This week we covered research on women voters in Pakistan, judicial capture, macro development, irrigation as climate adaptation, and two education interventions in Africa.
On Monday we are launching our new VoxDevLit. Don't forget to sign up here for our launch event (also on Monday, at 12:00GMT) with Senior Editors Stefano Caria and Kate Orkin, who will outline the key takeaways for policymakers from research on barriers to search and hiring in urban labour markets.
Women vote at much lower rates than men in Pakistan. In the 2018 election, women’s turnout was 9.1 percentage points lower than that of men, meaning that the set of voters who decided the election included 11 million more men than women. In Wednesday's article, Ali Cheema, Sarah Khan, Asad Liaqat and Shandana Khan Mohmand explore how women voters' turnout might be increased. They outline evidence which shows that, in contexts where men act as gatekeepers, efforts to improve political outcomes for women need to engage men.
Yesterday's article also focuses on Pakistan. Sultan Mehmood and Bakhtawar Ali present new evidence on how government real estate allocations to judges tilt the scales of justice in Pakistan's courtrooms. They uncover a quid pro quo between the Pakistani government and the judiciary, where judges receiving government-allotted housing are more likely to issue pro-government rulings.
Climate change poses a significant threat to the world's agricultural sector, which is increasingly vulnerable to unpredictable shifts in weather patterns and in need of targeted adaptation measures. In Monday's article, Di Wang, Peng Zhang, Shuai Chen and Ning Zhang study a specific adaptation measure - irrigation expansion. They find that this can play a pivotal role in mitigating the impacts of climate change on agriculture.
This week we featured two articles exploring the impacts of interventions aiming to improve the education system in Africa. Today's article highlights the important role of management in implementing changes that can transform teaching and learning. Sabrin Beg, Anne Fitzpatrick and Adrienne Lucas evaluate the impacts of a government programme in Ghana that encouraged school principals to act as leaders to improve classroom instruction. They find that this revolutionised classroom teaching and significantly enhanced student learning. In Tuesday's article, Joana Cardim Dias, Teresa Molina Millan and Pedro Vicente explore the effects of a computer-assisted learning programme in Angola which places teachers at the centre of the learning experience and is tailored to students' needs. They show that this improved teacher motivation and enhanced the overall classroom experience.
The availability of better data has given fresh impetus to the use of macroeconomic models to explain the development process in LICs. In this week's episode of VoxDevTalks, Doug Gollin and Paula Bustos discuss this emerging agenda, what questions it is helping to answer, and the challenges of the next generation of research.
Be sure to stay tuned for next week's articles and podcast, featuring research on market structure in China, infrastructure quality and FDI, trade shocks and infant health, mobile money, and protection from theft in agriculture.