This week we featured research on misperceptions about democracy, teacher sorting & more...
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This week we released two insightful VoxDevTalks episodes. On Tuesday, we released our second episode of Development Dialogues, a collaboration with Yale's Economic Growth Center. Catherine Cheney was joined by Amit Khandelwal, Isabela Manelici and Arvind Subramanian to discuss the challenges that developing countries encounter when opening their markets to trade, the effectiveness of industrial policy and the implications of Trump's presidency for trade in these nations. On Thursday, Tim Phillips spoke to Chris Woodruff about the role of evidence at Development Finance Institutions.
History shows that under certain conditions, infrastructure can be exploited for political power, serving as a tool for control rather than public good. Felipe González, Josepa Miquel-Florensa, Mounu Prem and Stéphane Straub explore how Paraguay's dictator used road infrastructure to facilitate state-led repression.
Evidence on whether transfer programmes can sustain longer-term impacts after programmes end is mixed. On Monday, Akhter Ahmed, Melissa Hidrobo, John Hoddinott, Bastien Kolt, Shalini Roy and Salauddin Tauseef assessed whether a two-year transfer programme implemented in Bangladesh had sustained impacts on consumption and poverty four years after it ended – focusing on whether sustained impacts depended on transfer modality, complementary programming, and context.
Also on Monday, Daron Acemoglu, Cevat Giray Aksoy, Ceren Baysan, Carlos Molina and Gamze Zeki explored how an intervention, providing accurate information to voters in Türkiye, addressed misperceptions about the quality of state institutions and the value of democracy and how it affected demand for democracy.
Today on VoxDev, Luis Baldomero-Quintana, Guillermo Woo-Mora and Enrique de la Rosa Ramos explore the long-term effects of a Spanish colonial policy in Mexico and how it affected Mexico City’s economic and spatial landscape centuries later.
Research on the effects of cash transfers on local businesses and markets remains limited. Antonia Delius and Olivier Sterck outline the market and business impacts of a large-scale programme of restricted cash transfers in Kenya.
Public education is fundamental to providing equality of opportunity for students of different socioeconomic backgrounds. Yet, in many countries, the widespread problem of teacher sorting threatens this role. Yesterday, Nicolás Ajzenman, Eleonora Bertoni, Gregory Elacqua, Luana Marotta and Carolina Méndez Vargas explored how Peru's low-cost nationwide strategy encouraged highly qualified teachers to apply for jobs in disadvantaged schools.
There has been a flurry of excellent articles to end the year, with enough on CGDEV to warrant their own paragraph. Ranil Dissanayake had an excellent blog on how donors at development organisations "hear" evidence. He also wrote with Mark Miller and Roli Asthana about how FCDO can take economic growth seriously. Ryan Duncombe, Karam Elabd and Justin Sandefur wrote about the barriers to translating the two new malaria vaccines into lives saved. And finally, Charles Kenny discusses how current development and climate finance targets are the worst of all worlds.
Elsewhere:
- Need to catch up on Job Market Posts on development economics? Development Impact and economics that really matters have you covered.
- CEPR featured interesting work on China: Government reform and innovation performance in China by Min Zhang & Andrés Rodríguez-Pose + Chinese infrastructure lending and Africa's global value chain participation by Vito Amendolagine, Andrea Presbitero & Roberta Rabellotti.
- A write up on BRAC of Asif Saleh's recent interview: Development risks need urgent reimagining.
- Todd Moss calls for a more nuanced discussion of development and fossil fuels.
- Abhishek Waghmare had an excellent write up on Data for India explaining GDP and per capita income in India.
- Oliver Kim wrote about why the industrial revolution happened.
- Sandra Rozo discussed key insights from ten years of research on the impacts of regularisation of forced migrants in Latin America in a World Bank webinar.