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VoxDev Development Economics

VoxDev.org

Hear about the cutting edge of development economics from research to practice.

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24:36

S6 Ep32: Contraception without prejudice: Reducing...

VoxDev Development Economics ·

2025/08/13

Like all of us, healthcare providers bring their biases to work. But if those biases result in a reduced level of care for their patients, how can we correct them? An innovative experiment in three very different countries attempted to reduce bias in contraceptive care for women. Zachary Wagner of USC and Manisha Shah of UC Berkeley were two of a multidisciplinary team that implemented program and evaluated the results. They talk to Tim Phillips about how biases shape contraceptive care, the

23:32

S6 Ep31: Partnering with business for development...

VoxDev Development Economics ·

2025/07/31

In the second of our two podcasts with Francis Annan of UC Berkeley on his research on mobile money first in Ghana, then beyond, Tim Phillips discusses how he worked with commercial providers, not just to set up the RCTs designed to investigate the extent and reduce financial fraud, but to ensure that the insights could be scaled up. While contacting sceptical commercial providers can often meet with little or no response, he says, the ability to frame research in a way that makes them realise the

31:40

S6 Ep30: Mobile money in Ghana

VoxDev Development Economics ·

2025/07/29

How can we design digital financial inclusion that minimizes fraud and maximises the benefit to the community in rural, low-trust, or cash-heavy economies? That’s the question posed by three studies of how mobile money works, or sometimes does not work, in Ghana’s villages. The author of those three studies: Francis Annan of Berkeley.In part one of a two-part VoxDev Talks special, Tim Phillips talks to Francis about this research, which has been a big part of his working life since he was a

35:22

S6 Ep29: The economics of period poverty

VoxDev Development Economics ·

2025/07/23

Stigma, shame and social norms around menstruation can prevent women and girls managing their periods with dignity and hygiene in low-income settings. So how can we provide information, influence those norms, and change behaviour to improve women’s health and well-being? Silvia Castro of LMU Munich and Kristina Czura of University of Groningen have conducted extensive field research in Bangladesh and other countries. They tell Tim Phillips how we can reduce the stigma and taboo around menstruation

24:23

S6 Ep28: Can storytelling reduce violence against...

VoxDev Development Economics ·

2025/07/16

There is a long history of using “edutainment” – mass media storytelling, to pass on information about important social issues, and even to try to change behaviour. But does this work, and in what circumstances can it help? Amber Peterman of UNICEF has just published a review of what we know about edutainment’s power to reduce violence against women and children. She talks to Tim Phillips about its track record in changing attitudes to problems such as FGM and child marriage, and the potential of

29:27

S6 Ep27: Why “brain drain” is an incomplete story of...

VoxDev Development Economics ·

2025/07/09

Many developed countries are creating immigration policies designed specifically to attract the most talented migrants. We often assume that when those skilled and educated citizens migrate from low-income countries in search of high-paying opportunities, it causes a “brain drain” in their home countries, delaying or hobbling development. A new article in the journal Science puts that assumption to the test and finds that there is also the possibility of a brain gain at home, as investments in

20:40

S6 Ep26: Minibuses, major gains: Rethinking urban...

VoxDev Development Economics ·

2025/07/03

In the second of our special episodes recorded at the 5th annual STEG conference, Lucas Conwell of UCL talks to Tim Phillips about how the private minibus networks, such a distinctive feature of urban transit in developing country cities, can improve their service when there is little room for public investment or regulation. If you have ever tried them, they can seem chaotic, but would require large or small policy tweaks to make them work efficiently, and what would those tweaks be? Lucas has

15:02

S6 Ep25: Gas flaring threatens agriculture and...

VoxDev Development Economics ·

2025/07/01

This week on VoxDev talks we have two special episodes recorded at the 5th annual STEG conference. STEG is a research initiative that aims to provide a better understanding of structural change, productivity, and growth in low- and middle-income countries. For many economies in the Global South, fossil fuel extraction has been both a blessing and a curse. Nowhere more so than Nigeria, where oil production generates huge revenues, but also creates an environmental and social burden for the people

28:02

S6 Ep24: Going for economic growth: Lessons from...

VoxDev Development Economics ·

2025/06/25

In October 2024, Prabowo Subianto became president of Indonesia. He inherits the “Golden Indonesia” vision: By the time the country celebrates 100 years of independence in 2045, it aims to be one of the five largest economies in the world. But if Indonesia remains dependent on commodity exports like palm oil, coal, natural gas, and rubber, does it risk getting stuck in the “middle income trap” – too wealthy to compete with low-wage nations, but without the human capital or technology to become a

33:59

S5 Ep6: Development Dialogues: What is the role of...

