This week we featured research on cities, jobs, agricultural advice, quotas, smoking, and more...
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On July 10th, Britta Augsburg, Andrew Foster and Molly Lipscomb will join us to outline the key policy takeaways from their forthcoming VoxDevLit on Sanitation Infrastructure. Register here.
On the VoxDev Blog, Managing Editor Oliver Hanney explores the concept of additionality in efforts to fight climate change. Before taking credit for offsetting carbon or reducing emissions, organisations need to ask: Would this have happened anyway? And Deputy Managing Editor Emaan Siddique discusses what research tells us about the incentives, selection, and training needed to improve the current state of civil service in Pakistan.
This week on VoxDevTalks, we featured two episodes recorded at the fifth annual Structural Transformation and Economic Growth (STEG) conference: Arinze Nwokolo discusses his research on the far-reaching consequences of gas flaring in Nigeria, and Lucas Conwell discusses his research on informal minibus transport systems in developing countries, with a focus on Cape Town, South Africa.
Can a small pilot project still be effective when scaled up to reach millions? Shawn Cole, Jessica Goldberg, Tomoko Harigaya, and Jessica Zhu show that digital advisory can help farmers who experience weather shocks obtain higher yields.
In South Africa, Andrea Kiss, Robert Garlick, Kate Orkin, and Lukas Hensel, find that short, low-cost workshops helped young jobseekers learn about their skills, search for better-matched vacancies, and raise their earnings by 25%.
Over the last fifteen years, the rate at which low-income countries are graduating to middle-income status has slowed markedly amid mounting headwinds. Although this trend presages more challenges ahead, Philip Kenworthy and Joseph Mawejje examine how these countries also have considerable untapped potential.
Kohei Takeda and Atsushi Yamagishi demonstrate that agglomeration economies and the coordination of people’s expectations were pivotal to the recovery of central Hiroshima following the atomic bombing.
In India, Varun Karekurve-Ramachandra and Gaurav Sood find that exposure to 15+ years of women’s quotas in rural local elections does not boost women’s representation when quotas are lifted.
Between 2009 and 2013, several Brazilian states and state capitals adopted strict smoking bans; this was followed by a national-level ban in 2014. Camila Steffens and Paula Carvalho Pereda demonstrate that comprehensive bans and strict enforcement were crucial to the effectiveness of these policy efforts.
Elsewhere in development, lots of interesting reads, events and opportunities:
- Peter Evans reflects on the lessons of nearly a quarter of a century of trying to improve the uptake and real world impact of research and evidence.
- In the excellent Evidence Effect series at J-PAL, Alison Fahey and Shobhini Mukerji highlight four essential roles of aid and philanthropy.
- Alice Evans' six bullet points on boosting birth rates.
- Igor Martins writes that the pressure to quantify research is erasing conceptual depth.
- On Le Monde, Esther Duflo: 'Development aid is not a waste of public money'.
- On CGD: Mikaela Gavas and Anita Käppeli reflect on the 2025 development leaders conference; and Helen Dempster, Charley Ward and Sam Huckstep outline why the US Remittance Tax Hits Poor Countries Hard.
- Hirwa Hans has a nice blog on substack reflecting on our recent webinar on critical mineral's role in African economic development.
- Join CSAE for a webinar about their scholarships for African nationals applying for the MPhil or DPhil in Economics at the University of Oxford for 2026 entry.
- J-PAL MENA are celebrating their five year anniversary - tune in on Monday, July 7 at 1:30 PM CLT.
And some interesting jobs:
- GiveWell are hiring a Program Officer to scale up GiveWell's livelihoods grantmaking, which aims to increase income and consumption for people in extreme poverty.
- Give Directly is hiring a Data Reporter.
- J-PAL MENA is hiring - they are looking for a research manager, senior research associate and research intern.
- And CGD is also hiring for a number of positions, including a Policy Fellow focused on lead exposure at their Global Health Program. Other positions include Comptroller, US Policy Assistant & Finance and Grants Associate.