When official statistics are unavailable or unreliable, researchers can use a range of forensic methods to extract credible economic information, with North Korea illustrating both the possibilities and limits of studying economic ‘black holes’.
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This week we featured research on China's solar industry, collectivisation's long shadow, food prices and more!
Read a summary of this work here: https://voxdev.org/topic/week-development-economics-voxdev-06032026
In China, cities that adopted solar policies saw a 64% increase in patenting alongside sharp rises in revenues, production capacity, exports and firm numbers. These effects grew over time and persisted long after subsidies were introduced.
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Negotiation training improves the ability of Liberian communities to strike beneficial deals around forest and land management by strengthening leaders’ ability to identify mutually beneficial, higher-value agreements.
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China’s solar subsidies triggered innovation and learning-by-doing that dramatically lowered global solar costs while generating domestic economic gains large enough to outweigh the subsidy costs, showing that green industrial policy can boost growth and help fight climate change.
Evidence from Vietnam shows that institutional barriers not only misallocate resources but also discourage farmers from investing in productivity improvements, compounding the losses from misallocation.
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🆕 Transport policy for economic development 📢
Today on VoxDevTalks, Adam Storeygard (@tufts.edu @tuftseconomics.bsky.social) discusses transport policy in developing countries: voxdev.org/topic/infras...
Rising crop prices usually quiet conflict, as labourers choose farming over fighting. In Myanmar, rising rice prices instead fuelled state-led violence against civilians. These findings challenge narratives that frame such atrocities as a reaction to insurgencies.
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A religious television broadcast strengthened Hindu identity in 1980s India, catalysing lasting electoral shifts, conflict, and institutional change.
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This week we featured research on jobs in Vietnam, pre-colonial Africa, Colombia coffee, Myanmar's mining ban and more!
Read a summary of this work here: https://voxdev.org/topic/week-development-economics-voxdev-27022026
China’s bureaucratic promotion system unintentionally incentivises local leaders to restrict trade and underinvest in cross-jurisdictional infrastructure with provincial peers, fragmenting the world’s largest domestic markets and undermining long-term growth.
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Adding home visits to a social safety net programme providing cash transfers and parenting information led to sustained improvements in child development, health behaviours, and education outcomes in Burkina Faso, whereas cash alone produced fewer lasting effects.
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Bilateral trade agreements create opportunities beyond signatories. The US-Vietnam trade agreement led to large, persistent increases in formal manufacturing employment in Vietnam through the entry and expansion of multinationals from East Asia.
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🚨 VoxDev is now on TikTok!
Follow for interesting and informative video explainers on development economics: www.tiktok.com/@voxdev0?is_...
Under standard conditions in the Colombian coffee sector, the benefits of producing better coffee are not passed on to farmers, weakening their incentives to invest in higher-quality production.
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🆕 Reducing air pollution: Can markets succeed where regulation fails? 📢
Today on VoxDevTalks, Michael Greenstone (@harrispolicy.bsky.social) discusses the potential of emissions trading systems in developing countries, highlighting evidence from Gujrat, India.
Link below ⤵️
Theories from research in anthropology, history and African studies, combined with new data on independent political communities in pre-colonial Africa, provide an alternate view of the continent’s history.
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Myanmar’s 2016 mining moratorium substantially reduced violent conflict by cutting off armed groups’ access to resource rents and pushing workers into alternative livelihoods.
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🆕 Carbon offsets are broken. Economists know how to fix them.
In this episode of Economics Unpacked, Rohini Pande (@yaleegc.bsky.social) and Daniel Xu (Duke University) the theory and real-world evidence behind carbon offset markets.
Watch below ⤵️
Women’s participation in skills training Pakistan is constrained primarily by social and safety barriers, rather than preferences or the ability to monetise skills.
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🆕 How skilled migration from Asia reshaped the US economy 📢
Today on VoxDevTalks, @econgaurav.bsky.social (@gpsucsd.bsky.social) discusses the rise of high-skilled migration from Asia to the US.
🔗 Link below ⤵️
📢 Our new VoxDevLit on Industrial Development is out now!
Senior Editors Francesco Amodio & Markus Poschke summarise everything you need to know about industrialisation.
Read & download here: voxdev.org/voxdevlit/in...
A new method analysing open-ended qualitative interviews with large samples, applied to interviews with Rohingya refugees and Bangladeshi hosts on parent’s aspirations for children, reveals dimensions of aspiration that standard surveys systematically miss.
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🆕 Special Economic Zones: Why they succeed in some countries – and fail in others
In this episode of Economics Unpacked, Tevin Tafese (@giga-hamburg.de) and Alex Rothenberg (@maxwellsu.bsky.social) discuss the economy-wide impacts of Special Economic Zones in Vietnam and Indonesia.
Link below ⤵️
Indonesia’s non-tariff import measures – particularly inspections, import approvals, and port restrictions – significantly weakened exporters’ ability to adjust to China’s yuan depreciation by constraining their access to cheaper intermediate inputs.
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Can free school meals change lives?
In Colombia, Fabio Sánchez shows that the expansion of a nationwide school meal programme lowered dropout rates, raised graduation and university attendance, and delivered some of the largest long-term returns ever found for a social policy.
🆕 Integrating refugees: What policies work best?
Today on VoxDevTalks, Dany Bahar (@watsonschoolbrown.bsky.social) & Giovanni Peri (@ucdavis.bsky.social) discuss the long-term gains of early, well-sequenced policies for both refugees and host economies.
🔗 Link below ⤵️
