The past month at VoxDev
This month we have released 12 articles and 4 podcasts featuring policy-relevant research in development economics
It’s been a great month at VoxDev, during which we have featured a plethora of exciting new research, highlighting the key takeaways for policymakers in areas including public works programmes, female labour force participation, technology, ports, and resource extraction.
Louise Grogan outlined how manufacturing employment, driven by the emergence of the ready-made-garment sector in Lesotho, can improve women’s agency. Meanwhile, research in Rwanda also shows how paid work for women at new coffee mills increased women’s paid employment and decreased domestic violence, as discussed by Deniz Sanin on this episode of VoxDevTalks. Aside from employment, improving access to childcare is another way in which policymakers can boost female empowerment, with Selim Gulesci discussing the latest evidence in this podcast.
Ports represent a key form of infrastructure for countries seeking greater access to global markets. In this article, Barthélémy Bonadio shows that in India, port infrastructure improvements may have higher economic returns than road improvements, but also have different regional implications.
Meanwhile in this article, which has a global focus, César Ducruet, Reka Juhasz, Dávid Krisztián Nagy and Claudia Steinwender shed light on some potential factors policymakers around the globe need to weigh as they grapple with port development.
We also featured work on understanding the environmental costs of infrastructure projects, with this article examining the impacts of road building in the Amazon.
Other research focused on two current issues related to developing countries’ bureaucracies. In Colombia, new research by Juan Felipe Riaño shows how family ties to non-elected bureaucrats distort public employment outcomes, and that standard anti-nepotism policies are ineffective at preventing their negative influence. While in India, highly competitive examinations for public service recruitment are having detrimental economic effects. One way of alleviating these labour market frictions in India, as outlined by A. Nilesh Fernando, Niharika Singh and Gabriel Tourek, could be providing firms with advertising and identity verification tools increases their hiring through a job portal, improving their ability to fill vacancies
Here are some of our other highlights:
Recent work in China shows how China's autocratic political regime and the rapid innovation in its AI sector mutually reinforce each other.
Technology to improve governance in Tajikistan - Electronic tax filing lowers compliance costs for firms while reducing the gap in tax revenues between those firms more likely vs less likely to evade
Anti-corruption regulation against multinational corporations in developed countries can increase the local economic benefits of natural resource extraction for African communities
Research in Mozambique highlights new, lower-cost approaches to reducing pupil absenteeism in low-income countries
This month, our VoxDevTalks episodes also address the following questions:
How does rebel governance affect long-term development?
How did the Londö public works programme in the Central African Republic affect participants' welfare?
Stay tuned for more details on our forthcoming VoxDevLits (we are excited to be releasing two new Lits over the coming months and also Issue 3 of Training Entrepreneurs), as well as our upcoming columns and podcasts, featuring research on the returns to international migration, US patents and exports, and public works programmes.
And if you have any tips or feedback on this post, or on using Substack more generally, please get in touch at ohanney@cepr.org!
Oliver Hanney, Managing Editor