S5 Ep6: Development Dialogues: What is the role of small farms in the future of agriculture?
In the latest episode of the collaboration between Yale’s Economic Growth Center and VoxDev, host Catherine Cheney discusses one of Africa’s most persistent development challenges: the low productivity of smallholder farmers. Despite decades of investment, innovation, and policy reform, yields on African small farms remain significantly below those in high-income countries. While the limitations of smallholder models, that doesn’t mean that the problem is easy to solve, not least because the way that land is owned my make consolidation impossible. The result: fewer opportunities for structural transformation and rural development.
Catherine is joined by Gérardine Mukeshimana, former Minister of Agriculture in Rwanda, Christopher Udry of Northwestern University and Mark Rosenzweig of Yale University.
--------
33:59
S6 Ep23: Why we need to invest in foundational learning
It was almost business as usual at the Education World Forum in London last month. At the world’s largest annual gathering of education and skills ministers, this year’s theme was & "Building stronger, bolder, better education together." But the context was far from routine. The conference took place against a backdrop of global funding cuts to education programmes—the Institute for Economics and Peace estimates that more than 35 million children around the world depend on foreign aid for their basic education. How can policy be strong, bold, or better in the face of these cuts?
Ben Piper, Director of Global Education at the Gates Foundation and a panellist on the
Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel (GEEAP), was at the conference, meeting
education ministers and discussing these problems with them. He tells Tim Phillips that, at a time when funding is scarce, foundational learning projects deliver cost-effective results for policymakers, and huge benefits for children.
Read the full show notes here: https://voxdev.org/topic/education/why-we-need-invest-foundational-learning
--------
30:15
S6 Ep22: Understanding Brazil’s falling income inequality
From Brazil, we bring good news for poverty reduction: Brazil’s formerly sky-high wage
inequality is not quite so sky-high anymore. From 1995 to 2015 Brazil became a more equal society, a trend that contrasts with rising inequality during that time in high-income countries. A soon-to-be-published article in the Journal of Economic Literature reviews the research that estimates the reduction, discovers the factors that have contributed to it and the mechanisms that have driven it. Alysson Portella of Insper tells Tim Phillips why there is no silver bullet that policymakers can use to reduce inequality, and why both implementing and evaluating policies in Brazil can be even more challenging than in other countries.
Read the full show notes on VoxDev: https://voxdev.org/topic/macroeconomics-growth/understanding-brazils-falling-income-inequality
--------
23:59
S6 Ep21: Can economists shape the future of AI?
AI’s boosters claim that it is going to revolutionize growth in the developing world. The
sceptics, many of whom are economists, point to a thin evidence base and the risk of
unintended consequences. This is not an easy question to research, not least because the underlying technologies are literally changing by the day, while the pace of academic research is often measured in years. One of those researchers is David Yanagizawa-Drott of the University of Zurich. We spoke to him about his hopes and fears for AI, how he keeps his research relevant, and how economists can influence the future applications of AI.
The Social Catalyst Lab: https://socialcatalystlab.org/
--------
35:51
S6 Ep20: How does social media influence conflict?
The Reducing Conflict and Improving Performance in the Economy (ReCIPE) programme
was established in April 2024 as a CEPR research initiative to provide a better understanding of the links between conflict, economic growth, and public policies. One of its themes is the link between conflict and hate speech, social media use, media bias, and propaganda. We need to know more about how media has influenced violence,
xenophobia, and recruitment for armed groups. Also, how we can use media sentiment to predict a rise in the risk of violence.
Maria Petrova of the Barcelona School of Economics and Augustin Tapsoba of the Toulouse School of Economics are the theme leaders. They spoke to Tim Phillips about the challenges of researching the impact of media, especially social media, on conflict, and what recent research has discovered.
Portugal