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351 afleveringen, van nieuw naar oud
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S7 Ep10: Reducing air pollution: Can markets succeed where regulation fails?
25 februari 2026 · 23 min
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. Lees meer
Greenstone and his co-authors ran a randomised controlled trial in Surat, Gujarat: from 300 industrial plants, mostly making textiles, all burning coal, half were randomly assigned to a market where pollution permits could be bought and sold. The results: in the market, pollution fell 25%, compliance was near-perfect, and abatement costs dropped 12%. The cost-benefit ratio is as high as 200 to one. Many plants in the control group asked to be moved into the market.
The research behind this episode:
Greenstone, Michael, Rohini Pande, Nicholas Ryan, and Anant Sudarshan. 2025. "Can Pollution Markets Work in Developing Countries? Experimental Evidence from India." Quarterly Journal of Economics 140 (2): 1003–1060. An ungated version is available as BFI Working Paper 2025-53.
To cite this episode:
Phillips, Tim. 2025. "Can Pollution Markets Work in Developing Countries?" VoxDev Talk (podcast).
Assign this as extra listening: the citation above is formatted and ready for a reading list or VLE.
About Michael Greenstone
Michael Greenstone is the Milton Friedman Distinguished Service Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago, where he is the founding Director of the Energy Policy Institute at Chicago (EPIC) and the Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth. His research focuses on the costs and benefits of environmental quality, including the Air Quality Life Index, which tracks the toll of particulate pollution country by country. He previously served as Chief Economist for the President's Council of Economic Advisers under President Obama.
Research cited in this episode
Air Quality Life Index (AQLI), Ene…
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S7 Ep9: How skilled migration from Asia reshaped the US economy
19 februari 2026 · 28 min
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? Lees meer
Gaurav Khanna of UC San Diego tells Tim Phillips the story of high-skilled migration to the US and warns of the consequences for the US economy if, in the future, they decide to go elsewhere – or stay at home.
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S7 Ep8: Integrating refugees: What policies work best?
12 februari 2026 · 36 min
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. Lees meer
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S7 Ep7: Can AI take off in Africa?
10 februari 2026 · 30 min
In this episode of Ideas in Development, we ask what needs to happen before AI can take off in Africa. Lees meer
Rose Mutiso talks us through the current state of energy and digital infrastructure in Africa, why leapfrogging is not guaranteed with AI, and what fundamental bottlenecks need to be addressed.
Read the full show notes: https://voxdev.org/topic/technology-innovation/ai-africa-barriers-opportunities-and-policy
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S7 Ep6: Gender inequality in labour markets: Why growth and education are not enough
4 februari 2026 · 33 min
Almost everywhere, women have less economic power than men, and earn less at work. Their commitment to childcare and work in the home gives them less spare time than men, as well as less recognition for the value of what they do. Lees meer
In another episodes based on the new book The London Consensus, published by LSE Press, Barbara Petrongolo of the University of Oxford, who one of the authors of the book’s chapter on Labour markets and gender inequality, and Ashwini Deshpande of Ashoka University, who wrote a response discuss with Tim Phillips whether there is a consensus on policy – and way to implement it – in this area.
Download The London Consensus. https://www.lse.ac.uk/school-of-public-policy/research/london-consensus
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S7 Ep5: African agriculture's underappreciated supply side
28 januari 2026 · 26 min
Agricultural yields across sub-Saharan Africa are falling. We can create better seeds, fertilisers and insecticides which has the potential to increase agricultural yields. But what stops that potential being realised? We put a lot of attention on how to influence the behaviour or the choices of farmers, but what can policy also do to help the firms, large and small, that provide the inputs that farmers use? Lees meer
Hope Michelson of the University of Illinois is one of the authors of a new review of agricultural input markets. She tells Tim Phillips about the important gaps in our knowledge of how those markets are working.
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S7 Ep4: Schools are failing to deliver learning
21 januari 2026 · 33 min
The new book The London Consensus is a large and very comprehensive successor to the Washington Consensus that dominated policymaking during the 1990s. It attempts to capture where the Washington consensus fell short, and suggest better policy for development. Lees meer
One area in which we need better policy is basic education. Despite the success of programmes to build and equip schools, outcomes are not improving. Pritchett’s chapter in The London Consensus examines the learning crisis and suggests what policy can do about it. He tells Tim Phillips that there are no short cuts – but examples from around the world show that solutions are possible.
