww
S7 Ep16: The rise and fall of China's overseas lending
China became the world's largest bilateral creditor to developing countries over two decades, and for most of that time the scale of what it was doing was effectively a state secret. Its state-owned banks lent close to $1 trillion to developing-country governments, structured roughly half those loans against commodity export revenues held in offshore accounts, and concentrated the riskiest lendin
S7 Ep15: The rise of digital payments in Latin America
Between 2019 and 2023, the number of electronic transactions tripled in six Latin American economies. The share of adults using digital wallets, mobile money, and mobile bank accounts went from 3% in 2011 to 40% by 2021. A region that not long ago was defined by financial disasters, hyperinflation, and deep mistrust of banks has become one of the world's leading examples of how digital payments c
S7 Ep13: Ideas in Development: Josh Lerner on the diffusion of technology
This is an episode from VoxDev's new podcast series, Ideas in Development. This series has a separate podcast feed, where you can find the entire AI series.Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ideas-in-development/id1866874059Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6sIdIKctE8frdWaz9iyfl2Everywhere else: https://audioboom.com/channels/5165629-ideas-in-developmentYouTube: https://ww
S7 Ep12: Can contact between groups reduce prejudice?
For 70 years, a simple idea has shaped efforts to reduce prejudice: put people from different groups together under the right conditions, and contact reduces prejudice. Gordon Allport proposed it in 1954. A landmark 2006 meta-analysis of 515 studies seemed to confirm it, reporting an average effect of 0.4 standard deviations on prejudice measures. That paper has been cited more than 14,000 times.
S7 Ep11: Transport policy for economic development
In cities across low- and middle-income countries, traffic crawls 24 hours a day. In Dhaka during rush hour, speeds average around 15km/h. At three in the morning, when the roads are empty, they average about 20km/h. Urban transport in the developing world is not only slow because of congestion. And so congestion policy, Adam Storeygard of Tufts University argues, gets you a small fraction of the
S7 Ep10: Reducing air pollution: Can markets succeed where regulation fails?
Particulate matter is, Michael Greenstone argues, the greatest public health threat on the planet. Worse than HIV, cigarettes, and alcohol. The average person loses about two years of life expectancy to it. In India, the figure is three and a half years. The solution to this problem has been tested, and it works, at least in high-income countries.Greenstone and his co-authors ran a randomised co
S7 Ep9: How skilled migration from Asia reshaped the US economy
A small number of Asian countries have provided thousands of high-skilled migrants to the US, many of whom have gone on to great success. What created this long-term trend, and what has it contributed to the US economy? And with changes in domestic policy, technology, and the opportunities in other countries, will it continue? Gaurav Khanna of UC San Diego tells Tim Phillips the story of high-ski
S7 Ep8: Integrating refugees: What policies work best?
With the number of global refugees continuing to rise, integrating refugees has become a difficult challenge for hosts – and it is far from easy for the refugees themselves. Dany Bahar of Brown University and Giovanni Peri of UC Davis tell Tim Phillips about a new review of the evidence that evaluates what policies have worked.
S7 Ep7: Can AI take off in Africa?
In this episode of Ideas in Development, we ask what needs to happen before AI can take off in Africa.Rose Mutiso talks us through the current state of energy and digital infrastructure in Africa, why leapfrogging is not guaranteed with AI, and what fundamental bottlenecks need to be addressed.Read the full show notes: https://voxdev.org/topic/technology-innovation/ai-africa-barriers-opportunitie
S7 Ep6: Gender inequality in labour markets: Why growth and education are not enough
Almost everywhere, women have less economic power than men, and earn less at work. Their commitment to childcare and work in the home gives them less spare time than men, as well as less recognition for the value of what they do. In another episodes based on the new book The London Consensus, published by LSE Press, Barbara Petrongolo of the University of Oxford, who one of the authors of the boo
S7 Ep5: African agriculture's underappreciated supply side
Agricultural yields across sub-Saharan Africa are falling. We can create better seeds, fertilisers and insecticides which has the potential to increase agricultural yields. But what stops that potential being realised? We put a lot of attention on how to influence the behaviour or the choices of farmers, but what can policy also do to help the firms, large and small, that provide the inputs that
S7 Ep4: Schools are failing to deliver learning
The new book The London Consensus is a large and very comprehensive successor to the Washington Consensus that dominated policymaking during the 1990s. It attempts to capture where the Washington consensus fell short, and suggest better policy for development.One area in which we need better policy is basic education. Despite the success of programmes to build and equip schools, outcomes are not
S7 Ep3: Why labour markets look different in low-income countries
Labor markets in poor countries are very different to labour markets in rich countries. Millions of young people in developing economies who will be starting work in the next few years will face rationed jobs, volatile employment, and low-quality work. How will they cope and how can policy best help them?Emily Breza of Harvard University and Supreet Kaur of UC Berkeley are the authors of a new re
