This week VoxDev featured research on female entrepreneurship, government analytics, malaria & more...
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Women across developing countries face significant barriers to participating in the labour force and starting their own businesses. These barriers are especially pronounced in South Asia, where low female labour force participation has persisted for decades despite significant economic growth. In yesterday's article, Gaurav Chiplunkar and Pinelopi Goldberg examine evidence from India, outlining how closing the gender gap in entrepreneurship is not just a social equity issue, but can be a powerful level for economic growth.
Deforestation can have significant costs for human health. The health costs of environmental degradation are difficult to measure since they are often masked by increases in income that motivated cutting down trees in the first place. On Tuesday, Julia Berazneva and Tanya Byker outline the impacts of deforestation-induced malaria incidence in Nigeria.
Immigration policy was a key topic of discussion in the recent US election. In Monday's article, Ritam Chaurey, Kanika Mahajan and Shekhar Tomar look at how firms deal with the uncertainty surrounding immigration policy. They find that increasing rhetoric around restrictive immigration policy may increase offshoring, rather than promote domestic employment.
While there is a lot of academic research on the design of public policies, less is known about the implementation infrastructure in place within governments. In this week's episode of VoxDevTalks, Tim Phillips spoke to Daniel Rogger and Christian Schuster about how government analytics can improve public sector implementation.
Limited access to capital is a major barrier hindering women from fully participating in the economy—be it through entrepreneurship or other productive activities—and can also significantly impact their overall quality of life. Today, Daniela Graney and Lauren Perlik look at the effectiveness of different financial innovations at addressing the barriers women face in accessing and using credit.
Registration has opened for three excellent events over the coming months:
- The Growth Research Platform is a new initiative led by CEPR. Our first event will be a policy workshop on March 22nd 2025.
- The next day (and in the same place) the CSAE Conference 2025 is taking place. You can now register for this amazing three day conference on African economies.
- Before then, on December 11th, Rohini Pande will be speaking at Ideas for India's annual lecture on regulating carbon emissions through nature-based solutions.
Elsewhere in development economics, Ranil Dissanayake wrote about the past, present and future of the global poverty line, and the excellent series of Job Market Posts continued on the Development Impact Blog.
Here are some new opportunities:
- The IGC is hiring a Communications Manager (Digital) and a Senior Communications and Events Officer.
- The British Academy is inviting proposals related to evidence-informed policy-making.
The COVID-19 pandemic has now resulted in over 20 million deaths. On Our World in Data, Saloni Dattani and Lucas Rodés-Guirao use 17 charts to tell the story of the pandemic across the world. I also enjoyed reading this linked article, on how the small team at Our World in Data became a crucial source of data on Covid-19 for the world.
And for those making the move to BlueSky:
- We created a starter pack with some of our favourite accounts and researchers.
- Here is some advice on getting started with academic bluesky.
- Here are some useful features you might not have discovered yet.
We will be back on Monday with a full week of content on gender-based violence, the legacies of conflict and more!
Oliver Hanney & Paola Davila - The VoxDev Team