This week we featured research on satellite imagery, financial shocks, history and more!
This week on Ideas in Development Mamo Mihretu – former Governor of the National Bank of Ethiopia – discussed export-led manufacturing, economic reform, and the macroeconomic foundations of a growing economy.
The contraction of international aid is forcing a fundamental rethink of how developing countries approach external assistance. In this week’s episode of VoxDevTalks, W. Gyude Moore – former Minister of Public Works in Liberia – argues that the current moment is not merely a crisis but a structural turning point, and that recipient countries have both the opportunity and the obligation to respond strategically.
In 2010, the government of Andhra Pradesh – then the heartland of India's microfinance industry – enacted an emergency ordinance that effectively halted all microfinance operations in the state. Muneer Kalliyil and Soham Sahoo examine this shock to study how a policy-induced credit contraction affected children’s education. They find that children in districts outside Andhra Pradesh that were more exposed to the credit disruption experienced larger and more persistent declines in foundational literacy and numeracy than children in less-exposed districts.
Tillmann von Carnap and Anna Tompsett discuss a new method for learning about short-run changes in economic conditions in developing countries: monitoring rural marketplaces using satellite imagery. This approach relies on periodic markets looking very different on market days and non-market days. Using validation data from Kenya, Malawi, and Mozambique, they show that they successfully detect markets where they exist and, conversely, that they don’t detect markets where they don’t exist. They then use this approach to generate a map of 1,776 markets in Ethiopia.
Marc Rysman, Robert M. Townsend, and Christoph Walsh explore the effect of the 1997 Thai financial crisis on credit access through the bank branching channel. Although Thailand appeared to have recovered within two to three years, they found that many areas did not see their branches replaced when the local economy recovered. This was because lower growth rates made entry prospects less favourable, despite higher levels of local GDP compared to before the crisis.
Giorgia Chiovelli, Stelios Michalopoulos, Elias Papaioannou, and Tanner Regan discuss a new adjusted and harmonised satellite nighttime-lights series for 1992–2023 that tracks local development in the Global South more accurately than the off-the-shelf data – especially in panels and at fine spatial resolution.
What lessons can economic history offer for development policy today? Magnus Neubert and Stefan Nikolić examine this question in the context of Bosnia-Herzegovina under Habsburg colonial rule between 1878 and 1910. Following the construction of railways, they find that market integration hurt local manufacturing, but also created new opportunities – with areas with better education and state capacity benefitting the most.
In Mexico, Andrea María Flores assesses the impact of the 2002 urban expansion of Oportunidades/Progresa on the bargaining power of mothers living with a partner, by building on a collective household model with the domestic production of a public good associated with children. She finds that the programme effectively increases mothers’ bargaining power in beneficiary households by approximately 13%. She also shows that since mothers have a relatively stronger preference for the public good that is domestically produced in the household and associated with children, the increase in their decision-making position within the household leads to an increase in the production of this good.
The persistence of patriarchal clan-based orders around the world is a serious hindrance to development not least because they constrain women’s emancipation. Drawing on varied empirical evidence from sub-Saharan Africa, Pablo Álvarez-Aragón, Catherine Guirkinger, and Jean-Philippe Platteau argue that women’s conversion to new Christian churches may be an attempt to pursue emancipation, subtly undermining clan authority.
Elsewhere in development:
- Susannah Hares, Jack Rossiter, and David Evans on rethinking how we report learning gains.
- Han Sheng Chia and Tim Ohlenburg have written a policy brief on generative AI evaluation.
- Deena Mousa on why AI won't be the next leapfrog miracle.
- Ben Hyman makes a case for international labour mobility.
- Pranab Bardhan writes about the neglected aspects of inequality in India.
- In Development is calling for pitches for narrative-driven essays on development. Submit these by July 1, 2026.