Global evidence from 33,262 mining sites shows that mineral price booms increase deforestation in nearby areas, beyond immediate mine sites. Investor origin shapes the size of these effects: mines owned by investors from higher-income countries generate lower deforestation responses.

Providing better information about school quality and admissions in a large, centralised school choice system in Ghana improved students’ applications outcomes, but did not increase enrolment. Read today's article to learn more:

🆕 Interpersonal violence costs the world more than war 📢 Today on VoxDevTalks, James Fearon (Stanford University) discusses why homicide, intimate partner violence, and child abuse cost more than war yet get far less attention: https://ow.ly/6fqO50ZjaCK

Two low-cost interventions targeting adolescent girls and boys separately each produced large, cost-effective reductions in intimate partner violence in Tanzania. Read today's article to learn more:

Audits do more than recover unpaid taxes. New evidence from South Africa suggests that they also increase tax reporting by audited firms’ geographic neighbours and by other clients of the same tax practitioner.

In Afghanistan, counterinsurgency efforts weakened community ties and local trust – ultimately undermining the foundations needed for reconstruction and peace.

Nigeria’s agricultural productivity deficit stems from overlapping institutional failures across seed supply, credit, insurance, extension, market access, and land tenure that collectively prevent smallholder farmers from adopting or benefiting from technologies that demonstrably work.

Despite contributing nearly a quarter of GDP and employing half the workforce, Nigeria's agricultural sector is trapped in low productivity by mutually reinforcing barriers. Read today's article to learn more:

🌍 Announcing IDEA — the International Development Economics Association @ideadevecon.bsky.social The field's first global, open, democratically governed professional association for development economists. Sign up to join the community: idea.devecon.org 🧵

Thirty years after South Africa created its Truth and Reconciliation Commission, its legacy remains contested. New evidence shows why.

In Côte d'Ivoire, public sector jobs attract highly skilled graduates not primarily through wages but through non-wage amenities such as job security, lower stress, and predictable working conditions. Read today's article to learn more:

During South Korea’s growth miracle decades, firm concentration rose sharply. The largest firms powered the rise in concentration and contributed to the growth miracle.

Instant payments can substitute for cash when adoption moves quickly beyond high-income early users. Evidence from Brazil, Costa Rica, and Mexico finds that the key is a rapid low-income gradient.

This week we featured research on pharmaceutical innovation, land formalisation and more! You can read a summary of this work here: https://voxdev.org/topic/week-development-economics-voxdev-19062026

Evidence from Brazil shows that an air interdiction policy in 2004 shifted cocaine routes to rivers, increasing violence in Amazonian municipalities.

🆕 Non-elite women in politics: Participation, power, and patriarchal norms 📢 Today on VoxDevTalks, Soledad Artiz Prillaman (Stanford University) discusses how patriarchal norms and social networks shape non-elite women's political engagement: https://ow.ly/ebj450Ze67B

📢 Our new VoxDevLit on Air Pollution is out now! In this VoxDevLit, Senior Editors Teevrat Garg (UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy) & Anant Sudarshan (Warwick Economics) summarise the economic evidence on air pollution. Read & download here: https://ow.ly/9WR150ZcCUO

A national drug reimbursement reform in China, which traded price reductions for guaranteed patient access, dramatically expanded the country’s pharmaceutical innovation, offering a rare policy model that reconciles drug affordability with R&D incentives.

A land formalisation programme in Benin significantly increased the likelihood that widows – especially those without a son – remained in their villages, offering formal institutional protection where customary norms left women most vulnerable.

📢 Our new VoxDevLit on Technology & Development is out now! In this VoxDevLit, Senior Editors Julieta Caunedo (Cornell University) & Tommaso Porzio (Columbia Business School) summarise economic research on technology and development. Read & download here: https://ow.ly/U2f450ZbJwK

This week we featured research on satellite imagery, financial shocks, history and more! Read a summary of this work here: https://voxdev.org/topic/week-development-economics-voxdev-12062026

Drawing on varied empirical evidence from sub-Saharan Africa, researchers argue that women’s conversion to new Christian churches may be an attempt to pursue emancipation, subtly undermining clan authority.

In Mexico, income transfers targeted at women are effective at improving their decision-making position within the household, translating into significant changes in household consumption and time allocation patterns.

In Andhra Pradesh, credit contraction in the rural economy, triggered by microfinance regulation, lowered educational investments and caused lasting learning losses, with larger effects for girls and younger children.

