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I've just got back from a fantastic week at the CEPR Symposium - as Managing Editor I am based at CEPR, which supports the work of VoxDev along with IGC, UKAID and PEDL - where it was great to meet some of the researchers who contribute to our articles, podcasts and VoxDevLits. VoxDev has continued our daily schedule, with three articles and the last two podcasts from our series in collaboration with IGC and BREAD based on their online PhD course.
While the news agenda is grabbed by droughts, hurricanes and wildfires, the inexorable rise in sea levels is less easy to see but will affect billions of people living in coastal regions in our lifetimes. So, what are the possibilities for, and costs of, adaptation to sea level rise? In yesterday's episode of VoxDevTalks, Allan Hsiao discussed how low-lying cities like Jakarta will cope with this new reality. Earlier in the week, Michael Greenstone joined Tim Phillips to discuss why estimating the social cost of carbon is such an important task for researchers. In this episode, Michael outlines how how the process of assigning a value to the cost of emissions can help us to think clearly about the policy decisions we should take.
The global economy is currently experiencing a boom in demand for minerals essential to the adoption of renewable energy technologies, which are mainly extracted in settings of extreme poverty where child labour remains a persistent and significant problem. To understand how education is affected by commodity booms in low-income countries, in Monday's article Irina España-Eljaiek and María José Fuentes-Vásquez look at commodity specialisation in Colombia during the late 19th and 20th centuries and show that this had negative impacts on the demand for education during a surge in global demand for coffee.
Over 300 giant oil or gas discoveries (greater than 500 million barrels) have been made across 39 countries since 2000, with the largest number occurring in Brazil. Politicians often respond to these resource discoveries with grand development promises - but these promises prove difficult to fulfill. In Wednesday's article, Erik Katovich outlines how production delays, sudden windfalls, and political reactions after discoveries created major challenges for local governments in Brazil.
Empowering women in settings like Tunisia, where opportunities and labour market outcomes are limited by strong gender and social norms, is a key priority for policymakers. In today's article, Jules Gazeaud, Nausheen Khan, Eric Mvukiyehe and Olivier Sterck show that a cash grant and training programme had a range of benefits for women in Tunisia, but only improved participation in income-generating activities for women who attended training without their partner.
Be sure to stay tuned for next week's content featuring research on buyers' sourcing strategies, support for democracies, early child development and the political economy of economic policy advice.