Where can you find articles, podcasts, and videos about research and topics in development economics? This blog is your one-stop shop for accessible resources related to development economics.
There is an ever-growing number of resources - newsletters, articles, blogs, podcasts, and videos - available to those who want to keep up with the latest research, evidence and thinking related to development economics. So, where can you start? Over the past two years I have built up a bank of free-to-access resources that I regularly read, listen to, or watch to stay in the loop. I have listed these in this blog, which is intended to be as comprehensive as possible. Hopefully there is something new for everyone, even those who have been interested in the subject for a while.
Not all of these resources strictly fall under ‘development economics’. If I have included them here, it is because they regularly release content that relates to policy-relevant topics in development economics.
If you are just getting started in learning about development economics, I would first recommend signing up to all of the following newsletters, which will give you a broad overview of recent research and policy debates. Don’t worry, these are released (approximately) weekly and won’t clog up your inbox. Then, depending on your preference for reading, listening or watching, I would go through the websites, podcasts, and YouTube channels linked to below in order to find the communication style that resonates best with you (as long as you keep reading VoxDev!).
Development economics newsletters
You can sign up at the links below to receive insights and discussions related to development economics straight to your inbox.
- VoxDev’s Weekly Newsletter
- Every Friday in our newsletter, we summarise as much relevant research and debate as possible, on and off VoxDev.
- Development Impact – World Bank Blogs
- Individual posts on methodologies, papers or policy by World Bank staff.
- Weekly curated links put together by David McKenzie.
- Economics and Marginalia
- A weekly set of links, mostly development economics related, put together by Ranil Dissanayake (CGDEV).
- JPAL Newsletters
- eNews: A monthly newsletter highlighting research results, news, and policy lessons from randomised evaluations.
- Research Newsletter: A monthly newsletter featuring new academic working papers, published papers, and information about new randomised evaluations.
- The Cranky Corner: Putting Complexity Back in Policy
- Jishnu Das’s new substack attempts to simplify, but not oversimplify, the economics behind policy debates.
- Previously Jishnu wrote on LinkedIn, and his account is still well worth a follow.
The following two newsletters are must-reads to stay in the loop with relevant policy debates in Africa.
- An Africanist Perspective
- Ken Opalo writes clearly and informatively about various issues in Africa.
- This Week in Africa
- A weekly bulletin by Jeffrey W. Paller that curates news about democracy, development, and daily life across Africa.
Regular reading on development economics
A number of websites, like VoxDev, focus exclusively on research in development economics. I make sure to regularly check the blogs and articles posted on the following platforms.
- The International Growth Centre
- The IGC has tons of resources, including a blog, evidence papers, growth briefs and more.
- J-PAL
- J-PAL has a wealth of resources available on their website, including Policy Insights, practical resources for researchers, and my personal favourite, the Evidence to Policy page.
- Women in Leadership in Economics Initiative (IEA-WE)
- We have partnered with IEA to amplify women economist’s voices, read the latest comment articles and policy briefs from IEA’s work on their website.
- Yale Economic Growth Center
- Yale EGC features economics and data-driven insights for equitable development.
- Center for Global Development
- Check out the CGDEV blog to get an overview of their varied work on development policy and find resources you can dive deeper into.
- Ideas For India
- An economics and policy portal focused on growth and development in India.
- They release research-based articles, opinion-based posts (perspectives), experience-based ‘notes from the field’, e-symposia/debates, explainers and more, some of which is translated to Hindi.
- Global Dev
- A blog aiming to connect development research to successful policies.
- Articles available in English, French & Spanish.
- BRAC Blog: The Good Feed
- BRAC’s blog explores insights from the global south for the world’s biggest challenges.
- Innovations for Poverty Action
- IPA have a blog, resources on evidence use, and evidence from over 900 evaluations across different areas of sectoral expertise.
- IDInsight
- The IDeas Blog and IDInsight Reports have lots of useful insights.
- 3ie (International Initiative for Impact Evaluation)
- 3ie Development Evidence Portal is an expansive and growing repository of rigorous evidence on what works in international development.
- PEP (Partnership for Economic Policy)
- The Partnership for Economic Policy (PEP) is a Southern-led global organisation dedicated to supporting development in the Global South, and has a blog and policy brief series.
- BII (British International Investment)
- The Research and Policy Blog by Paddy Carter covers issues related to development finance.
- CEGA (Centre for Effective Global Action)
- CEGA's blog outlines new insights and tools to improve people's lives.
- Mulago
- Mulago's website has articles, a blog, and tools for those looking to achieve impact at scale.
- UNU-WIDER
- UNU-WIDER has a huge range of resources on development economics, including their blog WIDERAngle.
These websites cover topics in development through data:
- Our World in Data
- Our World in Data’s mission is to publish the “research and data to make progress against the world’s largest problems”.
- Data for India
- Insights, charts and data to create shared knowledge and expand our understanding of India.
- Afrobarometer
- A pan-African, non-partisan survey research network that conducts public attitude surveys on democracy, governance, the economy, and society.
Many websites focus on specific topics within development. For example:
- What Works Hub for Global Education
- WWHGE has evidence and resources exploring how to put evidence-based ideas into widespread practice.
- TaxDev
- The centre for tax analysis in developing countries has blogs, events and other resources to contribute to more effective tax policymaking in LMICs.
