This week we featured research on climate change feedback loops, corruption in India, food economics, productivity in the workplace and agricultural productivity in sub-Saharan Africa.
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We are really excited about next week's event outlining how students and researchers based in low- and middle-income countries can begin to use generative AI for economic research. Register here for this free online webinar on Tuesday October 22nd with Anton Korinek.
Yesterday, we released a blog post on how the 2024 economic sciences laureates, Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson, have contributed to development economics. Their work on institutions has paved the way for applied work on a number of topics that both deepen our understanding of economic development and offer critical insights for policymakers in low- and middle-income countries.
Agriculture has large global environmental impacts, from greenhouse gas emissions to water and air pollution to biodiversity loss. At the same time anthropogenic climate and environmental changes impact agricultural production because crop and livestock systems depend fundamentally on growing conditions. In Tuesday's article, Chris Barrett, Jennifer Burney, Teevrat Garg, Ariel Ortiz-Bobea and Trinh Pham, explore the implications of the feedback loops between agriculture and climate change.
Anti-poverty programmes have historically been plagued by corruption, mismanagement, or the politicisation of benefits. Newer programmes are designed to prevent this through checks and balances that disperse power across key stakeholders. In Monday's article, Ajay Shenoy and Laura Zimmermann outline how a political party was able to circumvent the checks and balances embedded in India's make-work scheme and use welfare funds for the political gain of the party organisation.
Half of all child deaths are due to malnutrition of some form and there is a rising global burden of non-communicable diseases because of the food that people eat. Additionally, the rising complexity of supply chains means that both consumers and small farmers are being squeezed on either side of the market. On World Food Day, Tim Phillips interviewed William Masters and Amelia Finaret about food economics and its potential to resolve these challenges.
Industrial workplaces in India and China regularly expose workers to noise levels that can cause disabling hearing loss. While clearly a significant public health problem, this exposure may also create an economic problem. In Thursday's article, Joshua Dean, explored the productivity consequences of noisy workplaces using two experiments in Nairobi, Kenya.
In today's article, Philip Wollburg, Thomas Bentze, Yuchen Lu, Chris Udry and Douglas Gollin outline new evidence on the stagnation of smallholder agricultural productivity in sub-Saharan Africa over recent decades. On this theme, Chris Udry, the senior editor of our VoxDevLit on Agricultural Technology in Africa, led the latest webinar for the World Bank's Chief Economists of Government Network. He addressed the ways to boost technology usage to improve agricultural productivity levels in Africa and the webinar is available to watch online.
Elsewhere in development economics:
- The IMF and World Bank Group Annual Meetings are taking place next week. Open events can be followed on IMF and World Bank Digital Platforms.
- Read Berk Özler's World Bank blog post on the findings from new research on the general equilibrium effects of cash transfers and how they might be debunking the old status quo. You can also listen to an earlier VoxDevTalks episode with Dennis Egger where he discusses some of this work.
- If you haven't already seen the brilliant Markus Academy videos, make sure to check out their lectures on topics in economics.
- Finally, an exciting new job opportunity at Open Philanthropy, who are launching a search for a Program Officer to lead their new Economic Growth in LMICs program.
We will be back on Monday with a full week of content on social media and electoral accountability, experiments about institutions, and more!