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Japan’s Strategic Interests in the Global South: Indo-Pacific Strategy

Dramatic changes in the security environment in the Indo-Pacific have transformed Japan’s official development assistance (ODA) strategy. This paper examines this evolution, the results of those development efforts, and potential future policies.

Report by Kondoh Hisahiro — May 21, 2024

Japan’s Strategic Interests in the Global South: Africa

Report by Shirato Keiichi — May 21, 2024

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Transnistria?

Commentary by Leah Kieff — May 17, 2024

Mind the Darién Gap, Migration Bottleneck of the Americas

Report by Daniel F. Runde and Thomas Bryja — May 16, 2024

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RESCHEDULED: The Millennium Challenge Corporation at 20 Years

Join the CSIS Project on Prosperity and Development as we celebrate the Millennium Challenge Corporation's 20th anniversary and explore how the organization is responding and adapting to current global challenges.

Event — June 4, 2024

Japan has provided development assistance to Africa for decades but must contend with Chinese and Russian influence on the continent. This paper reviews Japanese development policy toward Africa and Japan’s efforts to encourage support for the rules-based global order.

Transnistrian reintegration is possible and important for Moldova's future. Holistic reintegration of Transnistria is key to removing not only the current Russian foothold, but also potential future Russian claims to Moldovan territory via Transnistria.

An audio version of “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Transnistria?,” a new commentary by CSIS’s Leah Kieff. This audio was generated with text-to-speech by Eleven Labs.

The surge in mass migration through Panama’s treacherous Darién Gap has created a perfect storm of human suffering, environmental damage, and criminal opportunism. This report analyzes the key dimensions of the crisis and calls for a comprehensive and coordinated international response.

CSIS is pleased to host Alexia Latortue for a discussion on the role of the United States in multilateral institutions.

Event — May 10, 2024

An audio summary of CSIS’s Jayant Krishna’s new commentary, “Locating the Technology Agenda in India’s 2024 General Election.” This audio was generated with text-to-speech by Eleven Labs.

Ukraine’s food exports are reaching wartime record levels due in part to the success of the Ukrainian corridor—but whether this meets “pre-war levels,” as many claim, and whether levels can be sustained, are unpacked by CSIS experts in this brief Critical Questions.

Critical Questions by Emma Dodd, Caitlin Welsh, and Joseph Glauber — May 2, 2024

Locating the Technology Agenda in India’s 2024 General Election

With the ongoing Lok Sabha general elections in India, the Chair in U.S.-India Policy Studies proposes new avenues for collaboration in the U.S.-India technology partnership.

Commentary by Jayant Krishna — May 2, 2024

The Sheffield Institute for International Development (SIID) and the UN Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) have published the results of a priority-setting exercise on international development research, proposing 100 research questions that relate to implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The exercise sought to identify funding and cooperation priorities for international development actors.

The SIID Project, “ID 100: The Hundred Most Important Questions in International Development,” invited questions from academics, think tanks, NGOs and multilateral organizations during a four-month consultation process. The approach was based on a “knowledge co-production” methodology that has previously been applied in the area of natural sciences. More than 700 people from 34 countries took part in the consultation, many from the UK (49.4%) and the rest of Europe (15.9%). Others were from the US, Latin America, Africa and Australasia. SIID is a part of the University of Sheffield, UK.

An expert group shortlisted the questions, and the selection was further refined through a workshop and voting process. The authors of the report, titled ‘A Hundred Key Questions for the Post-2015 Development Agenda,’ observe that the final 100 questions reflect long-standing concerns in international development, as well as questions about the role of actors that have recently entered the development sphere, including the private sector, emerging economic powers and middle-income countries (MICs). They highlight the need for “deeper collective reflection” on the role and relationships of different actors in international development, noting that many of the questions relate to broad issues in development politics, practices and institutions. [Publication: Working Paper: A Hundred Key Questions for the Post-2015 Development Agenda ] [ Project Video and Infographics ]