S7 Ep2: Ideas in Development: How Costa Rica became an FDI powerhouse
Ideas in Development is VoxDev's new second podcast! You can listen to Ideas in Development wherever you get your podcasts, or watch on YouTube. Don't forget to subscribe, so you won't miss an episode.Today we're bringing you one of the episodes from our new series. Oliver Hanney and Kartik Akileswaran ask how Costa Rica, a small country of approximately 5 million people, became an attractive hub
S7 Ep1: How to solve the global reading crisis
It’s one thing to enrol kids at school. But that is the beginning of their education. When they are there, they need to learn – and unless that starts with learning to read, we’re failing in our duty to them. A new report, produced by a group of literacy experts and is endorsed by GEEAP, shows that improving the quality of reading instruction can sharply increase reading levels in schools in LMIC
S6 Ep50: A unified global carbon market
When the work well, carbon markets worldwide decarbonise economies and direct funds to the most efficient projects. Yet for these mechanisms to be effective, credible, and equitable, should we move beyond today’s fragmented initiatives and create a unified global carbon market that would integrate compliance and voluntary markets, with consistent standards and pricing? Robin Burgess of LSE and Roh
S6 Ep49: How the slave trade shaped development in Europe
Many papers in economics have shown the scale of the damage that slavery did to Africa, but can we also make the argument that the slave trade helped cause Europe’s economic development? Ellora Derenoncourt of Princeton is the author of a recently published paper which uses new methods and new data to investigate this question. She talks to Tim Phillips about what historical records can and cannot
S6 Ep48: Women’s power at home
At home, men usually have more money and more power than their female partners, and this inequality is particularly wide in LMICs. What does research tell us about how decisions are made and, if there isn’t enough food or money or care to go around, who gets what? And when policymakers try to empower women do their well-intentioned policies work, and can they provoke a backlash? Seema Jayachandran
S6 Ep47: Intimate partner violence: Causes, costs and prevention
Intimate partner violence (IPV) is common everywhere, but how common? What are its causes and effects? How can we do a better job of noticing it, measuring its impact – and ultimately, finding effective ways to stop it?A new review of IPV looks at the recent economic research on the topic, what this work can tell us, and what questions are, so far, unanswered. Manisha Shah of UC Berkeley is one of
S6 Ep46: The origins of government
The modern state, and the way in which is governs, is clearly very important. It provides social programs, education, disaster relief or, on the other side, it can cause violence and repression.We tend to assume that there is one model of a successful state, and the emergence of government has followed a single path with, as Francis Fukuyama wrote, “Getting to Denmark” as its end point. But is tha
S6 Ep45: Rethinking trade and development
We think of trade-driven growth during the era of hyper-globalisation as having created many “growth miracles” since the 1990s. But how did that happen? If we look at what created these miracles more closely, will that help us to understand how the geopolitical and technology shifts of the last decade have affected, and will continue to affect, the relationship between international trade and deve
S6 Ep44: What have we learned about training entrepreneurs?
How can we train the next generation of entrepreneurs? In developing economies, more than a billion dollars a year is spent on this type of training, but does it work, are we training the right people with the right skills – and what opportunities are there to do better?David McKenzie of the World Bank is one of the senior editors of the latest version of the VoxDevLit on Training Entrepreneurs. H
S6 Ep43: How religion shapes economic development
What is the relationship between religion and economic development? Does economic development mean fewer people become religious, or more? What causes people to believe, and does organised religion adapt as societies change, and competition from other religions increases?Sara Lowes of UC San Diego, Eduardo Montero on the University of Chicago, and Benjamin Marx of Boston University are the authors
S6 Ep42: Leonard Wantchekon on African development, democracy, and the African School of Economics
“ Africa must become a full participant in global knowledge production, not just a passive recipient of solutions from elsewhere.” The journey of Leonard Wantchekon from teenage revolutionary in Benin to professor of economics at Princeton also led him to found the African School of Economics. In this week's episode, Leonard talks to Tim Phillips about what he learned from imprisonment and torture
S6 Ep41: India’s economic development since independence
A fascinating new book called A Sixth of Humanity, Independent India’s Development Odyssey examines 75 years of development in the world’s most populous country – the successes and failures, the compromises, and the ways in which India has defied many of our ideas of how development should happen. The authors are Devesh Kapur of Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, an
S6 Ep40: Understanding the global construction sector
Policymakers and politicians like to talk about creating infrastructure like roads, schools and transport systems: how it grows the economy, provides jobs, and strengthens domestic firms. But that infrastructure needs raw materials, people and constructors to create it. Martina Kirchberger of Trinity College Dublin is an expert on how stuff gets built in developing countries. Are the materials the
S6 Ep39: What have we learned about women in the workforce?
