VoxDev Development Economics

Ideas in Development is VoxDev's new second podcast! You can listen to Ideas in Development wherever you get your podcasts, or watch on YouTube. Don't forget to subscribe, so you won't miss an episode.Today we're bringing you one of the episodes from our new series. Oliver Hanney and Kartik Akileswaran ask how Costa Rica, a small country of approximately 5 million people, became an attractive hub...

It’s one thing to enrol kids at school. But that is the beginning of their education. When they are there, they need to learn – and unless that starts with learning to read, we’re failing in our duty to them. A new report, produced by a group of literacy experts and is endorsed by GEEAP, shows that improving the quality of reading instruction can sharply increase reading levels in schools in...

When the work well, carbon markets worldwide decarbonise economies and direct funds to the most efficient projects. Yet for these mechanisms to be effective, credible, and equitable, should we move beyond today’s fragmented initiatives and create a unified global carbon market that would integrate compliance and voluntary markets, with consistent standards and pricing? Robin Burgess of LSE and...

Many papers in economics have shown the scale of the damage that slavery did to Africa, but can we also make the argument that the slave trade helped cause Europe’s economic development? Ellora Derenoncourt of Princeton is the author of a recently published paper which uses new methods and new data to investigate this question. She talks to Tim Phillips about what historical records can and...

At home, men usually have more money and more power than their female partners, and this inequality is particularly wide in LMICs. What does research tell us about how decisions are made and, if there isn’t enough food or money or care to go around, who gets what? And when policymakers try to empower women do their well-intentioned policies work, and can they provoke a backlash? Seema...

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is common everywhere, but how common? What are its causes and effects? How can we do a better job of noticing it, measuring its impact – and ultimately, finding effective ways to stop it?A new review of IPV looks at the recent economic research on the topic, what this work can tell us, and what questions are, so far, unanswered. Manisha Shah of UC Berkeley is one...

The modern state, and the way in which is governs, is clearly very important. It provides social programs, education, disaster relief or, on the other side, it can cause violence and repression.We tend to assume that there is one model of a successful state, and the emergence of government has followed a single path with, as Francis Fukuyama wrote, “Getting to Denmark” as its end point. But is...

We think of trade-driven growth during the era of hyper-globalisation as having created many “growth miracles” since the 1990s. But how did that happen? If we look at what created these miracles more closely, will that help us to understand how the geopolitical and technology shifts of the last decade have affected, and will continue to affect, the relationship between international trade and...

How can we train the next generation of entrepreneurs? In developing economies, more than a billion dollars a year is spent on this type of training, but does it work, are we training the right people with the right skills – and what opportunities are there to do better?David McKenzie of the World Bank is one of the senior editors of the latest version of the VoxDevLit on Training Entrepreneurs....

What is the relationship between religion and economic development? Does economic development mean fewer people become religious, or more? What causes people to believe, and does organised religion adapt as societies change, and competition from other religions increases?Sara Lowes of UC San Diego, Eduardo Montero on the University of Chicago, and Benjamin Marx of Boston University are the...