This week, VoxDev featured research on microplastics, inflation, food transfers, migration and more.
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This week we announced our next event, which will focus on using evidence to make humanitarian aid more effective. Register here for this free online webinar on Tuesday January 28th, 2025.
On Monday, we released two articles by Michael Walker, Nachiket Shah, Edward Miguel, Dennis Egger, Felix Samy Soliman and Tilman Graff covering their work on slack and economic development. They show that demand-side policies or stimulus may be very effective at raising output without creating inflationary pressure when there is a lot of ‘slack’ in the economy. In the first article, they demonstrate that small firms in Kenya have a lot of ‘slack’.
In today's article, Xinming Du, Shan Zhang and Eric Zou describe their large-scale study, which establishes what is believed to be a first causal link between in-utero exposure to microplastics and low birthweights.
On Wednesday, Aditya Shrinivas, Kathy Baylis and Ben Crost showed that the expansion of India’s food transfer programme prevented approximately 1.8 million children from being stunted, while also raising wage incomes and improving dietary diversity.
The internet’s impact on developing countries has been profound, though uneven. In our first podcast of 2025, Lin Tian tells us that policy will play a crucial role in ensuring that the gains from connectivity are widely shared, and outlines why governments must invest in infrastructure and promote digital literacy.
In yesterday's article, Bharti Nandwani and Punarjit Roychowdhury find that the construction of rural roads improved women's empowerment by reducing mobility restrictions, fostering progressive norms, increasing girls' educational enrolment and enhancing female agency.
In Tuesday's article, Hanna Schwank showed that migration can act as a powerful tool for upward mobility. Evidence from Indonesia indicates that the benefits of migration depend on a household's initial education level, the age at which a child migrates, and the origin and destination locations.
Elsewhere, there is lots to catch up on from the holiday period:
- Ken Opalo recaps 2024 in Africa, and looks ahead to 2025.
- Jeffrey Paller looks at the top stories in Africa over the past year, and has some book recommendations: 18 books to read from 2024 & 11 books about urban Africa from 2024.
- Indermit Gill and Aaditya Mattoo argue that services are the new road to development.
- Youth Impact outline ten lessons from a decade of optimising and scaling impact.
- On CGDEV, Ranil Dissanayake discusses the disaster that is climate finance, Barbara Bruns talks about how the What Works Hub for Global Education is boosting education research, and Amina Mendez Acosta and Biniam Bedasso summarise a 15 year review on school meals and education.
- On LinkedIn Micheil Banoub asks what SMEs in Zambia really need from lenders.
Some great podcasts from the last month:
- Hannes Mueller and Margherita Philipp talked to Tim Phillips on VoxTalks about how AI forecasts can improve crisis response.
- On the CGD Podcast, Rachael Calleja speaks with Santiago Quiñones Cardenas about building better development partnerships.
- On CSAE’s podcast, they discuss student leadership training in Malawi.
And some opportunities and announcements:
- CSAE are hiring a Senior Research and Policy Officer for the Economic Policy Network.
- And congratulations to African School of Economics who welcomed their inaugural cohort of students in Nigeria.