VoxDev Development Economics

When citizens demand change and feel they are not being heard, they protest on the streets. Thanks to social media and TV coverage, we see protests every night on the news. But has the frequency or the character of protests changed? Who is protesting, and what makes them take to the streets? David Yang and Noam Yuchtman are two of the authors of a new review of the literature on protests. They tell Tim Phillips what they discovered. Read the full show notes on VoxDev: https://voxdev.org/topic/institutions-political-economy/why-do-protests-matter-exploring-their-causes-and-lasting

In our final episode based on this year’s BREAD-IGC virtual PhD-level course on the economics of cities in low and middle-income countries, Matthew Kahn of USC and Siqi Zheng of MIT focus on sustainable urbanisation. They tell Tim Phillips about how cities can adapt in the face of climate change, both its inhabitants and its buildings. Read the full show notes on VoxDev: https://voxdev.org/topic/migration-urbanisation/how-urban-environment-can-adapt-climate-change

If you’re applying for a job, you want to know what you’re good at, and be able to prove it to the recruiter. If doing the recruiting, you want some evidence about who the best candidates would be. In low- or middle-income countries, this information is often in short supply. How does this affect who gets a job, and the hiring process? In the latest in our collaborations with J-Pal to discuss their policy insights, Marianne Bertrand of Chicago Booth School, also Co-Chair, Labor Markets at J-Pal, and Stefano Caria of the University of Warwick, tell Tim Phillips about the impact of skills signals on employment. Read the full show notes on VoxDev: https://voxdev.org/topic/labour-markets/helping-jobseekers-signal-their-skills-cost-effective-strategy-benefitting

There are more than 1.4 million papers about cash transfers. They inspired Ugo Gentilini, lead economist for social protection at the World Bank, to spend five years researching the surprisingly long and rich history of these cash transfers. The resulting book, called “Timely Cash: Lessons From 2,500 Years of Giving People Money”, shows that the political and ethical debates that cash transfers inspire are centuries, sometimes millennia, old. In a special episode to mark the launch of his book, Ugo explains to Tim Phillips how we can draw on history to understand the current, sometimes heated, debates about why, when, and where cash transfers should be used. Read the full show notes on VoxDev: https://voxdev.org/topic/institutions-political-economy/history-cash-transfers