VoxDev Development Economics

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 graduate student, the  innovative interventions to minimise fraud and misconduct from the agents who supply mobile money, and what this tells us about how to protect consumers in remote locations.

Read the full show notes: https://voxdev.org/topic/finance/mobile-money-ghana-lessons-boosting-financial-inclusion

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 and give women and girls the information they need at home, at school, and at work. 

Read about Silvia’s work on VoxDev: https://voxdev.org/topic/health/breaking-silence-advancing-health-technology-adoption-through-open-discourse

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 edutainment in social media and even graphic novels. 

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 education, remittances, and the contribution of the diaspora to investment and changing norms can more the compensate for the loss of skills. 

Cátia Batista of Nova School of Business and Economics and Caroline Theoharides of Amherst College are two of the authors of the article, and they tell Tim Phillips about what the potential for brain gains, but also the policies that are needed to make sure this happens.

Read the full show notes on VoxDev: https://voxdev.org/topic/migration-urbanisation/why-brain-drain-incomplete-story-migration

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 mapped both the service and the opinions of passengers for Cape Town’s public transit minibuses, and discovered that minimal intervention could improve services, increase security, and decrease wait times.

Read the full show notes: https://voxdev.org/topic/infrastructure/minibuses-major-gains-rethinking-urban-transit-developing-countries

Find out more about STEG at https://steg.cepr.org

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 who live in oil producing regions.

Arinze Nwokolo of Lagos Business School has investigated one aspect of this burden: how gas flaring that occurs as part of the oil production process affects local agriculture. He talks to Tim Phillips about the dramatic impact it has on agricultural productivity, and how the policy alternatives can change those outcomes.

Read the full show notes on VoxDev: https://voxdev.org/topic/energy-environment/gas-flaring-threatens-agriculture-and-livelihoods-nigeria

Find out more about STEG at https://steg.cepr.org

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 HIC?

Chatib Basri is an economist and former finance minister of Indonesia. He tells Tim Phillips about the industrial policies needed to accelerate Indonesia’s economy and diversify its exports, and the challenges if Indonesia does not accelerate its growth.

Read the full show notes on VoxDev: https://voxdev.org/topic/macroeconomics-growth/going-economic-growth-lessons-indonesia

Also on VoxDev: Is improving tax administration more effective than raising tax rates? 
https://voxdev.org/topic/public-economics/improving-tax-administration-more-effective-raising-tax-rates-evidence

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 that land is owned my make consolidation impossible. The result: fewer opportunities for structural transformation and rural development.

Catherine is joined by Gérardine Mukeshimana, former Minister of Agriculture in Rwanda, Christopher Udry of Northwestern University and Mark Rosenzweig of Yale University.

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 basic education. How can policy be strong, bold, or better in the face of these cuts?

Ben Piper, Director of Global Education at the Gates Foundation and a panellist on the
Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel (GEEAP), was at the conference, meeting
education ministers and discussing these problems with them. He tells Tim Phillips that, at a time when funding is scarce, foundational learning projects deliver cost-effective results for policymakers, and huge benefits for children.

Read the full show notes here: https://voxdev.org/topic/education/why-we-need-invest-foundational-learning

From Brazil, we bring good news for poverty reduction: Brazil’s formerly sky-high wage
inequality 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 Insper tells Tim Phillips why there is no silver bullet that policymakers can use to reduce inequality, and why both implementing and evaluating policies in Brazil can be even more challenging than in other countries.

Read the full show notes on VoxDev: https://voxdev.org/topic/macroeconomics-growth/understanding-brazils-falling-income-inequality