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Blog post
Barriers for women in economics: A review of recent findings
The field of economics is one of the most gender imbalanced fields in academia, skewing heavily towards men. In this blog, we focus on three inhibiting mechanisms driving these gender imbalances in the discipline, namely lack of recognition, poor work environments, and self-selection. With only two Nobel economic prizes awarded to women (out of 89 awards) and...
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Blog post
How cleaner cookstoves and fuels could benefit women’s health and the environment
With lesser access to financial resources and greater domestic responsibilities, women face the brunt of the climate change crisis. In particular, women are more affected by indoor air pollution caused by unclean cookstoves or fuel. In this post, Sharma and McDonough discuss the evidence around research efforts in India to promote the uptake of cleaner alternatives for...
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Closing the gender profit gap through savings and training: Evidence from Mozambique
Access to mobile savings accounts and financial management skills can lead to improved profits and financial security of female-led micro-enterprises The ILO estimates that 78% of the world’s poor living in low-income countries are self-employed (ILO 2017). Yet female-led microenterprises often struggle with low levels of growth and rates of survival. Indeed, a...
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Blog post
Easing contracting frictions with machines: Evidence from India
Mechanisation standardises output and lowers supervision needs for hired labour, freeing owners’ families to engage in profitable off-farm activities A long-standing tradition in economics argues that an essential condition for economic development is the adoption of technologies that increase agricultural productivity, thereby making workers available for other...
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Blog post
Preparing for urban floods in Mozambique: Can risk communication help?
Climate change has increased the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, and small- and medium-sized low-income cities are particularly vulnerable. In a recent project, I study if communicating risk can help prepare urban households for inevitable shocks affecting their livelihoods. Early results show that an easily scalable video intervention increased flood...
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Blog post
Strategic or confused? Firm behaviour and missing millions in Uganda’s VAT
A quarter of Ugandan firms appear to consistently make costly mistakes, with potentially far-reaching consequences for theory and policy design Economists usually assume that firms behave rationally – they maximise after-tax profits given some constraints. But do they really? There is growing evidence that firms don’t always behave as standard models predict. For...
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Blog post
Do subways improve urban air quality?
Data from around the world show that a new subway system can improve air quality in highly polluted cities Air pollution is a major threat to human health and the climate. According to the World Health Organization, 90% of the world’s population is exposed to harmful pollution levels and about seven million people die prematurely each year as a result (WHO 2020)....
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Blog post
Selection and incentive effects of teacher performance contracts in Rwanda
Pay for performance can improve student learning without negative impacts on the type of teacher that gets recruited or retained Student learning in primary school lags enrolment gains across many low-income countries (Angrist et al. 2021). Teachers are key to student attainment (Chetty, Friedman and Rockoff 2014a,b, Bau and Das 2020, Buhl Wiggers et al. 2020) and...
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Blog post
Learning to navigate a new financial technology: Evidence from Bangladesh
How do consumers learn to navigate a new financial technology? An experiment with workers from Bangladesh suggests that experience makes a difference In the past decade, more than one billion people have gained access to a bank or mobile money account (World Bank 2017). While this shift has provided households with greater choice and autonomy, there is also...
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Blog post
Escaping the subsidy-quality trap in India’s retail electricity market
Reducing power prices for commercial and industrial consumers can help utilities raise revenue and enhance service quality across the system In many parts of the developing world, public utility companies providing services like electricity, water, transportation, and sanitation find themselves in a political-economic equilibrium characterised by poor service quality...
Blog post
How to reduce waste in the textile industry?
Textiles are an integral part of daily lives and the global economy, but their production and consumption often leave a global footprint of waste and pollution behind. A circular economy for textile can eliminate waste in the industry, which is a core sector of economies in the developing countries. Textile has played a key role in world trade and global development all...