This week we featured research on housing, trade wars, electric vehicles, AI and more...
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Artificial Intelligence, particularly Generative AI, is rapidly transforming labour markets worldwide. While its adoption has sparked optimism about its potential to spur productivity gains, it also raises concerns of widespread job displacement. In yesterday’s article, Marina M. Tavares, Carlo Pizzinelli, Augustus Panton, Mauro Cazzaniga and Longji Li outlined the implications of AI on developing economies.
On Wednesday, Simon Franklin discussed evidence from a large-scale housing lottery programme in Ethiopia, showing that government housing can work in settings with highly constrained housing supply and when programmes are designed well.
Although US tariffs on Chinese exports were intended to support domestic industries, Yang Jiao, Zhikuo Liu, Zhiwei Tian and Xiaxin Wang show that the tariff burden may have fallen largely on US consumers rather than Chinese exporters.
High external debt levels worldwide have forced nations to exploit natural resources to generate revenue. In this week’s episode of VoxDevTalks, Pushpam Kumar explores how economic pressures are driving unsustainable exploitation of natural resources.
Improved transport infrastructure can accelerate the transition to electric cars by alleviating range anxiety. In China, Hanming Fang, Ming Li, Long Wang and Zoe Yang find that the expansion of high-speed rail connectivity accounted for up to one-third of the increase in electric vehicle market share and sales from 2010 to 2023.
State capacity to provide property titles is limited in developing countries. Tanner Regan and Martina Manara offer evidence from Tanzania suggesting that community information on the willingness-to-pay for titles can help low-capacity governments determine fees and improve property titling in cities.
In today’s article, Nicolas Ajzenman, Martin Ardanaz, Guillermo Cruces, German Feierherd, and Ignacio Lunghi present evidence from an information intervention in Honduras offering a promising approach to updating citizen beliefs about corruption in the tax agency, which translated into increased tax compliance.
On Tuesday, Vivek Moorthy examined how the introduction of genetically engineered soy increased agricultural productivity in Brazil, but at the cost of reduced economic opportunities for women and increased fertility rates.
If that's not enough Friday reading, elsewhere in development economics:
- How reflexive catastrophizing inhibits policy imagination in African states - Ken Opalo "We should exploit the current crisis and geopolitical moment to focus minds on the urgent need to end aid dependency. This means deliberately designing aid programs to strengthen local self-sufficiency".
- The New Zealand Economic Papers have an edition on Development Economics.
- How Many Lives Does US Foreign Aid Save? - Charles Kenny and Justin Sandefur "We suggest the number of lives saved per year may range between 2.3 to 5.6 million with our preferred number resting on gross estimates of 3.3 million." See also New Estimates of the USAID Cuts.
- Cutting Through the Noise: Early Insights from the Frontier of Nonprofit AI Use - Han Sheng Chia "many nonprofits are already delivering services at scale with current AI technology".
- On that note, Sid Ravinutala, Mark Botterill & Zia Khan on IDinsight: How AI-powered tools supported India’s elections––and what may be next for AI in the public sector
- Financing Firm Growth - The Role of Capital Markets in Low- and Middle-Income Countries on IFC.
- A useful case study on OECD - Phasing out responsibly: Switzerland’s lessons from ending bilateral co-operation in Latin America and the Caribbean.
- The most innovative companies in the not-for-profit space for 2025.
- Chris Chibwana, Chris Maloney, Rhona Mijumbi & Irene Mwendwa on the Hewlett Foundation: Using evidence to improve lives in Uganda.
- Bright Simons on Project Syndicate: Trump’s War on Foreign Aid and the Rise of Transactional Diplomacy.
To watch:
- The 2025 Kuznets lecture: Development and the Organization of Labor.
- On Ideas Untrapped: Free Markets in Africa.
- On the Penn Development Research Initiative: Impacts of Foreign Aid Suspension – Webinar Recordings.