VoxDev Development Economics

Eighty years after Indian independence, the economic fingerprint of British colonial rule is still visible at the district level. Two institutions in particular left scars: whether a district was governed directly by British administrators or by one of India's roughly 680 Indian princes, and what kind of land tax arrangement the British put in place. For example, by 1991, directly ruled districts...

This is an episode from VoxDev's new podcast series, Ideas in Development. This series has a separate podcast feed, where you can find the entire AI series.Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ideas-in-development/id1866874059Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6sIdIKctE8frdWaz9iyfl2Everywhere else: https://audioboom.com/channels/5165629-ideas-in-developmentYouTube:...

China became the world's largest bilateral creditor to developing countries over two decades, and for most of that time the scale of what it was doing was effectively a state secret. Its state-owned banks lent close to $1 trillion to developing-country governments, structured roughly half those loans against commodity export revenues held in offshore accounts, and concentrated the riskiest...

Between 2019 and 2023, the number of electronic transactions tripled in six Latin American economies. The share of adults using digital wallets, mobile money, and mobile bank accounts went from 3% in 2011 to 40% by 2021. A region that not long ago was defined by financial disasters, hyperinflation, and deep mistrust of banks has become one of the world's leading examples of how digital payments...

This is an episode from VoxDev's new podcast series, Ideas in Development. This series has a separate podcast feed, where you can find the entire AI series.Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ideas-in-development/id1866874059Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6sIdIKctE8frdWaz9iyfl2Everywhere else: https://audioboom.com/channels/5165629-ideas-in-developmentYouTube:...

For 70 years, a simple idea has shaped efforts to reduce prejudice: put people from different groups together under the right conditions, and contact reduces prejudice. Gordon Allport proposed it in 1954. A landmark 2006 meta-analysis of 515 studies seemed to confirm it, reporting an average effect of 0.4 standard deviations on prejudice measures. That paper has been cited more than 14,000 times....

In cities across low- and middle-income countries, traffic crawls 24 hours a day. In Dhaka during rush hour, speeds average around 15km/h. At three in the morning, when the roads are empty, they average about 20km/h. Urban transport in the developing world is not only slow because of congestion. And so congestion policy, Adam Storeygard of Tufts University argues, gets you a small fraction of the...

Particulate matter is, Michael Greenstone argues, the greatest public health threat on the planet. Worse than HIV, cigarettes, and alcohol. The average person loses about two years of life expectancy to it. In India, the figure is three and a half years. The solution to this problem has been tested, and it works, at least in high-income countries.Greenstone and his co-authors ran a randomised...

A small number of Asian countries have provided thousands of high-skilled migrants to the US, many of whom have gone on to great success. What created this long-term trend, and what has it contributed to the US economy? And with changes in domestic policy, technology, and the opportunities in other countries, will it continue? Gaurav Khanna of UC San Diego tells Tim Phillips the story of...

With the number of global refugees continuing to rise, integrating refugees has become a difficult challenge for hosts – and it is far from easy for the refugees themselves. Dany Bahar of Brown University and Giovanni Peri of UC Davis tell Tim Phillips about a new review of the evidence that evaluates what policies have worked.