Episodi
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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 âGolden Indonesiaâ 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 âmiddle income trapâ â 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 Indonesiaâs 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 -
Episodi mancanti?
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In the latest episode of the collaboration between Yaleâs Economic Growth Center and VoxDev, host Catherine Cheney discusses one of Africaâs 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 doesnât 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 GĂ©rardine 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 worldâs largest annual gathering of education and skills ministers, this yearâs 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 programmesâthe 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: Brazilâs 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 -
AIâs boosters claim that it is going to revolutionize growth in the developing world. The
sceptics, many of whom are economists, point to a thin evidence base and the risk of
unintended consequences. This is not an easy question to research, not least because the underlying technologies are literally changing by the day, while the pace of academic research is often measured in years. One of those researchers is David Yanagizawa-Drott of the University of Zurich. We spoke to him about his hopes and fears for AI, how he keeps his research relevant, and how economists can influence the future applications of AI.
The Social Catalyst Lab: https://socialcatalystlab.org/ -
The Reducing Conflict and Improving Performance in the Economy (ReCIPE) programme
was established in April 2024 as a CEPR research initiative to provide a better understanding of the links between conflict, economic growth, and public policies. One of its themes is the link between conflict and hate speech, social media use, media bias, and propaganda. We need to know more about how media has influenced violence,
xenophobia, and recruitment for armed groups. Also, how we can use media sentiment to predict a rise in the risk of violence.
Maria Petrova of the Barcelona School of Economics and Augustin Tapsoba of the Toulouse School of Economics are the theme leaders. They spoke to Tim Phillips about the challenges of researching the impact of media, especially social media, on conflict, and what recent research has discovered. -
As aid programs are cut across the developing world, the focus falls on what investors can do to help create economic growth. Someone who knows all about impact investing is Yonas Alemu, the founder of Lovegrass Ethiopia, which creates products from teff, a gluten- free grain that's native to Ethiopia and sells them across the world. Yonas abandoned a successful career in investment banking in London to create a business in the country of his birth. He spoke to Tim Phillips about how entrepreneurship can stimulate positive change across Africa and how negative stereotypes of Africaâs dependency on aid discourage investment.
Read the full show notes: https://voxdev.org/topic/firms/building-business-roots-yonas-alemus-journey-ethiopian-entrepreneur
Discover more about Lovegrass Ethiopiaâs products and history: https://thelovegrass.com/ -
Millions of people around the world have no access to sanitation. They defecate in the open, or in facilities where itâs hard to avoid human contact, unavoidably spreading disease. One of the Sustainable Development Goals that you donât hear about so much is the call to end open defecation by 2030. What progress are we making, and what health improvements are we seeing so far? In the latest of our episodes based on J-PALâs policy insights, Karen Macours of the Paris School of Economics, also co-chair of J-PAL's Health Sector, tells Tim Phillips about how we can achieve this development goal, why itâs not a quick fix, and the surprising results of research into the health benefits of improving sanitation.
Read the full show notes on VoxDev: https://voxdev.org/topic/health/improving-sanitation-what-works-and-what-doesnt
Read the Policy Insight on J-PAL: https://www.povertyactionlab.org/policy-insight/improving-sanitation-access-subsidies-loans-and-community-led-programs -
We often talk about providing not just jobs, but decent jobs, in developing countries. But in many parts of the world, workers still have incredibly harsh working conditions.
There have been interventions at the firm level to create safer workplaces, better health,
higher job satisfaction. But have they succeeded? And, if these policies succeed in raising worker well-being, is there a cost or a benefit for the employer?
In the latest in our collaborations with J-PAL to discuss their policy insights, Achyuta
Adhvaryu, UC San Diego about their review of the research into worker well-being, the
policies that encourage firms to improve it, and the outcomes for employees and employers alike.
Read the full show notes on VoxDev: https://voxdev.org/topic/labour-markets/improving-worker-well-being-good-workers-good-business
You can find the review here https://www.povertyactionlab.org/ -
A large proportion of economic activity takes place in the informal sector in every country, particularly in LMICs. Informality, and the lack of rights and protection that goes with it, affects the families who live in slums, the people who take off-the-books jobs, and the firms that choose to skirt regulations. It also affects the governments who want to increase the size of the formal sector â and the revenue they can collect from it.
Gabriel Ulyssea of UCL and Mariaflavia Harari of the University of Pennsylvania are two of the editors of new VoxDevLit that examines what we know about the size of the informal sector and how it operates. They talk to Tim Phillips about the grey areas between formal and informal, and the limitations of policies that try to increase the size of the formal economy.
Read the VoxDevLit here: https://voxdev.org/voxdevlit/informality -
In 1981, 44% of the worldâs population were living in extreme poverty. By 2019, that number had fallen to 9%. This seems like a good news story, but how did it happen?
Tom Vogl of UC San Diego is one of the authors of a paper called simply, âHow Poverty
Fellâ. In it, they use surveys to track the progress out of poverty of individuals and
generations, to discover whether this progress has been driven by individuals and families becoming less poor over their lives or by successive generations who are less likely to be born into poverty. Has the progress been driven by women in the workplace, by government support, or by the move out of agriculture? And, significantly, do those who move out of poverty stay in that position or, is it, as Tom tells Tim Phillips, âLike climbing a slippery slopeâ?