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wp_usermeta dl on pu.user_id = dl.user_id join wp_usermeta ur on pu.user_id = ur.user_id left join (select * from wp_usermeta where meta_key = 'description_short') ds on pu.user_id = ds.user_id left join (select * from wp_usermeta where meta_key = 'user_prefix') px on pu.user_id = px.user_id left join (select * from wp_usermeta where meta_key = 'user_suffix') sx on pu.user_id = sx.user_id where fn.meta_key = 'first_name' and ln.meta_key = 'last_name' and dl.meta_key = 'description' and ur.meta_key = 'wp_capabilities' order by pu.pid desc, pu.uid asc;--> |, sdg knowledge weekly: 2018 high-level political forum, part 2 24 july 2018 0 then 4 else u.id end as user_id , u.user_email as user_email , case when u.user_nicename like '%-account' then '' when left(u.user_login,2) = 'z_' or u.id=64 then 'guest-authors' else 'thematic-experts' end as user_link_role , case when u.user_nicename like '%-account' then '' else u.user_nicename end as user_link_slug , p.pid, p.uid from wp_2_posts_authors 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'wp_capabilities' order by pu.pid desc, pu.uid asc;--> |, icat launches updated climate transparency and reporting guidance 19 june 2018 0 then 4 else u.id end as user_id , u.user_email as user_email , case when u.user_nicename like '%-account' then '' when left(u.user_login,2) = 'z_' or u.id=64 then 'guest-authors' else 'thematic-experts' end as user_link_role , case when u.user_nicename like '%-account' then '' else u.user_nicename end as user_link_slug , p.pid, p.uid from wp_2_posts_authors p join wp_users u on u.id=case when find_in_set(p.post_author,'228,8,9,22,421,373')>0 then 4 else p.post_author end where p.id in (369530) ) pu join wp_usermeta fn on pu.user_id = fn.user_id join wp_usermeta ln on pu.user_id = ln.user_id join wp_usermeta dl on pu.user_id = dl.user_id join wp_usermeta ur on pu.user_id = ur.user_id left join (select * from wp_usermeta where meta_key = 'description_short') ds on pu.user_id = ds.user_id left join (select * from wp_usermeta where meta_key = 'user_prefix') px on pu.user_id = px.user_id left join (select * from wp_usermeta where meta_key = 'user_suffix') sx on pu.user_id = sx.user_id where fn.meta_key = 'first_name' and ln.meta_key = 'last_name' and dl.meta_key = 'description' and ur.meta_key = 'wp_capabilities' order by pu.pid desc, pu.uid asc;--> |, icat launches updated climate transparency and rep... 19 june 2018 0 then 4 else u.id end as user_id , u.user_email as user_email , case when u.user_nicename like '%-account' then '' when left(u.user_login,2) = 'z_' or u.id=64 then 'guest-authors' else 'thematic-experts' end as user_link_role , case when u.user_nicename like '%-account' then '' else u.user_nicename end as user_link_slug , p.pid, p.uid from wp_2_posts_authors p join wp_users u on u.id=case when find_in_set(p.post_author,'228,8,9,22,421,373')>0 then 4 else p.post_author end where p.id in (369530) ) pu join wp_usermeta fn on pu.user_id = fn.user_id join wp_usermeta ln on pu.user_id = ln.user_id join wp_usermeta dl on pu.user_id = dl.user_id join wp_usermeta ur on pu.user_id = ur.user_id left join (select * from wp_usermeta where meta_key = 'description_short') ds on pu.user_id = ds.user_id left join (select * from wp_usermeta where meta_key = 'user_prefix') px on pu.user_id = px.user_id left join (select * from wp_usermeta where meta_key = 'user_suffix') sx on pu.user_id = sx.user_id where fn.meta_key = 'first_name' and ln.meta_key = 'last_name' and dl.meta_key = 'description' and ur.meta_key = 'wp_capabilities' order by pu.pid desc, pu.uid asc;--> |, adaptation finance update: green bonds on the rise but will adaptation projects benefit 3 may 2018 0 then 4 else u.id end as user_id , u.user_email as user_email , case when u.user_nicename like '%-account' then '' when left(u.user_login,2) = 'z_' or u.id=64 then 'guest-authors' else 'thematic-experts' end as user_link_role , case when u.user_nicename like '%-account' then '' else u.user_nicename end as user_link_slug , p.pid, p.uid from wp_2_posts_authors p join wp_users u on u.id=case when find_in_set(p.post_author,'228,8,9,22,421,373')>0 then 4 else p.post_author end where p.id in (366831) ) pu join wp_usermeta fn on pu.user_id = fn.user_id join wp_usermeta ln on pu.user_id = ln.user_id join wp_usermeta dl on pu.user_id = dl.user_id join wp_usermeta ur on pu.user_id = ur.user_id left join (select * from wp_usermeta where meta_key = 'description_short') ds on pu.user_id = ds.user_id left join (select * from wp_usermeta where meta_key = 'user_prefix') px on pu.user_id = px.user_id left join (select * from wp_usermeta where meta_key = 'user_suffix') sx on pu.user_id = sx.user_id where fn.meta_key = 'first_name' and ln.meta_key = 'last_name' and dl.meta_key = 'description' and ur.meta_key = 'wp_capabilities' order by pu.pid desc, pu.uid asc;--> |, adaptation finance update: green bonds on the rise... 3 may 2018 0 then 4 else u.id end as user_id , u.user_email as user_email , case when u.user_nicename like '%-account' then '' when left(u.user_login,2) = 'z_' or u.id=64 then 'guest-authors' else 'thematic-experts' end as user_link_role , case when u.user_nicename like '%-account' then '' else u.user_nicename end as user_link_slug , p.pid, p.uid from wp_2_posts_authors p join wp_users u on u.id=case when find_in_set(p.post_author,'228,8,9,22,421,373')>0 then 4 else p.post_author end where p.id in (366831) ) pu join wp_usermeta fn on pu.user_id = fn.user_id join wp_usermeta ln on pu.user_id = ln.user_id join wp_usermeta dl on pu.user_id = dl.user_id join wp_usermeta ur on pu.user_id = ur.user_id left join (select * from wp_usermeta where meta_key = 'description_short') ds on pu.user_id = ds.user_id left join (select * from wp_usermeta where meta_key = 'user_prefix') px on pu.user_id = px.user_id left join (select * from wp_usermeta where meta_key = 'user_suffix') sx on pu.user_id = sx.user_id where fn.meta_key = 'first_name' and ln.meta_key = 'last_name' and dl.meta_key = 'description' and ur.meta_key = 'wp_capabilities' order by pu.pid desc, pu.uid asc;--> |.