Everywhere, women’s labour force participation is lower than men’s. There are many reasons to close this gap, but there are just as many reasons why it’s hard to do it. Research is discovering new and important insights into how financial constraints, social norms, the backlash from man and the problems of travelling safely reduce the opportunities to work from home. But which policies can change
S6 Ep38: Understanding and tackling school bullying
When children are victims of bullying or social exclusion at school, it can be devastating for every part of their lives. This is a global problem, but with a global solution: if we can teach kids about empathy, self-control, or the effects of their violent behaviour, it can reduce bullying. How well do these policies work, and can they be scaled up successfully? JPAL is about to publish a policy
S6 Ep37: The macroeconomics of climate change
Macroeconomists know that our economic activity influences – and is influenced by – the natural environment in which it is embedded, but we have learned that modelling those effects is far from easy. The scientific consensus around climate change is strong, but there’s not similar agreement over appropriate economic policies to deal with it. On the eve of COP 30, a new review of macroeconomics and
S6 Ep36: Culture and economic development
How does culture affect development policy, and how does development policy affect culture? If we don’t take account of cultural norms or fail to learn about how they interact with well-intentioned polices, then this gap in our knowledge may be undermining development projects. Can better measurement and collaboration with other social sciences fill these gaps? A new paper investigates what we kno
S6 Ep35: Conflict and development
With record levels of armed conflict around the world in recent years, the study of conflict has gone from being a niche corner of economics into a thriving discipline that learns from, and interacts with, development economics. Rigorous empirical research on conflict is, however, relatively recent. The Reducing Conflict and Improving Performance in the Economy (ReCIPE) programme aims to provide a
S6 Ep34: Food policy: Lessons and priorities for a changing world
In 2025, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) is 50 years old. “Lessons and Priorities for a Changing World”, its 2025 Global Food Policy Report, runs to just under 600 pages and covers the last five decades of progress in improving the world’s food systems – but also the challenges that remain, and the need for policy to keep evolving if we are going to build sustainable, heal
S6 Ep33: The development bogeyman? Understanding the role of middlemen
What happens from the moment goods are manufactured or harvested, until they are bought by consumers? As we know from experience, most of the things we consume reach us having been bought and sold, sometimes many times, by intermediaries – most of us don’t order a phone from the factory. Many interventions designed to increase the welfare of consumers in developing economies are designed to shorte
S6 Ep32: Contraception without prejudice: Reducing bias in family planning
Like all of us, healthcare providers bring their biases to work. But if those biases result in a reduced level of care for their patients, how can we correct them? An innovative experiment in three very different countries attempted to reduce bias in contraceptive care for women. Zachary Wagner of USC and Manisha Shah of UC Berkeley were two of a multidisciplinary team that implemented program and
S6 Ep31: Partnering with business for development economics research
In the second of our two podcasts with Francis Annan of UC Berkeley on his research on mobile money first in Ghana, then beyond, Tim Phillips discusses how he worked with commercial providers, not just to set up the RCTs designed to investigate the extent and reduce financial fraud, but to ensure that the insights could be scaled up. While contacting sceptical commercial providers can often meet w
S6 Ep30: Mobile money in Ghana
How can we design digital financial inclusion that minimizes fraud and maximises the benefit to the community in rural, low-trust, or cash-heavy economies? That’s the question posed by three studies of how mobile money works, or sometimes does not work, in Ghana’s villages. The author of those three studies: Francis Annan of Berkeley.In part one of a two-part VoxDev Talks special, Tim Phillips tal
S6 Ep29: The economics of period poverty
Stigma, shame and social norms around menstruation can prevent women and girls managing their periods with dignity and hygiene in low-income settings. So how can we provide information, influence those norms, and change behaviour to improve women’s health and well-being? Silvia Castro of LMU Munich and Kristina Czura of University of Groningen have conducted extensive field research in Bangladesh
S6 Ep28: Can storytelling reduce violence against women and children?
There is a long history of using “edutainment” – mass media storytelling, to pass on information about important social issues, and even to try to change behaviour. But does this work, and in what circumstances can it help? Amber Peterman of UNICEF has just published a review of what we know about edutainment’s power to reduce violence against women and children. She talks to Tim Phillips about it
S6 Ep27: Why “brain drain” is an incomplete story of migration
Many developed countries are creating immigration policies designed specifically to attract the most talented migrants. We often assume that when those skilled and educated citizens migrate from low-income countries in search of high-paying opportunities, it causes a “brain drain” in their home countries, delaying or hobbling development. A new article in the journal Science puts that assumption t
S6 Ep26: Minibuses, major gains: Rethinking urban transit
In the second of our special episodes recorded at the 5th annual STEG conference, Lucas Conwell of UCL talks to Tim Phillips about how the private minibus networks, such a distinctive feature of urban transit in developing country cities, can improve their service when there is little room for public investment or regulation. If you have ever tried them, they can seem chaotic, but would require la
S6 Ep25: Gas flaring threatens agriculture and livelihoods in Nigeria
This week on VoxDev talks we have two special episodes recorded at the 5th annual STEG conference. STEG is a research initiative that aims to provide a better understanding of structural change, productivity, and growth in low- and middle-income countries. For many economies in the Global South, fossil fuel extraction has been both a blessingand a curse. Nowhere more so than Nigeria, where oil pro
S6 Ep24: Going for economic growth: Lessons from Indonesia
In October 2024, Prabowo Subianto became president of Indonesia. He inherits the “Golden Indonesia” vision: By the time the country celebrates 100 years of independence in 2045, it aims to be one of the five largest economies in the world. But if Indonesia remains dependent on commodity exports like palm oil, coal, natural gas, and rubber, does it risk getting stuck in the “middle income trap” – t
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