Public service reforms can provoke political backlash from service providers, but when quality increases sufficiently, the electoral rewards can outweigh the costs

Lottery incentives in Mexico attracted unbanked households to open bank accounts and caused a persistent increase in the flow of deposits and the stock of savings

Special training for teachers in Turkey aided refugee children’s integration into the education system and improved key educational outcomes

Production networks matter for firm growth. However, little is known about what shapes firms’ production networks in developing countries. This column explores the role of community networks in West Bengal in firm-to-firm trade between 2010 and 2016. Firms systematically trade more within their caste than they would if trading relationships were randomly chosen, both for firms in large and smaller castes. Being in the same caste doubles the probability that two firms trade and, when they do, increases trade volumes by almost 20%.

Enterprise growth for small businesses in India led to schooling gains for children of literate parents but schooling losses for children of illiterate parents, lowering relative intergenerational mobility

Chinese import competition in Peru had adverse effects on employment in the short term, which dissipates for men, but is long-lasting for low-educated women in the tradable sector

Autocracies and weak democracies are more likely to import facial recognition AI from China, particularly in years when they experience domestic unrest

New empirical evidence on global deforestation casts doubts on Corporate Environmental Responsibility and ESG claims that they can replace state-led regulation as a mechanism to minimise negative environmental externalities in low government capacity settings

Evidence from the Jobs of the World Project shows that as countries develop they undergo three broad transformations in the organisation of labour: the marketisation of work, the emergence of wage work, and the fractionalisation of labour into specialised occupations