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What’s the Latest Research in Development Economics? A Roundup from NEUDC 2022

Almedina music, david evans.

What’s the latest in international economic development research? Last weekend was the North East Universities Development Consortium annual conference , often called NEUDC. With more than 135 papers presented (and almost all of them available for download ), it’s a great way to see recent trends in the international development research by economists and to learn about new findings.

The studies come from all over the world, as you can see in Figure 1 below. Just like last year , the plurality of studies take place in India (30 studies). Kenya is next (12), then Bangladesh (8), Brazil (7), China (7), and Indonesia (7). More than 40 countries are represented overall, from almost all regions of the world.

Figure 1: Where are recent development economics studies focused?

Source: This map draws on a sample of 139 studies from the NEUDC 2022 conference. Studies that covered more than three countries (often broad global or regional analyses) were excluded.

Researchers draw on a wide range of empirical methods. Nearly a third of studies reported on the results of a randomized controlled trial (43 studies). Other commonly used methods include difference-in-differences, fixed effects, and instrumental variables.

Figure 2: What empirical methods do recent development economics papers used?

Source: This chart draws on a sample of 139 studies from the NEUDC 2022 conference. Some studies used more than one method.

Below, we provide a quick takeaway from every paper in the conference for which we could find a digital copy. As you read our takeaways, keep the following in mind. First, we can’t capture all the nuance of a paper in a couple of lines. Second, our takeaway may not be the authors’ takeaway. Third, some of the papers are marked as preliminary and not ready for formal citation (you can see which if you follow the paper links). Fourth, we largely take the findings of these papers at face value: most have not yet been through peer review, so feel free to dig into the data and analysis to decide how confident you are in the results.

Our takeways are sorted by topic. If your principal interest is in a country or region, you can also read the takeaways sorted by country . We provide some indication of the empirical method used (for empirical papers) with hashtags at the end of the takeaways. Some papers fit into more than one category: for example, is a paper about the impact of free childcare on mothers’ careers about labor or about gender? It’s about both! In those cases, we’ve repeated studies in multiple sections below so if you’re focused on health, you’ll find all the health-related papers in the health section. The second or third time a paper appears, we put an asterisk after the summary so you can skip it if you’re reading straight through.

Happy learning!

Guide to the methodological hashtags: #DID = Difference-in-differences, #FE = Fixed effects, #IV = Instrumental variables, #LIF = Lab in the field, #PSM = Propensity score matching, #RCT = Randomized controlled trial, #RD = Regression discontinuity, #Other = Other

Households and human capital

Education and Early Childhood Development

· How critical are family conditions in early years for child development? Better weather (which means more agricultural income and better nutrition) at age 2 in Indonesia leads to higher adult cognitive ability. When households face hard times at earlier ages, they compensate with prolonged breastfeeding. ( Webb ) #FE

· Data from Indonesia suggest that parental education and parental income are the main drivers of differences in skills once kids grow up. ( Thomas ) #Other

· “Many teachers [in India and Bangladesh] underestimate the share of low performers in their classrooms, and...they believe that those students will perform better than they actually do. These results are not driven by less educated, trained, or experienced teachers or explained by biases against female, low-income, or lower caste students.” ( Djaker, Ganimian, and Sabarwal ) #Other

· A 1985 change in Indian law discouraging the payment of dowries led to a 24 percent drop in dowry payments, but it also led to an 18 percent reduction in girls' education attainment (with no impact on boys' education). ( Jha ) #DID

· Providing information about a learning app in Bangladesh didn't lead more people to use it, but it did lead some parents to arrange more tutoring, resulting in "lasting math learning gains, concentrated among richer households." ( Beam, Mukherjee, and Navarro-Sola ) #RCT

· Students in Kenya often apply to secondary schools with little information about the available schools. Providing information to students "led them to apply to" schools that were closer to home "without compromising school quality." Adding parents to those information meetings "led students to enroll in lower cost schools." ( Bonds ) #RCT

