This week we featured research on voting rights, climate politics, emergency aid, and more...
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After a short break, we returned to our normal schedule this week, featuring a range of fascinating research. We have lots of exciting plans and releases over the coming months as we ramp up after summer - we can't wait to share these with you!
In India, Guilhem Cassan, Lakshmi Iyer, and Rinchan Ali Mirza find that voting rights alone did not transform political participation or competition, but they did shift government priorities in favour of the newly enfranchised voters.
Do we fully understand the impacts of emergency aid? Salvatore Di Falco and Kyungbo Han present evidence from the 1984 Ethiopian famine, suggesting that emergency aid mitigates the impacts of large-scale disasters even decades later.
Despite strong public concern for climate change and pollution in Indonesia, politicians underestimate the demand for policy responses and fail to act – even when informed of voter preferences. Allan Hsiao and Nicholas Kuipers show that politicians’ misperceptions, elite capture, and political costs sustain inaction, underscoring the multiplicity of challenges for climate policy.
Vaidehi Tandel, Sahil Gandhi, Anupam Nanda, and Nandini Agnihotri demonstrate that mandatory disclosures in housing markets reduce market inefficiencies and improve access to information, as evidenced by disclosure laws in India.
In this week’s episode of VoxDevTalks, Zachary Wagner and Manisha Shah discuss Beyond Bias, an ambitious, multi-country project to tackle prejudices held by healthcare providers delivering family planning services. Conducted in Burkina Faso, Pakistan, and Tanzania, the initiative aimed to measure, understand, and reduce, provider bias – especially against young, unmarried, or childless women seeking contraception.
Alexander Rothenberg, Yao Wang, and Amalavoyal Chari find that Indonesia’s Special Economic Zone programme had minimal impact on regional growth and welfare, largely because it targeted remote, low-potential areas and relied solely on tax incentives. Effective design requires careful site selection, complemented by infrastructure investment and policies that reduce barriers to formal sector participation.
Guillermo Woo-Mora outlines evidence from Latin America and the Caribbean, which suggests that skin tone is a powerful predictor of intergenerational mobility.
In Ethiopia, Caterina Gennaioli and Gaia Narciso reveal an unintended consequence of road construction: a sharp rise in infant deaths along key trade routes – which is potentially the result of hazardous waste dumping near roads.
Elsewhere, some exciting announcements:
- The BREAD-IGC virtual PhD course is back! This year's course will provide a comprehensive review of the economic questions relevant to social protection.
- ReCIPE's first call for PhD Research Grant proposals is now open.
- And the Journal of Political Economy: Microeconomics has announced a special issue dedicated to the Science of Scaling.
- Check out AVA, the World Bank Institute for Economic Development’s new AI-powered research assistant.
And lots to read!
- On Open Philanthropy, Jeremy Klemin writes about how the Institute for Replication is making social science more robust and reliable.
- On Ideas for India - A short history of MNREGA: 20 years in 10 charts by Jean Dreze and Rahul R.
- Ken Opalo discusses how Ethiopia avoided colonization in the late 19th century but then lagged behind in the 20th century.
- On Brookings, Ugo Gentilini asks, and answers, Are cash transfers good for jobs?
- Dean Karlan has advice for the new USAID team - With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility.
- Some great insights on Spring Impact by Srivathsan Ramaswamy and Antonie Chigeda: Four common beliefs about scaling with government, challenged by those who’ve made it happen.
- Damien King, Executive Director of the Caribbean Policy Research Institute speaks to Tom Hashemi on Policy Unstuck.
- Solomon Lazare Kovo discusses his work and what drew him to development economics on J-PAL.
- Irene Guijt asks whether hope can have an evidence base.
- Eeshani Kandpal reflects on ABCDE 2025.
Finally, Afronomics is back with another episode, Andrew Dabalen and Moussa P. Blimpo discuss which should come first: household electrification, including for hard-to-reach rural families, or electricity for businesses that create jobs?