VoxDev Development Economics

Explore the successes and failures of decentralization in developing countries, including the lack of responsiveness and accountability in centralized systems. Discover the prerequisites for utilizing big data for state capacity, including proxy means tests and nationwide identification systems. Learn about the clash between rules and discretion in decentralization, and the role of political power dynamics in this process.

Most policies are one-size-fits-all. But in some cases, we can do better. How can we design an intervention that incentivises people to manage their diabetes and hypertension, and does it deliver better results for both the patient and the policymaker? Ariel Zucker of UC Santa Cruz tells Tim Phillips about an experiment to deliver personalised healthcare in India.

Poor air quality is a danger to children’s health, but most of what we know about the effects are from wealthy countries or large cities. A multidisciplinary study has estimated the impact of air quality on child health for many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, with surprising policy conclusions. Jennifer Burney talks to Tim Phillips.

The Chief Economist of the Inter-American Development Bank discusses the economic challenges in Latin America and the Caribbean, highlighting the benefits of economic integration. The podcast also covers IDB projects on improving math education in Peru and increasing HPV vaccination rates in Colombia. The development effectiveness framework used by IDB is explored, showcasing its value in accountability and decision-making.

Multifaceted graduation programmes can permanently change the lives of desperately poor people. But which components of these programs are the most important? And would any of these single interventions work just as well if they were tried on their own? Robert Osei tells Tim Phillips whether individual facets might be sufficient to help people graduate permanently from poverty.

Should the community have a greater say in determining how aid is spent? Participatory development aid has the goal of making sure that governments can’t misuse aid to buy approval. It’s an important idea, but Kate Baldwin tells Tim Phillips that it may be much more complicated in practice than in theory. 

The challenge of creating evidence-based policy inspired Arianna Legovini of the World Bank to create an entirely new model of impact evaluation: The Development Impact Evaluation (DIME) group generates operationally relevant data and research that has vastly expanded our knowledge of which interventions work, how they work, and how best to implement them. She tells Tim Phillips how DIME puts research into practice. 

Programs that incentivise rural workers to migrate to cities in Bangladesh for seasonal work have been successful. But why don’t more people migrate in this way, and why do some choose not to return to the city? Mushfiq Mobarak tells Tim Phillips about what the researchers discovered when they looked closely at the data, and how that should change policy to encourage migration.

Thinking about development as a ladder is a useful metaphor, but is it true? Can every country climb, or does trade push some countries up the ladder, and some countries down? David Atkin of MIT used this idea as a starting point to investigate the interaction between global trade and development, and he tell Tim Phillips what he discovered.

In the first of a series of podcasts recorded at the PSE-CEPR Policy Forum at the Paris School of Economics, Esther Duflo talks to Tim Phillips about how development economics can respond to the challenges of the 21st century, the link between climate justice and corporate taxation, and why development economics is like cooking a ragoût.