· Among students in 9th grade in India, student test scores rose similarly whether they were exposed to "rigidly defined remedial lessons that take time away from the curriculum" and "teacher determined remedial lessons," which allow teachers more flexibility. ( Beg et al. ) #RCT

· Parental aspirations for their children matter, but they may not be enough on their own. “In rural Gambia, families with high aspirations for their children’s future education and career, measured before children start school, go on to invest substantially more than other families in the early years of their children’s education. Despite this, essentially no children are literate or numerate three years later. When villages receive a highly-impactful, teacher-focused supply-side intervention, however, children of these families are 25 percent more likely to achieve literacy and numeracy than other children in the same village.” ( Eble and Escueta ) #RCT

· A ten day increase in the overlap between school days and peak farming periods in Malawi translates to children losing about a third of a year of schooling. ( Allen ) #IV

· Eliminating school fees for secondary school in Tanzania led not only to increased secondary school enrollments; it also increased primary school pass rates. ( Sandholtz ) #DID

· Indonesia's major school construction program from the 1970s led to eight percent overall higher national output forty years later, and much of that comes through migration from rural to urban areas. ( Hsiao ) #DID

· Phone call tutorials during COVID-19 were effective at boosting learning in India, Kenya, Nepal, Philippines, and Uganda, whether implemented by government teachers or non-government organization instructors. ( Angrist et al. ) #RCT

· An affirmative action policy in Brazil was effective at redistributing university spots to low-income students, with little drop in average achievement. "The policy also reduced the gap in applications to selective majors" between poor and rich students by more than 50 percent, but note that those are applications: many of those major-choice changes were among students unlikely to be accepted into a highly selective major. The policy worked, but it could work even better. ( Melo ) #DID

· Peru shut down a bunch of low-quality universities in 2015. Graduates from surviving universities experienced an increase in wages and higher employment rates. ( Vivar, Flor-Toro, and Magnaricotte ) #DID

· An influx of Syrian refugees in Jordan reduced school enrollment among Jordanians, particularly boys and kids with less-educated parents. More young Jordanians went to work instead. ( Almuhaisen ) #DID

· An edutainment program in Bangladeshi schools to trace school-to-home transmission of handwashing find that children are induced to wash more at school but less at home, yielding a net negative effect of the program ( Hussam and Oh ) #RCT

· Removing English language study from pubic primary schools in West Bengal, India, increased private school enrollment and---for those still in public schools---increased private tutoring among the richest households. ( Nandwani and Sen ) #FE

· In utero exposure to high ocean salinity levels (induced by climate change) reduces a child’s height-for-age z-score in Bangladesh, and increased prevalence of stunting and severe stunting due to nutritional deficiencies by age five. ( Guimbeau et al. ) #FE

· In Indonesia, “remittances increase household consumption, reduce poverty, and stimulate growth. Households send more children to school, and district governments increase public schools at the primary and junior secondary levels.” ( Hilmy ) #FE

· The tariff reduction from the U.S-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement decreased school attendance and increased children’s work, mainly in non-wage and household business jobs. Effects were stronger for boys, older children and households where the head had little education. ( Nguyen ) #DID

· Giving a widely known award "to top performers on a mandatory nationwide exam in Colombia" boosts their earnings by between 7 and 12 percent, and the effect endures for 5 years after graduation. It helps students graduating from low-reputation colleges the most. ( Busso, Montaño, Muñoz-Morales ) #RD

Health (including mental health)

· A national vaccine program in Burkina Faso in 1984 boosted the country’s child vaccination rate (against measles, yellow fever, and meningitis) from 17 percent to 77 percent in a few months. Child mortality fell, primary school completion rose, and—when the children reached adulthood—employment and agricultural productivity rose. ( Daramola et al. ) #DID

· School-based deworming in western Kenya—nearly a quarter of a century later—reduced under-5 mortality of the beneficiaries’ children by 24 percent! ( Walker et al. ) #RCT

· In Ecuador, letting employees use work time to get a flu vaccine boosted vaccination rates, but employees got sick about as much. Why? Some evidence suggests that employees engaged in “riskier health behaviors after getting vaccinated.” ( Hoffman, Mosquera, and Chadi ) #RCT

· In Kenya, “both patient subsidies and pharmacy incentives for diagnostic testing significantly increase usage of testing and may encourage malaria positive individuals to purchase high quality antimalarials.” ( Dieci ) #RCT

· Women who were babies in utero during a cholera epidemic in Peru in the 1990s were nearly 20 percent more likely to die of COVID-19. ( Ritter and Sanchez ) #DID

· After four years of using iron and iodine fortified salt in school lunches in India, children have lower likelihood of anemia, higher hemoglobin levels, but no differences in cognitive or educational outcomes. ( Grafenstein et al. ) #RCT

· Gold mining in the Philippines created new bodies of stagnant water, which boosted malaria cases by nearly a third (relative to provinces without gold deposits). ( Pagel ) #DID