Read the full show notes here: https://voxdev.org/topic/methods-measurement/how-has-global-poverty-fallen
Read the paper: https://econweb.ucsd.edu/~pniehaus/papers/how_poverty_fell.pdf -
In the latest episode of the collaboration between Yaleâs Economic Growth Center and VoxDev, host Catherine Cheney is asking one of the most complex questions in global development: how can the clean energy transition move forward quickly and equitably, particularly for low- and middle-income countries still grappling with poverty? There is a balance between emissions reductions and economic growth. While wealthy nations historically contributed the most to climate change, LMICs are now under pressure to take costly action to avoid it.
Catherine is joined by Max Bearak of the New York Times, Jessica Seddon of Yale Jackson School and the Dietz Family Initiative on Environment and Global Affairs, and Anant Sudarshan of the University of Warwick and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago.
Read the full show notes here: https://voxdev.org/topic/energy-environment/climate-capital-and-conscience-who-will-pay-global-energy-transition -
The Graduation approach to helping people to escape from poverty was pioneered in 2002 by BRAC in Bangladesh. Today the approach is used around the world. In more than 20 years, what have we learned about how it works, when it works best, and how to implement it at scale? Shameran Abed, the Executive Director of BRAC International talks to Tim Phillips about how the Graduation approach reaches people that other programmes miss, why it works, and how it can be scaled up to meet needs around the world.
Read the full show notes
The BRAC Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative -
Multinational enterprises in every industry are shifting profits to low-tax jurisdictions. These corporate tax havens reduce tax revenues everywhere, but that hits hardest in developing countries where corporate taxes are a larger part of the overall tax take. The International Growth Centre has published a policy toolkit report into corporate tax havens. Ludvig Wier, the author, explains to Tim Phillips how profit shifting works, how a global initiative is reducing the allure of tax havens, and how AI might level the playing field for overstretched developing country tax offices.
Read the full show notes on VoxDev: https://voxdev.org/topic/public-economics/profit-shifting-global-challenge-hitting-developing-countries-hardest
IGC Policy Toolkit: Corporate tax havens and their impact on development -
Vocational training is often seen as a silver bullet for unemployment and poverty, but does the evidence support that view? Why do so many training programs fail to lead to real job opportunities, and are we asking too much of these programs â or maybe the wrong questions entirely? In the latest episode of the collaboration between Yaleâs Economic Growth Center and VoxDev, host Catherine Cheney is joined by Oriana Bandiera, professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, Stefano Caria, professor of economics at the University of Warwick, and Munshi Sulaiman, Director of Research at the BRAC Institute of Governance and Development and a professor in the Master of Development Studies program at BRAC University, to ask what it takes to make job skills programs work.
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A fundamental part of womenâs economic empowerment is helping women who want to work outside the home to find and keep a job. A major part of that decision is ensuring that they can travel to work without fear of stigma, harassment or violence on public transport. In Pakistan, a study set out to discover whether an offer of safe commuter transport would tempt women who are currently not looking for a job.
Kate Vyborny of the World Bank spoke to Tim Phillips from Lahore, where the study
took place, about the challenges women face in commuting to work and about how safe transport can change career opportunities for millions of women.
Photo credit: ADB
Read the full show notes here: https://voxdev.org/topic/infrastructure/how-safe-transport-could-unlock-womens-labour-force-participation-pakistan -
How does rising external debt in low-income countries affect the natural capital that
sustains our livelihoods? A new paper focuses on three river basins that are vital to the
livelihoods and biodiversity of the countries that surround them, suggesting ways that
we can both measure and conserve that natural capital in the face of the economic
forces that threaten it. Pushpam Kumar of UN Environment Programme talks to Tim
Phillips about the alarming rise in the ratio of debt to natural capital for the 21 countries whose wealth relies on the river basins that they border, and how debt-for-nature swaps may be our best hope of avoiding both an economic and ecological disaster.
Read the full show notes here: https://voxdev.org/topic/energy-environment/debt-leading-unsustainable-exploitation-natural-resources -
Geopolitical alliances are changing rapidly. Technological innovation is reshaping our economies. These trends offer a cocktail of risk and reward for countries in the global south. They are also both topics that are familiar to Simon Johnson of MIT.
Simon speaks to Tim Phillips about how policy in developing countries should respond to President Trumpâs deglobalization agenda, how artificial intelligence changes the future for all countries, and where growth and jobs will come from in the future.
And of course, what it was like to win the Nobel Prize.
Read the full show notes on VoxDev: https://voxdev.org/topic/macroeconomics-growth/geopolitics-ai-future-global-development-conversation-simon-johnson
Sahel and West Africa Club: https://www.oecd.org/en/about/directorates/sahel-and-west-africa-club.html
Power and progress: https://shapingwork.mit.edu/power-and-progress/ -
Civil war â the latest in a long series of armed conflicts â broke out in Sudan in April
2023. Today, more than half of the population needs humanitarian aid, and almost 15
million people have been displaced. The war has also devastated the digital
infrastructure in Sudan, deepening the crisis. African Renaissance Ventures is a VC firm
that backs entrepreneurs who use technology to solve major development challenges.
Magdi Amin tells Tim Phillips about how its infrastructure might be restored, and the
risks to Sudanâs population if it is not.
Read the full show notes on VoxDev: https://voxdev.org/topic/institutions-political-economy/rebuilding-sudans-digital-infrastructure-amidst-conflict - Mostra di più
