This week at VoxDev - 14/04/2023
Our first newsletter on Substack - let's see how this goes
Hi there,
Each week for the past 5 years, VoxDev has released a newsletter to those dedicated members of our audience who want to keep up to date with the articles, podcasts, videos and VoxDevLits we release. We figured Substack would also be a good place to release this, so here goes…
In this week's episode of VoxDevTalks, we are joined by Dr. Zulfiqar Bhutta, one of the global leaders in implementing large-scale public health programmes in developing countries, to discuss key lessons learned from a long career working in health research and policy. This wide ranging conversation recaps important projects from Dr. Zulfiqar Bhutta's career, including examples of successful research in developing countries which have shaped global health policy, and what lessons about moving research into practice we can draw from these experiences. The discussion then moves on to identify important areas of future research, the need for interdisciplinary collaboration, and how development economists can improve their work in this field.
Last month marked the three-year anniversary of COVID-19 being assigned pandemic status by the World Health Organization. Despite an unprecedented global vaccination effort under which, to date, more than 5.5 billion people have received the COVID-19 jab, the distribution and coverage of COVID-19 vaccines has been highly unequal.
COVID-19 vaccination rates in selected countries and regions
Notes: Share of people fully vaccinated. Source: Mathieu et al. (2021)
Monday's article, by Philip Wollburg, Yannick Markhof and Alberto Zezza, uses insights from high-frequency phone survey data collection to show that access, rather than hesitancy, prevents vaccine uptake in Sub-Saharan Africa.
In most cities around the world paying the bus fare with cash is the norm rather than the exception, and it is very common to see drivers handling cash in real time on buses, usually by using an open device where cash is collected and organised. In this article, Patricio Domínguez considers the case of robberies in the public transport system and the implications of a change in the way the bus system is organised - specifically, when driver’s working conditions were modified. Results show that decoupling driver salaries from fare revenues led to a surge in crime, highlighting the role of private behaviour in victimisation.
And last but not least, in today’s article, Jules Gazeud, Eric Mvukiyehe and Olivier Sterck outline evidence from Comoros on the constraints to migration.
Their study focuses on a workfare programme, which they find increases migration by loosening households’ liquidity and risk constraints.
Stay tuned for more details on our forthcoming VoxDevLits, as well as our upcoming columns and podcasts, featuring research on incentivising school attendance, domestic violence, and local elections in China. And if you have any tips or feedback on this post, or using Substack more generally, please get in touch at ohanney@cepr.org!
Oliver Hanney, Managing Editor