· Giving households a flyer about mobile health services in rural Bangladesh didn't get them to use it more, but offering to save the access numbers in the participants' phone boosted take-up by 22 percent in the succeeding 2 months and reduced health expenditure, since households were less likely to go to "informal providers who usually overprescribe medicines." ( Sardar ) #RCT

· A drug procurement program in China "brought down the prices of 10 chronic condition drugs by an average of 78" percent. As a result, "drug adherence was improved for the uninsured who had poorer adherence" before the price reduction. ( He and Yang ) #DID

· In Dakar, Senegal, it can be hard to find someone to desludge your septic pit. Providing subsidies to use a government run call center to connect households with desludgers increases use, and that use continues for a while after the subsidies end. Later, a city-wide subsidy increased adoption most in those communities that had received subsidies earlier. ( Deutschmann ) #RCT

Fertility and family planning

· "Learning about government mistreatment of citizens undermines trust in institutions. In Perú, “disclosure of information about illegal sterilization reduced usage of contraceptive methods, prenatal and delivery services, and the demand for medical services, resulting in worsened child health."" ( León-Ciliotta, Zejcirovic, and Fernandez ) #DID

· During the colonial period in the Congo, greater exposure to Catholic nuns increased women’s fertility (as opposed to exposure to Protestant or male Catholic missionaries). Catholic nuns likely promoted the image of an ideal Christian woman which explains the results. ( Guirkinger and Villar ) #DID

Households and marriage

· Households in Bangladesh reduced their monthly residential electricity use by 15.8 percent (≈37 kWh) when they switched from postpaid electricity metering system to prepaid metering. ( Das ) #IV

· A new method to infer causal effects on choices that exploits relationships between choices and hypothetical evaluations “can recover treatment effects even if the treatment is assigned endogenously and standard estimation methods are poorly suited, or if the treatment does not vary.” ( Bernheim, et al. ) #Other

· In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 73 percent of households provided with access to childcare centers use them. Both parents “increase their engagement in commercial activities, leading to gains in agricultural productivity, household income and women’s subjective well-being." Women reported increases in their concentration and sense of control. Using the centers also led to significant gains in early childhood development outcomes, particularly for younger children. ( Donald and Vaillant ) #RCT

· Can commitment-saving ahead of a lean season alter consumption downfalls among the ultra-poor? In Bangladesh, a temporary savings subsidy doubled formal savings, and resulted in increased food and non-food expenditure by 8.6-12.6 percent during the lean season, with no lasting post-lean season impact. ( Takahashi et al. ) #RCT

· An “edutainment” intervention designed to reduce child marriage in rural Pakistan, significantly reduces marriage of girl adolescents. Targeting men alone reduced child marriage in sample households, while targeting women or men & women jointly reduces child marriage at the village level. ( Cassidy et al. ) #RCT

· In Kenya, workshops and couples’ therapy sessions to decrease alcohol consumption lowered prevalence of sexual intimate partner violence (IPV) by 0.21 standard deviations, with smaller or no effects on physical and emotional IPV. ( Castilla, Aqeel, and Murphy ) #RCT

Migration and refugees

· Can temporary foreign work permits “throttle human smugglers’ businesses? “Combining internal and external controls with a regulated market for temporary visas alleviates the policy trade-off between migration control and ending human smuggling.” Data from migration between Senegal & Spain and the Democratic Republic of the Congo & South Africa. ( Auriol, Mesnard, and Perrault ) #Other

· Massive exodus of Venezuelans in Colombia had a larger negative effect on the lower tail of the natives’ wage distribution, increasing inequality in the host economy. Due to formal restrictions, immigrants ended up working in more routine and low-paying jobs. “A large-scale amnesty program reduced the magnitude of downgrading, mitigating the unequalizing impact of the exodus.” ( Lombardo et al. ) #IV

· In Mexico, children in households with return migrants (from the U.S.) “benefit from an increase in school attendance and a decrease in the probability of schooling delay relative to children in non-migrant households.” However, females in return migrant households are likely to complete a lower grade relative to non-migrant households. ( Chakraborty, Bucheli, and Fontenla ) #IV

· An evaluation of a large-scale migration loan program in Bangladesh revealed that capacity constraints at scale lead effort to be directed toward those already planning to migrate without a loan. ( Mitchell et al. ) #RCT

· A Zambian fertilizer subsidy program led to “some households to intensify their agricultural activity, and others to out-migrate.” The subsidy increased the share of households with outmigrants by 40 percentage points and doubled the number of outmigrants net of in-migrants. ( Diop ) #DID

· Clearance of slums in Santiago, Chile, and families’ relocation to public housing in low-income areas led to displaced children having 10 percent lower earnings and 0.5 fewer years of education as adults than non-displaced. ( Rojas-Ampuero and Carrera ) #FE

