RCT

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.

A field experiment in Colombia found that disclosing the identity-based criteria used to select students for a free training programme reduced enrolment, suggesting that how targeted invitations are framed shapes whether intended beneficiaries actual...

Providing better information about school quality and admissions in a large, centralised school choice system in Ghana improved students’ applications outcomes, but did not increase enrolment – suggesting that information alone cannot resolve the dee...

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.

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, we argue that women’s convers...

Delays in public benefit delivery can harm societies' most vulnerable households, but making management-relevant information more accessible to the bureaucrats implementing these programmes can meaningfully improve delivery speeds.

A five-year randomised trial across Tanzania finds that entrepreneurship training delivered to young women before family obligations set in produces lasting income gains, but both economic and reproductive-health programmes unexpectedly increased ear...

In January 2022, the US suspended Ethiopia’s eligibility for the African Growth and Opportunity Act, ending Ethiopia’s preferential trade access to the US market, and leading to a major increase in tariffs, the loss of key buyers, and, at some compan...

A four-year study of smallholder farmers in Malawi finds that combining cash transfers with intensive agricultural extension produces larger and more durable gains in crop production and household consumption than either intervention alone.