VoxDev Development Economics ·

2025/06/18

In the latest episode of the collaboration between Yale’s Economic Growth Center and VoxDev, host Catherine Cheney discusses one of Africa’s most persistent development challenges: the low productivity of smallholder farmers. Despite decades of investment, innovation, and policy reform, yields on African small farms remain significantly below those in high-income countries. While the limitations of smallholder models, that doesn’t mean that the problem is easy to solve, not least because the way

30:15

S6 Ep23: Why we need to invest in foundational learning

VoxDev Development Economics ·

2025/06/11

It was almost business as usual at the Education World Forum in London last month. At the world’s largest annual gathering of education and skills ministers, this year’s theme was & "Building stronger, bolder, better education together." But the context was far from routine. The conference took place against a backdrop of global funding cuts to education programmes—the Institute for Economics and Peace estimates that more than 35 million children around the world depend on foreign aid for their

23:59

S6 Ep22: Understanding Brazil’s falling income...

VoxDev Development Economics ·

2025/06/04

From Brazil, we bring good news for poverty reduction: Brazil’s formerly sky-high wageinequality is not quite so sky-high anymore. From 1995 to 2015 Brazil became a more equal society, a trend that contrasts with rising inequality during that time in high-income countries. A soon-to-be-published article in the Journal of Economic Literature reviews the research that estimates the reduction, discovers the factors that have contributed to it and the mechanisms that have driven it. Alysson Portella of

35:51

S6 Ep21: Can economists shape the future of AI?

VoxDev Development Economics ·

2025/05/28

AI’s boosters claim that it is going to revolutionize growth in the developing world. Thesceptics, many of whom are economists, point to a thin evidence base and the risk of unintended consequences. This is not an easy question to research, not least because the underlying technologies are literally changing by the day, while the pace of academic research is often measured in years. One of those researchers is David Yanagizawa-Drott of the University of Zurich. We spoke to him about his hopes and

18:36

S6 Ep20: How does social media influence conflict?

VoxDev Development Economics ·

2025/05/21

The Reducing Conflict and Improving Performance in the Economy (ReCIPE) programmewas established in April 2024 as a CEPR research initiative to provide a better understanding of the links between conflict, economic growth, and public policies. One of its themes is the link between conflict and hate speech, social media use, media bias, and propaganda. We need to know more about how media has influenced violence, xenophobia, and recruitment for armed groups. Also, how we can use media sentiment to

32:49

S6 Ep19: Lovegrass Ethiopia: Building a business from...

VoxDev Development Economics ·

2025/05/14

As aid programs are cut across the developing world, the focus falls on what investors can do to help create economic growth. Someone who knows all about impact investing is Yonas Alemu, the founder of Lovegrass Ethiopia, which creates products from teff, a gluten- free grain that's native to Ethiopia and sells them across the world. Yonas abandoned a successful career in investment banking in London to create a business in the country of his birth. He spoke to Tim Phillips about how

18:41

S6 Ep18: Improving sanitation: What works and what...

VoxDev Development Economics ·

2025/05/08

Millions of people around the world have no access to sanitation. They defecate in the open, or in facilities where it’s hard to avoid human contact, unavoidably spreading disease. One of the Sustainable Development Goals that you don’t hear about so much is the call to end open defecation by 2030. What progress are we making, and what health improvements are we seeing so far? In the latest of our episodes based on J-PAL’s policy insights, Karen Macours of the Paris School of Economics, also

30:36

S6 Ep17: Improving worker well-being

VoxDev Development Economics ·

2025/05/01

We often talk about providing not just jobs, but decent jobs, in developing countries. But in many parts of the world, workers still have incredibly harsh working conditions.There have been interventions at the firm level to create safer workplaces, better health, higher job satisfaction. But have they succeeded? And, if these policies succeed in raising worker well-being, is there a cost or a benefit for the employer? In the latest in our collaborations with J-Pal to discuss their policy

36:10

S6 Ep16: What have we learned about the informal sector?

VoxDev Development Economics ·

2025/04/24

A large proportion of economic activity takes place in the informal sector in every country, particularly in LMICs. Informality, and the lack of rights and protection that goes with it, affects the families who live in slums, the people who take off-the-books jobs, and the firms that choose to skirt regulations. It also affects the governments who want to increase the size of the formal sector – and the revenue they can collect from it.Gabriel Ulyssea of UCL and Mariaflavia Harari of the

22:14

S6 Ep15: How poverty fell

VoxDev Development Economics ·

2025/04/17

In 1981, 44% of the world’s population were living in extreme poverty. By 2019, that number had fallen to 9%. This seems like a good news story, but how did it happen?Tom Vogl of UC San Diego is one of the authors of a paper called simply, “How Poverty Fell”. In it, they use surveys to track the progress out of poverty of individuals and generations, to discover whether this progress has been driven by individuals and families becoming less poor over their lives or by successive generations who

39:28

S5 Ep5: Development Dialogues: Who will pay for the...

VoxDev Development Economics ·

2025/04/15

In the latest episode of the collaboration between Yale’s Economic Growth Center and VoxDev, host Catherine Cheney is asking one of the most complex questions in global development: how can the clean energy transition move forward quickly and equitably, particularly for low- and middle-income countries still grappling with poverty? There is a balance between emissions reductions and economic growth. While wealthy nations historically contributed the most to climate change, LMICs are now under

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