This week we featured research on gender stereotypes, alcohol bans, forecasting air pollution & more...
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How can researchers write accessible summaries of academic research? In Wednesday's blog, Managing Editor Oliver Hanney has summarised and expanded on our guidelines for authors based on his own experience editing approximately 350 VoxDev articles.
Although a large body of research shows that educators have a lasting impact on their students’ careers long after they leave the classroom, less is known about their role in perpetuating gender pay and employment gaps. Earlier this week, Joan J. Martínez examined the extent to which gender-stereotyped teacher assessments regarding students’ abilities affect their labour market outcomes and educational careers.
Why is studying the dynamics of cities important for understanding economic development? What are the differences between cities in LMICs and developed countries? What are the challenges that cities faces and where is more research needed? In this week's episode of VoxDevTalks, as part of our mini-series covering the BREAD-IGC virtual PhD-level course on urban economics, Tim Phillips spoke to Edward Glaeser and Diego Puga about the dynamics of cities.
While lowering air pollution levels in the coming years will be crucial, in the meantime there has to be a focus on adaptation. Effective adaptation requires accurate forecasting. In Monday's article, Husnain Fateh Ahmad, Matthew Gibson, Fatiq Nadeem, Sanval Nasim and Arman Rezaee outline their latest research from Pakistan on how to improve individuals' ability to forecast pollution and how this affects their adaptation behaviour.
Alcohol use is deeply woven into the fabric of many human societies. However, alcohol poses serious risks, particularly when consumed excessively. South Africa’s sudden five-week alcohol sales ban in July 2020 provides an opportunity to isolate cleanly the influence that alcohol consumption has at a national level. Yesterday on VoxDev, Kai Barron, Rob Dorrington and Richard Matzopoulos studied the impacts of this ban on violent crime and injury-related deaths.
Today we released a post by Patrick Agte, Carmen Arbaizar and Rohini Pande on female representation on editorial boards. They discuss their new analysis revealing how female representation on editorial boards influences the papers that get published.
We also released an article by Lukas Althoff and Hugo Reichardt about the persistence of disparities between Black and white Americans. The authors find that disparities persist not simply because of slavery but because most families enslaved until the Civil War lived in states with strict Jim Crow regimes when slavery ended.
Elsewhere in development economics:
- Jishnu Das outlines the problem with the privatization debate in education.
- Todd Moss highlights the absurd spectacle of a tiny country’s climate plan at the World Bank.
- On IGC - The long-term adoption of grid electricity: Evidence from rural Rwanda.
- The World Bank's Poverty and Inequality Platform has been upgraded to be more interactive - lots of great infographics!
- Ranil Dissanayake discusses the challenge of localisation on CGDEV and whether debt will constrain Western foreign policy with Patrick Wintour on Chatham House's podcast.
- A great explainer on the CarbonBrief - Can ‘carbon border adjustment mechanisms’ help tackle climate change?
- On CGDEV, poll results from 12 countries shed light on why policymakers aren't more concerned about low learning levels.
And some interesting jobs:
- International Growth Centre (IGC) and the Data Science Institute (DSI) are looking for a Data Engineer to lead the development of data architecture and key data products for the Zambia Evidence Lab.
- And the What Works Hub for Global Education are looking for a Research Assistant and Research Manager.
We will be back on Monday with a full week of content on absenteeism, the falling price of cement, small-scale farmer resilience and more!