The Mobile Salary Payment (MSP) reform in Afghanistan was an ambitious effort to build administrative capacity in one of the world’s most fragile states. Evidence on its impacts sheds light on what helps to improve state performance, and how fragilit...

The VoxDev team reflects on 2024 at VoxDev, and previews our plans for 2025.

A growing body of research uses experimental methods to study institutional quality and change, offering important policy implications.

The VoxDev Editorial Board would like to congratulate the 2024 economic sciences laureates, Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson. All three laureates have made significant contributions to both development economics and political economy.

Evidence from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan shows that digital aid is a cost-effective, credible, and efficient way to reach vulnerable populations, in this case poor, tech-illiterate, female-headed households, in fragile states.

Politics and patronage exacerbate public sector absenteeism, limiting the efficacy of reform measures

Smartphone monitoring streamlined information flows and improved inspection rates at public clinics across Punjab