🆕 The end of aid dependency 📢 Today on VoxDevTalks, W. Gyude Moore (Center for Global Development) discusses why developing countries must recentre on growth diagnostics as international aid structurally declines: https://voxdev.org/topic/institutions-political-economy/end-aid-dependency

Colonial railways reshaped local economies in Bosnia, but lasting gains depended on human capital, state capacity, and external competition.

A new adjusted and harmonised satellite nighttime-lights series for 1992–2023 tracks local development in the Global South more accurately than the off-the-shelf data – especially in panels and at fine spatial resolution. Read today's article to learn more:

The 1997 Thai financial crisis had far longer lasting consequences for financial access than aggregate measures suggest, driven by bank branch closures that were never reversed even after the broader economy recovered.

Tracking rural markets using satellite imagery offers a new way to monitor economic conditions in remote, data-scarce regions – as demonstrated by a new research paper and online dashboard.

Evidence from the Northern Triangle and Mexico shows that an increase in the supply of weapons raises homicidal violence, which subsequently drives migration. Notably, this effect persists even when weapons are transferred through proper legal protocols.

When fertiliser becomes scarce, wages, crop prices, and production choices adjust, partly cushioning the yield losses. Applying the same framework to a severe fertiliser disruption through the Strait of Hormuz suggests smaller, but still meaningful, effects.

India’s IT boom generated large but unequal gains, and shows why education access and mobility determine who gains from high-skill globalisation.

When Brazil let neglected districts break away and form new municipalities, peripheral areas gained services, jobs, and growth at no visible cost to the rest of the country.

🆕 What the $1-a-day global poverty line gets wrong 📢 Today on VoxDevTalks, Lant Pritchett (LSE School of Public Policy) discusses why the $1-a-day poverty line understates global poverty, and why a $21.50 upper bound matters for broader economic growth: https://ow.ly/yQhh50Z708s

Delays in public benefit delivery can harm societies' most vulnerable households, but making management-relevant information more accessible to the bureaucrats implementing these programmes can meaningfully improve delivery speeds. Read today's article here:

Evidence from Uganda suggests that natural disasters can reduce income and life satisfaction for years, especially when households are displaced without their social networks.

In Mexico, violence against journalists reduces media activity in the months following an attack and, in the long run, reshapes the profession towards younger and less-established reporters – with lasting implications for local government transparency and electoral outcomes.

This week we featured research on supply chains, protest, job loss and more! Read a full summary of this work here: https://voxdev.org/topic/week-development-economics-voxdev-29052026

The majority of women in Pakistan do not access paid, formal work. They are trapped in low-productivity agriculture and the informal sector by social norms that impose heavy domestic burdens and stigmatise working outside the home. Read today's article to learn more:

Conflict disrupting transport routes in Somalia raises food prices and worsens household welfare in distant, peaceful markets, showing that the economic costs of violence travel far beyond the front line through supply chains.

A five-year randomised trial across Tanzania finds that entrepreneurship training delivered to young women before family obligations set in produces lasting income gains, but both economic and reproductive-health programmes unexpectedly increased early pregnancy.

🆕 Why civil service reform fails – and what actually works 📢 Today on VoxDevTalks, Martin J. Williams (University of Michigan) draws on over a decade of research across six African countries to explain why civil service reforms so often fall short: https://ow.ly/fBLM50Z4A4q

Iran’s 2022 protest movement, ‘Women, Life, Freedom’, revealed the extent of public support for women’s rights. The regime made no legal concessions, yet behaviour changed.

An experiment in Nairobi's informal settlements found that parents usually made child-nutrition decisions cooperatively, and that fathers were at least as willing as mothers to allocate resources to their children's meals.

This week we featured research on safety nets, growth, scaling programmes and more! Read a summary of this work here: https://voxdev.org/topic/week-development-economics-voxdev-22052026

In the Brazilian Amazon, large landholders strategically donate to local politicians, who promote agriculture in return – with negative environmental consequences.

Scaling evidence-based education programmes requires identifying the non-negotiable components that drive impact and adapting everything else to fit within government systems. Read today's article to learn more:

A four-year study of smallholder farmers in Malawi finds that combining cash transfers with intensive agricultural extension produces larger and more durable gains in crop production and household consumption than either intervention alone.

🆕 The East Asian miracle revisited: Industrial policy, shared prosperity, and lessons for today 📢 Today on VoxDevTalks, @nbirdsall.bsky.social (@cgdev.org) revisits the World Bank's landmark 1993 East Asian Miracle report: www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kgg...

Using data for 115 conflicts across 145 countries over the past 75 years, researchers document large and persistent declines in output, investment, and trade following the onset of war, with no evidence of recovery even a decade later.