· In refugee camps and surrounding communities in Uganda and Kenya, refugee children can be up to three times more likely to be poor than adults. Child’s age, household composition, and access to sanitation and clean water, predict child poverty in refugee settlements well, often better than per-capita household expenditure. ( Beltramo et al. ) #ML

· During WWII, nine ethnic groups were entirely deported from the Soviet Union to Central Asia. In the 50s, five returned to their former homeland, while the other four remained marginalized in internal exile. Locals in host regions had significantly higher levels of education two generations later. “A strong positive effect on higher education is found among returnees to origin regions, suggesting that these ethnic groups hedged against further negative shocks.” ( Zimmermann ) #IV

· Pairing employers in Uganda with a refugee and providing an incentive to offer a free internship to that refugee "improves employers’ beliefs about refugees’ skills, but it does not change their willingness to hire new refugees," but certain types of matches (depending on employer and refugee characteristics) do result in more refugee hires. ( Loiacono and Silva-Vargas ) #RCT

· In India, Hindu women are subject to caste “purity” norms, while Adivasi, or Indigenous, women are not. “Having more Adivasi neighbors leads to: (i) higher rates of Hindu women’s paid work and lower perceived stigma of such work; and (ii) lesser adherence to a range of purity norms, including the practice of untouchability towards Adivasis.” ( Agte and Bernhardt ) #FE

· Does free childcare improve mothers’ careers? Yes. In Sao Paulo, Brazil, mothers in sub-districts with above median childcare availability have a persistent increase of 8 percent in earnings, driven by 1 percentage point higher labor force participation and 4 percent longer hours. ( Garcia, Latham-Proença, and Mello ) #FE

· Can cash transfers influence gender roles? In Chad, cash transfers increased women’s business profits (0.6 SD) as well as marital separation. The program also “led to large improvements (0.3-0.7 SD) in a broad set of women’s subjective well-being, including self-efficacy, depressive symptoms, and perceived social status.” ( Kandpal, Schnitzer, and Dayé ) #RD

· In Nigeria, women prefer to defer budget allocation decisions to their husband even when deferral is costly and is not observed by the husband; the reverse is true for husbands. A randomized cash transfer receipt increases women’s demand for agency: if the decision is hidden from the husband, women want to make their own budget decisions, even if it is the same as their husband’s. ( Bakhtiar et al. ) #LIF

· Showing teachers in Pakistan a pro-women’s rights award-winning movie (the 2011 film Bol) increased their own and students’ support for women’s rights, being unbiased in gender Implicit Association Tests, and willingness to petition parliament for greater gender equality. ( Mehmood, Naseer, and Chen ) #RCT

· Profiles for women who signal on an online Indian matchmaking site that they want to work after marriage receive up to 22 percent less interest from men than those of women who have never worked. Women willing to give up work after marriage face a lower penalty. ( Dhar ) #RCT

· In Chile, informing outstanding students in mathematics and science about their relative performance and presenting STEM majors as a feasible option, led to women applying more, but only in health-related majors, and not in STEM majors. ( Ramirez-Espinosa ) #RCT

· In Brazil, union bargaining that prioritized women’s needs increased female-centric amenities (like longer maternity leave with job protection) at work. These led to women queueing for jobs at treated establishments and separating from them less, which are both indicators of firm value. ( Corradini, Lagos, and Sharma ) #DID

· While both gender barriers to occupational choices and wage penalties persist across countries, the “reduction in wage gaps between 1980-2000 was primarily driven by economic channels while the more recent decline between 2000-2015 was driven by changes in gender barriers.” ( Chiplunkar and Kleineberg ) #Other

· “A program targeting ultra-poor women in Uganda” paired “business and entrepreneurship skills development with psychological empowerment.” It increased profits by 105 percent. ( Lang and Seither ) #RCT

· Expansion of the coffee mills in Rwanda led to increased “women’s paid employment, women’s and their husbands’ earnings and decreases domestic violence.” Decline in violence is driven by women’s increased bargaining power and their contribution to household earnings, not exposure reduction between couples. ( Sanin ) #DID

· Sharing a hyperlocal digital job search platform with couples as well as the wives' social networks in Delhi, India, increased husband's labor market outcomes (including working hours and total earnings), but only home-based self-employment among the women, potentially due to social norms. ( Afridi et al. ) #RCT

· New data from more than 90 countries demonstrates three things: (1) the shift out of agriculture that happens as countries grow richer is driven by whole households (not just individuals within households), (2) "in the poorest countries, the gap between female and male market employment is only large for married urban women," and (3) "countries where employment rates of urban married women are low relative to their rural counterparts also see low urbanization rates of married men." ( Doss et al. ) #Other

Working and saving

Banking and credit

· In India "delinquent borrowers who are offered a debt moratorium by their lender are 4 percentage points (6.9 percent) less likely to default on their loan, while forbearance has no effect on repayment if it is granted by the regulator.” ( Fiorin, Hall, and Kanz ) #RCT

