VoxDev Development Economics

When governments want to raise revenue, they often look for state-owned assets to privatise. What is the effect on the people who work in these firms? David Arnold talks to Tim Phillips about the impact of privatisation in Brazil.

Policymakers might seek to address the frictions that prevent potentially beneficial migration to urban areas from taking place
Read “Urban-Rural Gaps in the Developing World: Does Internal Migration Offer Opportunities?” by David Lagakos here.

What role do bureaucrats play in a crisis? We might think that the best bureaucracy would be made up of people who are very good at doing exactly what they are told. But research into the impact of the 1918 flu pandemic in India suggests that other factors may be important too. Guo Xu talks to Tim Phillips.

Civil war – the latest in a long series of armed conflicts – broke out in Sudan in April
2023. Today, more than half of the population needs humanitarian aid, and almost 15
million people have been displaced. The war has also devastated the digital
infrastructure in Sudan, deepening the crisis. African Renaissance Ventures is a VC firm
that backs entrepreneurs who use technology to solve major development challenges.
Magdi Amin tells Tim Phillips about how its infrastructure might be restored, and the
risks to Sudan’s population if it is not.
Read the full show notes on VoxDev: https://voxdev.org/topic/institutions-political-economy/rebuilding-sudans-digital-infrastructure-amidst-conflict

Do policies to provide women with financial resources or financial services give them more economic independence? Less often than we would like, Mikaela Rabb tells Tim Phillips.