This week we featured research on conflict, hotter temperatures, seeds and more...
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Multinational enterprises are often seen only as engines of growth and development. Yet across Africa, another side of the story is unfolding. Using geo-referenced data across the African continent, Tommaso Sonno demonstrates how foreign investment is increasingly linked to local conflicts over land and livelihoods.
In Bangladesh, Teevrat Garg, Maulik Jagnani, and Hemant K. Pullabhotla find that while mild heat exposure does not reduce individual computer programmer productivity, it does significantly impair team performance, especially in more diverse teams, raising concerns about climate change impacts on modern collaborative work.
Often presented as game-changing solutions, agricultural technologies like improved seeds or fertilisers can lead farmers to adopt one at the expense of others, only to disadopt when the expected gains, based on overly optimistic assumptions about reduced need for complementary inputs, fail to materialise. Caroline Miehe, Leocardia Nabwire, Robert Sparrow, David Spielman, and Bjorn Van Campenhout provide evidence from Uganda.
How does media bias contribute to social unrest? In this episode of VoxDevTalks, Maria Petrova and Augustin Tapsoba discuss the links between conflict, hate speech, and media—especially social media. The conversation is part of the Information and Conflict theme within CEPR’s ReCIPE programme, which aims to understand how conflict affects economic growth and public policy.
Why do some protests grow quickly into large movements that force governments to respond, whereas others slowly die out? What drives individuals to join and what determines when a government decides to concede? Sofía Correa presents a new economic model describing the strategic behaviour of both protesters and the government.
When new manufacturing sectors emerge in developing countries, a significant share of the workforce is often comprised of women, many of whom previously lacked access to non-agricultural employment. Such employment can have important consequences for women’s physical and psychological wellbeing, as well as for resource allocation within households. Louise Grogan discusses how women’s employment in export processing zones in Nicaragua disrupted gender roles, contributing to intimate partner violence.
And from VoxDev, Deputy Managing Editor Emaan Siddique discusses why increased Chinese foreign assistance should be expected, and Managing Editor Oliver Hanney outlines what have we learned from economic research on unintended consequences.
For those who haven't seen it, FCDO’s Research Commissioning Centre (RCC) is inviting expressions of interest to explore the role of evidence use in policymaking. Detailed call for expressions of interest and application instructions are available here.
Elsewhere in development:
- The benefits of foundational learning to individuals and society: a review of the evidence by Michelle Kaffenberger, Sarah Melville & Madhuri Agarwal.
- Children Are Being Poisoned Because of Bureaucratic Inertia by Lee Crawfurd & Rory Todd.
- Where do cuts to USAID leave the future of foreign aid in Africa? Podcast on The Conversation with Gemma Ware & Bright Simons.
- Challenges with digital technology adoption by SMEs: A case study from Viet Nam by Miriam Bruhn, Shawn W. Tan & Trang Tran.
- On nature, Christopher Bendana writes that Trump’s cuts to international aid are stifling Africa’s HIV research.
- Bill Gates writes about the breakthrough that transformed the Gates Foundation.
And finally, the International Growth Centre are hiring three policy economists for climate, energy and environment.