This week we featured research on mass extinction, humanitarian aid, modern farming, state fragility and more...
Sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter and updates on our upcoming VoxDevLit launch events straight to your inbox.
A massive thank you to Jeannie Annan, Luc Behaghel, Tarek Ghani and Jonas Heirman for their insightful presentations at Tuesday's webinar. You can now find a recording of the event, alongside their slides and other links, on the VoxDev website: Using evidence to make humanitarian aid more effective. For those interested in research in conflict and post-conflict settings, next Wednesday (February 5th), the IGC SFi and VoxDev are hosting a webinar on state fragility research. More details here.
This week, microfinance was a big focus of the research we featured:
- We updated our VoxDevLit by Senior Editors Jing Cai, Muhammad Meki and Simon Quinn, and Co-Editors Erica Field, Cynthia Kinnan, Jonathan Morduch, Jonathan de Quidt and Farah Said. Issue 3 of this living literature review includes new evidence on asset-based microfinance, and can be found on our new interactive website here.
- Senior Editors discussed the takeaways from research in this area on this week's podcast.
- And in today's article, Francesco Cordaro, Marcel Fafchamps, Colin Mayer, Muhammad Meki, Simon Quinn and Kate Roll showed how better financial contracts can unlock business growth in Kenya.
We also featured four fascinating articles, showcasing the huge range of topics that economists are studying:
- In Tuesday's article, M. Scott Taylor and Rolf Weder showed that humans are accelerating possible mass extinctions, and outlined their radical solution to preserve biodiversity.
- Also on Tuesday, Joshua Blumenstock, Michael Callen, Anastasiia Faikina, Stefano Fiorin, Tarek Ghani and Saipremnath Muthukumaran explored an ambitious attempt to build administrative capacity in Afghanistan, and discussed lessons on how to improve state performance in fragile contexts.
- On Monday, Farid Farrokhi and Heitor S. Pellegrina outlined how global trade drove the shift to modern farming by facilitating access to critical agricultural inputs.
- Wednesday's article by Leah Lakdawala and Diana Martinez Heredia looked at the impacts of a unique Bolivian law that legalised and regulated the work of young children.
Elsewhere in development economics:
- On An Africanist Perspective, Ken Opalo writes that Africa’s elites cannot outsource their countries’ developmental ambitions.
- On WWHGE, Noam Angrist, Ben Piper, Rukmini Banerji, Hafsatu Hamza, Laura Poswell and Yue-Yi Hwa outline six insights on implementation challenges at scale – and how to fix them.
- On The Economics Show, Martin Wolf talks to Arvind Subramanian on whether India is the next economic superpower.
- On Our World in Data, Hannah Ritchie outlines the data on fossil fuels subsidies around the world.
Some interesting events:
- Catch up on Norad's 2025 Conference.
- The programme for the CSAE Conference (23 - 25 March) is out now, more details here.
Plus the following opportunities have been announced:
- JPAL Global are hiring for a number of roles, include Senior AI Policy Associate & Senior AI Policy Manager.
- Oxfam is hiring a head of research.