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 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.

A study of Indonesia's Kartu Prakerja programme finds that on-demand cash and training assistance can significantly boost self-employment and income among those who genuinely receive it. However, the programme's flexible online design enabled third-p...

An experiment in Nairobi's informal settlements found that parents usually made child-nutrition decisions cooperatively, and that fathers were at least as willing as mothers to allocate resources to their children's meals – challenging the case for u...