natural experiment

How has research featured on VoxDev used different econometric techniques? Here are some examples from recent development economics research, offering insights for students, teachers and academics.

Conflict disrupting transport routes in Somalia raises food prices and worsens household welfare in distant, peaceful markets, showing that the economic costs of violence travel far beyond the front line through supply chains. Aid strategies focused ...

Twenty years after the Lord's Resistance Army conflict ended in northern Uganda, women who were abducted as children during the war and subsequently released show significantly higher rates of depression and perceived stress, reduced social support, ...

In Mexico, children in safe areas suffer lasting academic harm when peers who fled local violence transfer to their schools – even though they were never directly exposed to that violence themselves. This hidden cost of violence is especially pronoun...

Ethnic diversity is often blamed for poor development outcomes. New evidence from colonial Peru shows that a history of economic exchange can sustain inter-ethnic cooperation and local trade in the long run.

Extreme heat in West Africa does not simply reduce farm labour but reshapes household labour allocation – often increasing reliance on women and children and reducing hired labour – while the overall response varies significantly across countries, de...

A growing number of urban areas around the world face water scarcity. Focusing on the prolonged drought that Cape Town experienced from 2015 to 2018, this column examines how adaptation shaped outcomes for the city’s residents and for its municipal w...

Electricity clearly improves people’s quality of life. But in Rwanda, even one decade after communities were connected, rural electrification had limited effects on incomes, employment, and broader economic development.

Exposure to less restrictive reproductive health policies via international migration leads to lower fertility in origin communities through the diffusion of new knowledge, preferences, and behaviour.