· What are the household welfare gains from financial inclusion? Applying a new approach using demand estimates from three RCTs (on retirement savings in the United States, commitment savings in the Philippines, and microfinance in Mexico) , welfare gains per dollar lent or saved are small as compensated demand elasticities are large, but still correspond to large aggregate welfare gains from financial inclusion. ( Loeser ) #Other

· In Ghana, microenterprises receiving joint liability loans reported higher profits six to ten months after borrowing. Effects are driven by borrowers whose applications were not endorsed by political party operatives. ( Boso, Burlando, and Abdul-Rahaman ) #FE

· A self-help group lending program in rural Bihar, India, “significantly improved risk-sharing in regions where the program had greater institutional capacity and was better implemented.” ( Attanasio et al. ) #FE #IV

· In Kenya, “performance-contingent microfinance contracts can encourage investment and increase profits – and, as a result, increase household consumption.” ( Cordaro et al. ) #RCT

· In India, “plants exposed to banking shocks redistribute this liquidity through the supply chain. As a result, firms extending trade credit can increase their own sales as their customers are able to purchase on credit. Downstream firms are able to increase their own sales, employment, and productivity.” ( Chakraborty et al. ) #DID

· In India, “risk pooling creates a distortion in consumption such that food consumption is better protected from aggregate village shocks than nonfood consumption.” ( Fafchamps and Shrinivas ) #Other

Cash transfers

· Can cash transfers influence gender roles? In Chad, cash transfers increased women’s business profits (0.6 SD), and marital separation. The program also “led to large improvements (0.3-0.7 SD) in a broad set of women’s subjective well-being, including self-efficacy, depressive symptoms, and perceived social status.” ( Kandpal, Schnitzer, and Dayé ) #RD *

Firms and microenterprises

· In India, “larger cultural proximity [by way of caste and religion] between a pair of firms reduces prices and fosters trade at both the intensive and extensive margins.” ( Fujiy, Khanna, and Toma ) #FE

· After close elections in India, entrepreneurs from the same social group as the winning candidate are more likely to start businesses. ( Bhalla et al. ) #FE

· Politically connected firms in India were more likely to get access to short-term credit from banks and to be able to delay short-term payments to suppliers and creditors during the surprise demonetization of 2016. ( Chen et al. ) #Other

· Variation of COVID lockdowns over time and across parts of India reveal that inputs delivered by suppliers within the same industry are complements (rather than substitutes), which means that "shocks propagate through supply chains," increasing the shock to overall GDP. ( Fujiy, Ghose, and Khanna ) #FE

· "Starting in 1997, India dismantled its policy of product reservation whereby hundreds of products had been reserved for exclusive production by small firms." The effect? "entry in the downstream product market increases with no observable decline in quality of entrants." ( Rastogi ) #Other

· Inviting Zambian farmers to participate in a simple budgeting exercise (i.e., think through their budget and formulate a spending plan) increased how much they expected to spend for the coming year by 20-60 percent and lowered their willingness to pay for a nonessential item of clothing by 34 percent. By the end of the year, farmers decreased their expenditures by 15 percent and ended up with one additional month of savings. ( Augenblick et al. ) #RCT

· A new way to measure productivity of retailers in low- or middle-income countries captures their three-fold need to attract customers, manage a storefront, and maintain inventory across many products. In Malawi, "the three dimensions of productivity are correlated with one another" but not perfectly, so that a training that focuses on just one may fail to boost overall productivity. ( Huntington ) #Other

· In Mexico, a rise in gas prices led to an increase in mom-and-pop shops but "their average size and quality fell." ( Ramos-Menchelli and Sverdlin-Lisker ) #IV

· Waiving competitive bidding for small-value purchases in Brazil led to 23 percent more expensive purchased products. At least half of this overpricing is explained by discretion allowing agencies to purchase higher-quality products. ( Fazio ) #FE

Labor (including child labor)

· A late 1990s labor market reform in China led to tens of millions of layoffs in a short period. That led to a drop in employment for workers who did not finish high school—by 20 percent in the industrial sector—and a 5 percent increase in the high school completion rate. ( Zhao ) #DID

· “A 2014 Bolivian law that recognized the work of children as young as 10 years old, whose age placed them below the minimum working age of 14 years old, enabling them to legally work (subject to a work permit) while simultaneously extending benefits and protections to child workers” (such as adult minimum wages) actually decreased work for children under 14. ( Lakdawala, Martínez Heredia, and Vera-Cossio ) #Other

· A federal policy that set minimum fares for drivers of motorcycle taxis on a ridesharing app in Indonesia led to higher trip prices but not driver earnings, both because more drivers signed on for any given day AND drivers logged onto the app for more hours, meaning that each driver got fewer rides. ( Nakamura and Siregar ) #DID #SC

