This week we featured research on aid, telemedicine, irrigation and more!
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This Monday October 27th (13:00 UK), Cesi Cruz and Horacio Larreguy will outline the key takeaways for policy from their forthcoming VoxDevLit on the causes and consequences of political polarisation. Register here.
When delivered by a single donor, development aid appears to curtail corruption. However, under donor fragmentation, these benefits are significantly diminished. Travers B. Child, Austin L. Wright, and Yun Xiao explain.
In Rwanda, Alexandra Steiny Wellsjo, Paul Gertler, Ada Kwan, Eric Remera, Piero Irakiza, Jeanine Condo, and James Humuza telemedicine delivered higher-quality, faster, and lower-cost care for common conditions.
Expanding irrigation infrastructure in Senegal led to significant and sustained increases in cultivation rates and reduced sensitivity to temperature shocks. Abdoulaye Cisse, Alain de Janvry, Joel Ferguson, Marco Gonzalez-Navarro, Samba Mbaye, Elisabeth Sadoulet, and Mame Mor Anta Syll discuss.
In this episode of VoxDevTalks, Leonard Wantchekon reflects on a life that bridges activism, scholarship, and institution-building. He recounts how formative experiences of injustice in Benin shaped his research agenda, discusses his influential research in political economy, and sets out his mission for the African School of Economics (ASE) – which he founded to cultivate a new generation of Africa-based researchers.
In Ghana, Pascaline Dupas, Camille Falezan, Seema Jayachandran, and Mark Walsh found that a three-minute video intervention prompted mothers to talk more to infants and boosted early language – at just $0.45 per child at scale.
Internationally trained PhDs are often seen as a ‘brain drain’, but evidence from Colombia suggests that they act as crucial bridges – connecting local researchers to the global scientific community. Rodrigo Ito, Diego Chavarro, Tommaso Ciarli, Robin Cowan, and Fabiana Visentin explain.
In India, Arkadev Ghosh, Prerna Kundu, Matt Lowe, and Gareth Nellis find that youth camps integrating sports, rituals, and civics training built intergroup ties, reduced bias, and enhanced well-being among adolescent boys.
Panle Jia Barwick, Luming Chen, Shanjun Li, and Xiaobo Zhang find that China’s 2014 business registration reform spurred greater market dynamism by lowering entry barriers, which increased firm turnover and allowed smaller yet more productive entrepreneurs to establish new businesses, boosting overall productivity and growth.
Elsewhere in development:
- Jishnu Das on impact investing in private schools.
- Sarah Bermeo disentangles foreign aid and development.
- Max Roser on Kenya’s 30-year progress in providing access to electricity.
- Daniel Björkegren on barriers to AI use in countries with low internet access.