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S7 Ep3: Why labour markets look different in low-income countries
15 januari 2026 · 28 min
Labor markets in poor countries are very different to labour markets in rich countries. Millions of young people in developing economies who will be starting work in the next few years will face rationed jobs, volatile employment, and low-quality work. How will they cope and how can policy best help them? Lees meer
Emily Breza of Harvard University and Supreet Kaur of UC Berkeley are the authors of a new review of how labour markets in developing countries. They tell Tim Phillips some surprising facts about how labour markets work, what policy can do better – and what we still need to discover to help those young jobseekers find decent work.
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S7 Ep2: Ideas in Development: How Costa Rica became an FDI powerhouse
13 januari 2026 · 54 min
Ideas in Development is VoxDev's new second podcast! Lees meer
You can listen to Ideas in Development wherever you get your podcasts, or watch on YouTube. Don't forget to subscribe, so you won't miss an episode.
Today we're bringing you one of the episodes from our new series. Oliver Hanney and Kartik Akileswaran ask how Costa Rica, a small country of approximately 5 million people, became an attractive hub that now hosts operations for more than 1,000 multinationals. To take us through this period of economic change, we were joined by Andres Valenciano Yamuni, who played his own role in Costa Rica’s FDI journey during his time as Minister of Foreign Trade.
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S7 Ep1: How to solve the global reading crisis
7 januari 2026 · 27 min
It’s one thing to enrol kids at school. But that is the beginning of their education. When they are there, they need to learn – and unless that starts with learning to read, we’re failing in our duty to them. Lees meer
A new report, produced by a group of literacy experts and is endorsed by GEEAP, shows that improving the quality of reading instruction can sharply increase reading levels in schools in LMICs, and calls on policymakers to act.
Benjamin Piper of the Gates Foundation joins Tim Phillips to talk about what works, and how it can be implemented.
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S6 Ep50: A unified global carbon market
17 december 2025 · 43 min
When the work well, carbon markets worldwide decarbonise economies and direct funds to the most efficient projects. Yet for these mechanisms to be effective, credible, and equitable, should we move beyond today’s fragmented initiatives and create a unified global carbon market that would integrate compliance and voluntary markets, with consistent standards and pricing?
Robin Burgess of LSE and Rohini Pande of Yale are authors of a detailed proposal to design and implement this radical concept. Fresh from presenting the report’s insights at COP 30, they join Tim Phillips to explain the potential and transformative impact of a unified market for carbon. Lees meerDownload the report https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/Pande%20et%20al%20Draft%20Proposal%20for%20a%20Unified%20Carbon%20Market.pdf
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S6 Ep49: How the slave trade shaped development in Europe
10 december 2025 · 25 min
Many papers in economics have shown the scale of the damage that slavery did to Africa, but can we also make the argument that the slave trade helped cause Europe’s economic development? Ellora Derenoncourt of Princeton is the author of a recently published paper which uses new methods and new data to investigate this question. Lees meer
She talks to Tim Phillips about what historical records can and cannot tell us about that link, and what this data tells us about the growth of European port cities.
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S6 Ep48: Women’s power at home
3 december 2025 · 24 min
At home, men usually have more money and more power than their female partners, and this inequality is particularly wide in LMICs. What does research tell us about how decisions are made and, if there isn’t enough food or money or care to go around, who gets what? And when policymakers try to empower women do their well-intentioned policies work, and can they provoke a backlash? Seema Jayachandran of Princeton and Alessandra Voena of Stanford are the authors of a new review of the evidence, and they talk to Tim Phillips about why women’s power at home is so difficult to measure, and what we don’t yet know about how to increase it. Lees meer
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S6 Ep47: Intimate partner violence: Causes, costs and prevention
26 november 2025 · 28 min
Intimate partner violence (IPV) is common everywhere, but how common? What are its causes and effects? How can we do a better job of noticing it, measuring its impact – and ultimately, finding effective ways to stop it? Lees meer
A new review of IPV looks at the recent economic research on the topic, what this work can tell us, and what questions are, so far, unanswered. Manisha Shah of UC Berkeley is one of the authors. She talks to Tim Phillips about why IPV is hard to measure, and even harder to prevent.
Read the full show notes here: https://voxdev.org/topic/health/intimate-partner-violence-causes-costs-and-prevention
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S6 Ep46: The origins of government
19 november 2025 · 40 min
The modern state, and the way in which is governs, is clearly very important. It provides social programs, education, disaster relief or, on the other side, it can cause violence and repression. Lees meer
We tend to assume that there is one model of a successful state, and the emergence of government has followed a single path with, as Francis Fukuyama wrote, “Getting to Denmark” as its end point. But is that the story that the historical record tells? And are successful states today, even in high-income countries, all governed in a way that matches our assumptions?
