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Don't forget to sign up here for our launch event with Senior Editors Stefano Caria and Kate Orkin, who will outline the key takeaways for policymakers from research on barriers to search and hiring in urban labour markets.
Despite global efforts by policymakers to lower the barriers to starting a business, there's growing skepticism amongst researchers about the actual benefits of these measures in terms of job creation and economic growth. In yesterday's article, Samuel Bazzi, Marc Muendler, Raquel F. Oliveira and James E. Rauch explore the impacts of expanding credit on firm entry and growth in Brazil. They show that an economy-wide expansion of credit for SMEs induced entry of more capable firms but did not change employment at the municipal level.
In recent years, high-speed internet has emerged as a transformative force in Africa, and African banks have responded by shifting toward innovative financial technology (FinTech). In today's article, Nicola Limodio and Angelo D'Andrea explore the relationship between high-speed internet, financial technology and banking. They find that high-speed internet enhances the role of banks in Africa by reducing telecommunication costs and fostering the banks’ adoption of new financial technologies, such as the real-time gross settlement (RTGS) payment system.
Globally, one in three women experience intimate partner violence (IPV) in their lifetime, and identifying reliable policies for preventing and reducing domestic violence is proving difficult. In Monday's article, Tilman Brück and Wolfgang Stojetz shed light on what affects men's propensity to commit IPV, finding that Angolan war veterans exposed to sexual violence during the war are more likely to be violent to their wives in the post-war period. This highlights the need for policy to pay attention to perpetrators and the factors internal to them that precipitate violent acts, especially in post-conflict countries.
Tuesday's article explores the effects of an early childhood health intervention in Bangladesh. Tania Barham, Brachel Champion, Gisella Kagy, Randall Kuhn, Patrick Turner and Jena Hamadani use data that connects three generations to provide evidence on the long-term and intergenerational effects of a public health intervention in the Matlab area of Bangladesh. They find that this programme benefitted adult’s human capital and economic outcomes as well as human capital in the next generation.
On Wednesday we covered research that explores US history and highlights development lessons for today. This week's podcast explored the role of state capacity in the economic development of the US. Nicola Mastrorocco outlined the key takeaways from five years of work digitalising civil service records in the US, including how 100 years of bureaucracy changed the US, and what this tells us about how a state bureaucracy evolves. Also on Wednesday, Andrea Bernini, Giovanni Facchini, Marco Tabellini and Cecilia Testa looked at how majority groups react to policy interventions empowering minorities in their article. They examine the impacts of the Voting Rights Act (1965) which struck down legal barriers that had disenfranchised African Americans since 1890. They find that the VRA improved the conditions of Black Americans along multiple dimensions, but also triggered significant and long-lasting opposition among the white majority.
Be sure to stay tuned for next week's articles and podcast, featuring research on adapting to extreme temperatures, technology in classrooms, the emerging agenda for macro development, judicial capture, and management in schools.