Other websites have a broad focus, but still regularly cover topics relevant to Development Economics through blogs, articles, and reports.
- VoxEU: VoxDev is modelled on this website and covers a wide range of economic research, including studies on development economics
- The Conversation Africa: An independent source of news and views from the academic and research community.
- Asterisk magazine: An interesting new online magazine that covers topics relevant to our own work, their latest issue is on development (broadly defined).
- The Economics Observatory: An accessible website providing answers to questions about the economy, including on Aid & International development and Energy & Climate Change.
- The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS): Reports, presentations and commentary on International Development.
- Microeconomic Insights: Distilling research for public debate, including articles on development.
- Open Philanthropy: Has a blog and research reports such as Economic Growth in Low- and Middle-Income Countries.
- Brookings: Global Economy and Development at Brookings – Research and Commentary
Economic journals are now doing some of the work themselves!
- NBER (National Bureau of Economic Research)
- The Digest - A free monthly publication featuring non-technical summaries of research on topics of broad public interest.
- The Reporter - A free quarterly publication featuring programme updates, several summaries of affiliates' research, and news about the NBER.
- AEA (American Economic Association)
- AEA Research Highlights are podcasts, articles and charts featured in selected articles published in the AEA journals.
Development economics podcasts
Prefer listening to researchers discuss their research rather than reading summaries? There are a growing number of excellent podcasts that focus on development economics so you can listen on the go.
- VoxDevTalks: The excellent Tim Philipps hosts our weekly podcast which discusses the policy takeaways from the latest research.
- We are excited to be collaborating with Yale EGC for a new series of podcasts, Development Dialogues – listen now to the first episode on financing climate adaptation. I would also recommend checking out Voices in Development, season 1 of Yale EGC’s podcast.
- Conversations on Transformation (STEG): Discussions of important new research in structural transformation, growth and economic development.
- In Pursuit of Development: Dan Banik’s podcast covers topics including democracy, poverty eradication, and the urgent battle against climate change.
- CSAE Research Podcasts: A series of conversations between researchers and collaborators about projects taking place at the Centre for the Study of African Economies.
- Econ-on-Mics (IEA WE): A joint production of the International Economic Association’s Women in Leadership in Economics initiative and Women in Econ/Policy.
- Ideas Untrapped: Tobi Lawson’s podcast offers a platform for debate on ideas that matter for economic growth.
- Ideas of India: A Mercatur Original Podcast with Shruti Rajagopalan that examines the academic ideas that can propel India forward.
- CID Voices: Amplifies the work and perspectives of those in the Harvard Center for International Development community.
- Impact = (BII): Aims to demystify how to invest to achieve impact in developing economies
Some other podcasts that sometimes focus on development economics include:
- VoxTalks is our partner podcast, which focuses on a wide range of economic research, including topics in development economics.
- Trade Talks (Chad Bown): A podcast about the economics of trade and policy. The “Trade Talks Episode Catalog for Educators” divides these 200 episodes by topic and is a super useful resource.
- The Economics Show with Soumaya Keynes: This podcast digs into the hottest topics in economics and frequently touches on topics relevant to development.
Can’t find an episode on research you’d like to listen to? As you might have seen, you can now use AI to create your own podcast by uploading a pdf to Notebook LM.
There are now lots of ways to learn about research without reading academic papers. If you do want to dive deeper into papers themselves, there has never been an easier time to do so. I would highly recommend checking out Ungated Research, which assembles and provides access to all publicly available working papers for research in leading economics journals.
Development economics learning resources & videos
The majority of resources highlighted in this blog are useful for students. Here are some other learning resources that make frontier research more accessible to those studying development economics at different levels.
- Econimate
- The frontier of economics research in stick figures. Econimate is a YouTube channel aimed at making economics research accessible and engaging. Check out their development economics playlist here.
- BREAD-IGC Virtual PhD courses – recordings and slides available at the following links:
- 2024 Nobel Symposium in Economic Sciences
- Check out STIAS’s YouTube playlist of 12 presentations on range of topics in development by leading researchers.
- Markus Academy Videos
- Markus Brunnermeier hosts a conversation with an acclaimed academic or thought leader on critical issues facing the global economy.
Using social media to keep up with academic research
Twitter was traditionally the best place to keep up to date with the latest research and participate in discussions. Despite its deterioration, and the number of economists who have left, it can still be a useful place to keep up to date with new research and current policy debates. VoxDev will be staying there, for now.
If you would rather not be on Twitter, thankfully you can still keep up by subscribing to the “Best of Econtwitter” substack, which collates tweets about new papers and interesting discussions in a weekly newsletter.
I have found LinkedIn is the next best and it is worth following a range of development researchers, practitioners and policymakers on there. Neela A. Saldanha’s recent LinkedIn post on resources for transitioning into the development space prompted me to put together this list of my own.
BlueSky has emerged as another option, and a large number of economists have made the move. One useful feature is “Starter Packs”, where you can follow a number of related accounts in one go. Two starter packs that include VoxDev and other similar accounts are:
Hopefully I have delivered on my promise of identifying at least one new resource to check out for every reader. If you feel I have missed a resource (I am sure I have), please let me know ([email protected]) and I can add them to the blog and check them out myself.