Leander Heldring of Northwestern University is the author of a chapter on the forthcoming Handbook of Political Economy that examines the historical data and the types of government that have succeeded and failed. He tells Tim Phillips what he has discovered about what types of bureaucracy have succeeded in history, what forms of government that citizens in different times and places have chosen, and whether there is one true evolutionary path to a successful state.
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S6 Ep45: Rethinking trade and development
12 november 2025 · 36 min
We think of trade-driven growth during the era of hyper-globalisation as having created many “growth miracles” since the 1990s. But how did that happen? If we look at what created these miracles more closely, will that help us to understand how the geopolitical and technology shifts of the last decade have affected, and will continue to affect, the relationship between international trade and development? Lees meer
Penny Goldberg of Yale and Michele Ruta of the IMF are the authors of a chapter in the forthcoming Handbook of Development that questions many of our assumptions about the role of trade in growth miracles. They tell Tim Phillips about how this engine of development really worked – and why it might not work as well in future.
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S6 Ep44: What have we learned about training entrepreneurs?
5 november 2025 · 31 min
How can we train the next generation of entrepreneurs? In developing economies, more than a billion dollars a year is spent on this type of training, but does it work, are we training the right people with the right skills – and what opportunities are there to do better? Lees meer
David McKenzie of the World Bank is one of the senior editors of the latest version of the VoxDevLit on Training Entrepreneurs. He tells Tim Phillips what we know about what training can achieve, why training programmes are not “one size fits all”, and what this all means for policy.
The VoxDevLit on training entrepreneurs: https://voxdev.org/voxdevlit/training-entrepreneurs
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S6 Ep43: How religion shapes economic development
29 oktober 2025 · 23 min
What is the relationship between religion and economic development? Does economic development mean fewer people become religious, or more? What causes people to believe, and does organised religion adapt as societies change, and competition from other religions increases? Lees meer
Sara Lowes of UC San Diego, Eduardo Montero on the University of Chicago, and Benjamin Marx of Boston University are the authors of a new review of religion in emerging and developing regions. They talk to Tim Phillips about how our assumptions about what religion is, and why people believe, are not always accurate – and how an understanding of religiosity can help policymakers understand our motivations and create social policy that is effective.
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S6 Ep42: Leonard Wantchekon on African development, democracy, and the African School of Economics
22 oktober 2025 · 28 min
“ Africa must become a full participant in global knowledge production, not just a passive recipient of solutions from elsewhere.” The journey of Leonard Wantchekon from teenage revolutionary in Benin to professor of economics at Princeton also led him to found the African School of Economics. Lees meer
In this week's episode, Leonard talks to Tim Phillips about what he learned from imprisonment and torture, how to improve African democracy, the legacy of slavery on trust, and how African economists can contribute to development in the region.
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S6 Ep41: India’s economic development since independence
15 oktober 2025 · 34 min
A fascinating new book called A Sixth of Humanity, Independent India’s Development Odyssey examines 75 years of development in the world’s most populous country – the successes and failures, the compromises, and the ways in which India has defied many of our ideas of how development should happen. The authors are Devesh Kapur of Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and Arvind Subramanian of the Peterson Institute, also of course formerly Chief Economic Advisor to the Government of India. They speak to Tim Phillips about what Indian politicians and policymakers around the world can learn from India’s economic transformation. Lees meer
The book is called A Sixth of Humanity: Independent India’s Development Odyssey. It is published by HarperCollins India. https://harpercollins.co.in/product/a-sixth-of-humanity/
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S6 Ep40: Understanding the global construction sector
8 oktober 2025 · 28 min
Policymakers and politicians like to talk about creating infrastructure like roads, schools and transport systems: how it grows the economy, provides jobs, and strengthens domestic firms. But that infrastructure needs raw materials, people and constructors to create it. Martina Kirchberger of Trinity College Dublin is an expert on how stuff gets built in developing countries. Are the materials they need expensive? Will a construction boom also create jobs? Are there local firms who can do the work and, if not, who makes projects happen in the global construction sector? She talks to Tim Phillips about investment, partnership, and the surprising cost of cement. Lees meer
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S6 Ep39: What have we learned about women in the workforce?
