VoxDev Development Economics

In Uganda, every sale between two VAT-registered firms reaches the tax authority twice. The seller reports it, and so does the buyer. But the two numbers rarely match. In Turkiye, a supplier that installs its first industrial robot doesn’t make an announcement, but the administrative records can track when the firms automate, and what happens next.Justine Knebelmann and Nuriye Melisa Bilgin tell...

How can we cut corruption in government, procurement that generates kickbacks for local politicians? We could hire officials on merit. Across the developing world, many governments now do exactly that. So why do public contracts still go to political friends?In this week's VoxDev Talk, Sarah Brierley (LSE) tells Tim Phillips why merit-based hiring is not enough. If politicians cannot choose who...

This is an episode from VoxDev's new podcast series, Ideas in Development. This series has a separate podcast feed, where you can find every episode of Oliver Hanney’s conversations on evidence.YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpOCMtfSF1A Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-brac-partners-with-governments-to-fight-poverty/id1866874059?i=1000788403797 Spotify:...

Research on how to collect more tax in developing countries has focused on how information, especially administrative data, can help. But in Uganda for example, buyers and sellers report different amounts for the same VAT transaction in 79% of cases. The invoices exist ... but nobody in the tax administration is comparing them.In this week's VoxDev Talk Anders Jensen (Harvard Kennedy School) and...

Many conversations about development for focus on aid: how much, from whom, and for how long. But aid has never been more than a small part of what pays for a country's development, and in 2025 it fell by 23.1%. The need to rethink our attitude to development has inspired the Future of Development Cooperation Coalition (FDCC). In this week's episode, Alexia Latortue and Radha Rajkotia of FDCC...

By 2018 the reservoirs supplying Cape Town were down to 20% of capacity. If they reached 13.5%, the city would need to shut down parts of the water network and send residents to collection points to fetch water. That was known as Day Zero, and the rain came just in time to avoid it.Hugh Cole (City of Cape Town) joined the city government in the middle of the crisis, and has subsequently driven...

In 1978, a farmer in rural China could not sell a sack of grain above the state quota, choose an employer, or move to the nearest city without a permit.In this week's VoxDev Talk, Kaiji Chen and Tao Zha (both Emory University and Atlanta Fed) explain how China dismantled barriers like this one at a time. Gradualist reform first gave farmers the right to sell surplus grain at market prices. Small...

The ballot cast by a landless labourer counts the same as the one cast by the landlord whose fields he works. In this way, democracy can give excluded or subordinate groups access to political power.That's not what has happened, at least, not in large parts of the Global South. Amit Ahuja (UC Santa Barbara) calls those at the bottom of the social order "subaltern groups". Three barriers stand...

Do economists treat what men do as normal human behaviour, and then study norms around women as a departure? If so, we need to pay more attention what we mean by masculinity.That's what Pauline Grosjean (University of New South Wales, CEPR) does. She argues that these masculinity norms carry economic weight of their own. What do men around the world think "being a man" means? The consistent...

This is an episode from VoxDev's new podcast series, Ideas in Development. This series has a separate podcast feed, where you can find every episode of Oliver Hanney’s conversations with leading development thinkers.YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgwcv4fyU28 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-global-supply-chains-are-built-and-how-to/id1866874059?i=1000774798943...