VoxDev Development Economics

S7 Ep44: Fifty years of Chinese growth: The gradualist reform strategy explained

In 1978, a farmer in rural China could not sell a sack of grain above the state quota, choose an employer, or move to the nearest city without a permit. In this week's V

S7 Ep43: Caste, race, and power: The barriers to political inclusion

The ballot cast by a landless labourer counts the same as the one cast by the landlord whose fields he works. In this way, democracy can give excluded or subordinate grou

S7 Ep42: Masculinity norms and their economic implications

Do economists treat what men do as normal human behaviour, and then study norms around women as a departure? If so, we need to pay more attention what we mean by masculin

S7 Ep41: How global supply chains are built

This is an episode from VoxDev's new podcast series, Ideas in Development. This series has a separate podcast feed, where you can find every episode of Oliver Hanney’s co

S7 Ep40: Using mobile phones to support teachers, parents, and students

More households in low-income countries own a mobile phone than have electricity or clean water.  So why is education one of the last places it has been put to work? Jen

S7 Ep39: Ideas in Development: Moving billions to evidence

This is an episode from VoxDev's new podcast series, Ideas in Development. This series has a separate podcast feed, where you can find every episode of Oliver Hanney’s co

S7 Ep38: How AI can put 20 years of development evidence to work

A farmer in rural Ghana can use her phone to take a picture of a blighted leaf, upload it, and within seconds she gets a diagnosis that takes account of the soil, the wea

S7 Ep37: Why businesses stay small in emerging markets

If you walk down a street in a low-income country, count the businesses you can see, you will miss many entirely. Someone who cooks at home and sells at the roadside neve

S7 Ep36: Climate Change Politics in Developing Countries

A river dries up. The soil turns salty. A harvest fails. Farmers across the developing world feel climate change constantly and personally, they rarely blame their govern

S7 Ep35: Ideas in Development: Has development economics lost its way?

This is an episode from VoxDev's new podcast series, Ideas in Development. This series has a separate podcast feed, where you can find every episode of Oliver Hanney’s co

S7 Ep34: Why farmers struggle to adopt new agricultural technology

How many maize seeds should farmers plant in each hole? Ask the farmers and they say two or three. Agronomists can show them more reliable seeds, where they only need one

S7 Ep33: Interpersonal violence costs the world more than war

Wars get the headlines. A civil war can wreck a country's economy and dominate its news for a decade. But if you assume war is the most costly form of violence a society

S7 Ep32: Courts in the Global South

How do courts work when they work well? You would expect them to be impartial, neutral, and consistent. In much of the Global South that is a tall order.  So when courts

S7 Ep31: Nonelite Women's Participation in Politics

The usual way to measure women's power in politics is to count the seats they hold in parliament. But most women who take part in politics never stand for office. They vo

S7 Ep30: The end of aid dependency

This episode follows a wide-ranging panel convened at Stanford's King Center on Global Development, featuring Gyude Moore, as well as Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman, fo

S7 Ep29: What the $1-a-day global poverty line gets wrong

It's 1990. A young staff economist walks into a director's office at the World Bank and says the number he's about to publish is "crazy". The director tells him not to wo

S7 Ep28: Why civil service reform fails (and what actually works)

Every civil service reform plan opens with the same list of complaints: poor performance, low motivation, weak accountability. Across six African countries and three deca

S7 Ep27: The World Bank's East Asian Miracle

In 1993, the World Bank published a report on a remarkable development story. East Asia's post-war growth — Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and their neighbours —

S7 Ep26: Ed Glaeser on the perfect city and the demons of density

This is an episode from VoxDev's new podcast series, Ideas in Development. This series has a separate podcast feed, where you can find every episode of Oliver Hanney and

S7 Ep25: Roshaneh Zafar on 30 years of microfinance and mindset change in Pakistan

Wherever Roshaneh Zafar went in Pakistan in the early 1990s, documenting World Bank social development projects, women told her the same thing: the water and sanitation a