This week we featured research on pharmaceutical innovation, land formalisation and more!
This week we released two new VoxDevLits!
- On Monday, we released our VoxDevLit on Technology and Development with Senior Editors Julieta Caunedo and Tommaso Porzio, and Co-Editors David Argente, Jaedo Choi, Yulu Tang, Danial Lashkari, Jacob Moscona, Karthik Sastry, Deivy Houeix, Federico Rossi, Luisa Cefala, Erin Kelley, and Conor Walsh.
- On Wednesday, we published our VoxDevLit on Air Pollution with Senior Editors Teevrat Garg and Anant Sudarshan.
Dean Karlan, former Chief Economist of USAID, joined us this week on Ideas in Development to discuss what the push for evidence-based policy actually looks like inside institutions, the rise of embedded evidence labs in developing country governments, and whether there are questions in development economics on which we now have enough evidence.
What does the standard seat count really tell us about women's political power? In this week’s episode of VoxDevTalks, Soledad Artiz Prillaman discusses her review of the research into non-elite women's political participation. The conversation explores who counts as 'elite', why that distinction matters for policy, and what the evidence actually shows about the barriers women face when trying to engage with politics.
As part of the National Reimbursement Drug List reform, the Chinese government negotiated steep price cuts with pharmaceutical firms for innovative, high-priced therapies in exchange for guaranteed coverage and near-universal patient access. Panle Jia Barwick, Hongyuan Xia, and Tianli Xia find that this dramatically expanded the country’s pharmaceutical innovation, offering a rare policy model that reconciles drug affordability with R&D incentives.
A land formalisation programme in Benin significantly increased the likelihood that widows – especially those without a son – remained in their villages, offering formal institutional protection where customary norms left women most vulnerable. Ioana Botea, Markus Goldstein, Kenneth Houngbedji, Florence Kondylis, Michael O’Sullivan, and Harris Selod discuss.
Leila Pereita, Rafael Pucci, and Rodrigo R. Soares examine how an air interdiction policy in early 2000s Brazil shifted cocaine trafficking from air routes to Amazonian rivers, increasing violence in municipalities along these waterways. They find that the policy redirected trafficking to river networks by raising the risks of aerial transport, bringing criminal organisations into closer contact with local communities.
Instant payments can substitute for cash when adoption moves quickly beyond high-income early users. Evidence from Brazil, Costa Rica, and Mexico finds that the key is a rapid low-income gradient: systems must combine low adoption costs, dense networks, supply-side coordination, awareness, and trust. Without them, even sound platforms can remain marginal. David Argente, Paula González-Alvarez, Esteban Méndez, and Diana Van Patten explain.
Elsewhere in development:
- Ivan Manhique, Felix Mambo, and Jennifer Mascarenhas discuss how Mozambique became one of the world's poorest countries.
- The South African Economics Pipeline invites students from South African universities interested in economics to apply for their bursary and training programme.