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Researchers want to maximise the development impact of their advice, but often their suggestions of an optimal policy or intervention do not account for the constraints faced by policymakers. In this week's episode of VoxDevTalks, our last of Season 3, Stefan Dercon discusses how giving "second-best advice" which takes into account the political feasibility of policies can improve the impact of research. Stefan also discusses the extractive nature of economic research and why this makes the work of the Centre for the Study of African Economies and other institutions that look to build research capacity in low- and middle-income countries so important.
Millions of children in low-income countries risk not reaching their development potential due to extreme poverty and deprivation. The crucial task of improving early child development outcomes in these settings requires affordable, sustainable, and easily scalable solutions. In today's article, Patricio Justino, Marinella Leone and Pierfrancesco Rolla evaluate the “First Steps” programme in Rwanda, which they find has substantial positive effects on child development and offers a blueprint for interventions seeking to improve parental practices.
A firm’s approach to sourcing is a critical strategic decision, and Monday's article shows that the sourcing strategies of global buyers can have profound implications for suppliers in low-income countries. Using novel data, research by Julia Cajal Grossi, Rocco Macciavello and Guillermo Noguera in the garment sector reveals how global buyers differ in their approach to sourcing and why that matters for suppliers’ margins.
Democracy is in crisis. Both democracy itself, and support for democracy, have been declining around the world. In yesterday's article, Daron Acemoğlu, Nicolas Ajzenman, Cevat Giray Aksoy, Martin Fiszbein & Carlos Molina explored the key determinants of support for democratic institutions. They find that such support is very closely related to people’s experience of democratic institutions in terms of the things that they care about – economic growth, peace and stability, redistribution and control of corruption.
Earlier this week, I wrote a blog post outlining some of the ways in which VoxDev can be used by students and teachers at universities. With the added capabilities of our new website, you can now filter our articles by a number of commonly used research techniques, including DIDs, RDDs, IVs, RCTs and calibrated models. I highlighted a subset of these articles that we have featured during my time as Managing Editor that use a particular causal inference technique commonly taught in economic undergraduate or postgraduate degrees, or approach development issues in an insightful way.
The editorial board and I are putting together a post summarising VoxDev's busy and exciting 2023. We will release this before the new year, so be sure to stay tuned for that as well as the resumption of our normal schedule of articles, podcasts and VoxDevLits on January 2nd.