1 oktober 2025 · 30 min
Everywhere, women’s labour force participation is lower than men’s. There are many reasons to close this gap, but there are just as many reasons why it’s hard to do it. Research is discovering new and important insights into how financial constraints, social norms, the backlash from man and the problems of travelling safely reduce the opportunities to work from home. But which policies can change this? Release 2 of the VoxDev Lit on Female Labour Force Participation sets out this research, and Rachel Heath of the University of Washington tells Tim Phillips what it tells us about how work helps women, and policy helps women to find work. Lees meer
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S6 Ep38: Understanding and tackling school bullying
24 september 2025 · 37 min
When children are victims of bullying or social exclusion at school, it can be devastating for every part of their lives. This is a global problem, but with a global solution: if we can teach kids about empathy, self-control, or the effects of their violent behaviour, it can reduce bullying. How well do these policies work, and can they be scaled up successfully? Lees meer
JPAL is about to publish a policy insight on this topic, bringing together the research and summarising what we know. Sule Alan of Cornell University tells Tim Phillips about how we can spot bullying and exclusion in the classroom, and the interventions that work.
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S6 Ep37: The macroeconomics of climate change
17 september 2025 · 30 min
Macroeconomists know that our economic activity influences – and is influenced by – the natural environment in which it is embedded, but we have learned that modelling those effects is far from easy. The scientific consensus around climate change is strong, but there’s not similar agreement over appropriate economic policies to deal with it. On the eve of COP 30, a new review of macroeconomics and climate shows how far we have come but also points out where the gaps in our knowledge are. Lees meer
Adrien Bilal of Stanford University tells Tim Phillips about the state of research, its missing links, and the limits of what economists can do to influence the policy agenda.
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S6 Ep36: Culture and economic development
10 september 2025 · 26 min
How does culture affect development policy, and how does development policy affect culture? If we don’t take account of cultural norms or fail to learn about how they interact with well-intentioned polices, then this gap in our knowledge may be undermining development projects. Can better measurement and collaboration with other social sciences fill these gaps? A new paper investigates what we know about the culture, policy, and economic development, and Natalie Bau of UCLA, Sara Lowes of UC San Diego, and Eduardo Montero of the University of Chicago tell Tim Phillips about the potential, and pitfalls, of research into culture. Lees meer
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S6 Ep35: Conflict and development
3 september 2025 · 38 min
With record levels of armed conflict around the world in recent years, the study of conflict has gone from being a niche corner of economics into a thriving discipline that learns from, and interacts with, development economics. Rigorous empirical research on conflict is, however, relatively recent. Lees meer
The Reducing Conflict and Improving Performance in the Economy (ReCIPE) programme aims to provide a better understanding of the links between conflicts, economic growth, and public policies. this week we speak to Dominic Rohner (Geneva Graduate Institute), the Research Director of the programme, and Oliver Vanden Eynde (Paris School of Economics), the Head of Engagement about their new research that attempts to link the attributes of countries to the types of conflict they experience, how economic methods can advance our knowledge of conflict and the policies to reduce it, and what the work of ReCIPE can do to influence policy around conflict and development.
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S6 Ep34: Food policy: Lessons and priorities for a changing world
27 augustus 2025 · 30 min
In 2025, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) is 50 years old. “Lessons and Priorities for a Changing World”, its 2025 Global Food Policy Report, runs to just under 600 pages and covers the last five decades of progress in improving the world’s food systems – but also the challenges that remain, and the need for policy to keep evolving if we are going to build sustainable, healthy food systems. Lees meer
Johan Swinnen and Purnima Menon of IFPRI talk to Tim Phillips about the importance of agrifood resilience. With changes in the global economy, the equity and effectiveness of these food value chains will affect the livelihoods of billions of people. But has the progress in the last 50 years stalled?
Read the full show notes on VoxDev: https://voxdev.org/topic/health/food-policy-lessons-and-priorities-changing-world
Download the report: https://www.ifpri.org/global-food-policy-report/
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S6 Ep33: The development bogeyman? Understanding the role of middlemen
20 augustus 2025 · 31 min
What happens from the moment goods are manufactured or harvested, until they are bought by consumers? As we know from experience, most of the things we consume reach us having been bought and sold, sometimes many times, by intermediaries – most of us don’t order a phone from the factory. Many interventions designed to increase the welfare of consumers in developing economies are designed to shorten these supply chains by cutting out those traders in the middle. But what happens when you do that in the real world? Lees meer
Meredith Startz of Dartmouth College tells Tim Phillips why the story of what intermediaries deliver, and even their effect on the prices consumers pay, is more nuanced than our economic models often suggest.
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S6 Ep32: Contraception without prejudice: Reducing bias in family planning
13 augustus 2025 · 25 min
Like all of us, healthcare providers bring their biases to work. But if those biases result in a reduced level of care for their patients, how can we correct them? Lees meer
An innovative experiment in three very different countries attempted to reduce bias in contraceptive care for women. Zachary Wagner of USC and Manisha Shah of UC Berkeley were two of a multidisciplinary team that implemented program and evaluated the results. They talk to Tim Phillips about how biases shape contraceptive care, the methods that can help us to understand why they arise, and the challenges of creating a program that can work in different cultural and religious settings.
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S6 Ep31: Partnering with business for development economics research
31 juli 2025 · 24 min
In the second of our two podcasts with Francis Annan of UC Berkeley on his research on mobile money first in Ghana, then beyond, Tim Phillips discusses how he worked with commercial providers, not just to set up the RCTs designed to investigate the extent and reduce financial fraud, but to ensure that the insights could be scaled up. Lees meer
While contacting sceptical commercial providers can often meet with little or no response, he says, the ability to frame research in a way that makes them realise the commercial value as well as the social value can get, and keep, their attention – and lead to a long-run partnership that achieves more than working independently or through regulators.
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S6 Ep30: Mobile money in Ghana
29 juli 2025 · 32 min
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. Lees meer
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
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S6 Ep29: The economics of period poverty
23 juli 2025 · 35 min
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. Lees meer
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
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S6 Ep28: Can storytelling reduce violence against women and children?
16 juli 2025 · 24 min
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? Lees meer
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.
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S6 Ep27: Why “brain drain” is an incomplete story of migration
9 juli 2025 · 29 min
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. Lees meer
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
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S6 Ep26: Minibuses, major gains: Rethinking urban transit
3 juli 2025 · 21 min
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. Lees meer
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
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S6 Ep25: Gas flaring threatens agriculture and livelihoods in Nigeria
1 juli 2025 · 15 min
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. Lees meer
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
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S6 Ep24: Going for economic growth: Lessons from Indonesia
25 juni 2025 · 28 min
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? Lees meer
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 -
S5 Ep6: Development Dialogues: What is the role of small farms in the future of agriculture?
18 juni 2025 · 34 min
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. Lees meer
Catherine is joined by Gérardine Mukeshimana, former Minister of Agriculture in Rwanda, Christopher Udry of Northwestern University and Mark Rosenzweig of Yale University.
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S6 Ep23: Why we need to invest in foundational learning
11 juni 2025 · 30 min
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? Lees meer
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
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S6 Ep22: Understanding Brazil’s falling income inequality
4 juni 2025 · 24 min
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. Lees meerRead the full show notes on VoxDev: https://voxdev.org/topic/macroeconomics-growth/understanding-brazils-falling-income-inequality
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S6 Ep21: Can economists shape the future of AI?
28 mei 2025 · 36 min
AI’s 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. Lees meerThe Social Catalyst Lab: https://socialcatalystlab.org/
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S6 Ep20: How does social media influence conflict?
21 mei 2025 · 19 min
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. Lees meerMaria 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.
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S6 Ep19: Lovegrass Ethiopia: Building a business from the roots up
14 mei 2025 · 33 min
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 Africa’s dependency on aid discourage investment. Lees meer
Read the full show notes: https://voxdev.org/topic/firms/building-business-roots-yonas-alemus-journey-ethiopian-entrepreneur
Discover more about Lovegrass Ethiopia’s products and history: https://thelovegrass.com/
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S6 Ep18: Improving sanitation: What works and what doesn’t
8 mei 2025 · 19 min
Millions of people around the world have no access to sanitation. They defecate in the open, or in facilities where it’s hard to avoid human contact, unavoidably spreading disease. One of the Sustainable Development Goals that you don’t 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-PAL’s 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 it’s not a quick fix, and the surprising results of research into the health benefits of improving sanitation. Lees meer
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
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S6 Ep17: Improving worker well-being
1 mei 2025 · 31 min
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? Lees meerIn 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/
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S6 Ep16: What have we learned about the informal sector?
24 april 2025 · 36 min
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 – and the revenue they can collect from it. Lees meer
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
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S6 Ep15: How poverty fell
17 april 2025 · 22 min
In 1981, 44% of the world’s 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? Lees meer
Tom Vogl of UC San Diego is one of the authors of a paper called simply, “How Poverty
Fell”. 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, “Like climbing a slippery slope”?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
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S5 Ep5: Development Dialogues: Who will pay for the global energy transition?
15 april 2025 · 39 min
In the latest episode of the collaboration between Yale’s 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. Lees meer
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
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S6 Ep14: Graduation programmes: BRAC’s approach to targeting the ultra-poor
9 april 2025 · 34 min
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. Lees meer
Read the full show notes
The BRAC Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative
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S6 Ep13: Profit shifting hits developing countries hardest
2 april 2025 · 24 min
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. Lees meer
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