· Providing mentorship to vocational students in Uganda to help with their training-to-work transition increased their likelihood of working a few months later by more than a quarter and also boosted their incomes after a year. Why? It's mostly through info about how the entry-level job market works (not through referrals): As a result, mentored youth "turn down fewer job offers." ( Alfonsi, Namubiru, and Spaziani ) #RCT

· College students in Mumbai, India, were less likely to share information about jobs if they knew they'd have to compete for them, and the men in particular tended not to share the information with the peers they viewed as having high abilities. ( Chiplunkar, Kelley, and Lane ) #RCT

· Why do "workers in richer countries experience faster rates of wage growth over their lifetimes than workers in poorer countries"? Cross-country data suggest that workers in rich countries received more training from the firms they work for, and that this is a major component of workers' skills. "Firm-provided training accounts for 38% of cross-country wage growth differences." ( Ma, Nakab, Vidart ) #Other

· Many interventions help workers with job searches. Doing that without increasing the number of jobs could limit the effectiveness of those interventions. On the other hand, "making it easier for firms to find qualified workers could reduce the cost of hiring" and generate more jobs. With an intervention to subsidize job searches for people in Ethiopia, the lack of jobs ends up limiting the effectiveness. ( Van Vuren ) #RCT

· A survey in Accra, Ghana, showed that lots of job vacancies were not widely circulated, and---as a result---many employers are unable to find qualified workers during six months. But publishing detailed advertisements on a state-operated online portal increases both the likelihood of finding workers and of those workers being suitable for the jobs. ( Lambon-Quayefio et al. ) #RCT

· The timing of when auctions for public procurement contracts end in Brazil is random, which permits comparison of winners and runners-up. "Winning a government contract increases wages." ( Carvalho, Galindo da Fonseca, and Santarrosa ) #IV

· In rural Kenya, a “future orientation” workshop that teaches participants techniques to imagine a positive future, lay out concrete short-term steps to achieve their vision, and plan for obstacles, lifted aspirations and expectations. It led to increased labour supply and spending on productive inputs. The “intervention is at least twice as cost-effective as an (unconditional) cash transfer.” ( Orkin et al. ) #RCT

· Does free childcare improve mothers’ careers? Yes. In Sao Paulo, mothers in sub-districts with above median childcare availability have a persistent increase of 8 percent in earnings, driven by 1 percentage point higher labor force participation and 4 percent longer hours. ( Garcia, Latham-Proença, and Mello ) #FE *

Poverty Measurement

· Poverty is often measured using annual income. But using monthly data from India shows that “experiences of poverty are substantially more common than annual measures suggest; entry into and exit from poverty are much less clear than typically assumed;” and the use of monthly poverty measures “is a stronger predictor of development outcomes – child weight and height – than conventional” annual measures. ( Merfeld and Morduch ) #Other

· Are poverty lines real? This study articulates social and theoretical underpinnings for such a distinction between the poor and the nonpoor. ( Dutta et al. )

· Many social programs identify their beneficiaries collaboratively with multiple community members together. Comparing the judgments that the same individuals make about who to target when they’re deciding collaboratively versus individually in Indonesia suggests that gains from collaborative targeting are negligible. “These results suggest that policymakers should think carefully before asking community members to invest valuable time in participating in [community-based targeting] exercises.” ( Trachtman ) #Other

Governments, institutions, and conflict

Conflict and crime

· A national-level electoral reform in Mexico that increased politicians’ cost of accepting bribes decreased the number of suspicious financial reports by around 4 percent ( ∼ 650 fewer reports), while the number of attacks by violent groups increased by approximately 2 percent ( ∼ 44 more attacks), in places with the presence of criminal organizations. ( Rámon Enríquez ) #DID

· How does ethnic violence and subsequent segregation shape children’s lives? In India, Muslims perform better in cities that were more susceptible to (Hindu) communal violence in terms of early education outcomes. ( Kalra ) #PSM

· In India, judges are more likely to convict offenders in cases of sexual crimes (excluding rape) if they are exposed to more media coverage about sexual crimes that are unrelated to the case on trial. A central mechanism behind this result is heightened judicial scrutiny in response to greater media coverage. ( Vasishth ) #DID

· In Colombia, close family connections in the public administration are pervasive and they weaken performance. “Connected bureaucrats receive higher salaries and are more likely to be hierarchically promoted but are negatively selected in terms of public sector experience, education, and records of misconduct.” A 2015 anti-nepotism legislation had limited effectiveness. ( Riaño ) #RCT

· In China, after a high-profile corruption inspection, labor “strikes experienced a twofold increase within six months and a threefold increase in two years.” ( Chen ) #Other

· Reducing corruption in China "induces positive selection for integrity and public-mindedness into the state sector, which remains present even when conditioning on ability and family background." ( Hong ) #DID

· Do autocrats favor their supporters during economic shocks? The Maduro regime was more likely to exempt regime-supporting regions affected by the Venezuelan blackout from later power rationing. In Sub-Saharan Africa, “droughts magnify differences in development, protests and state-coercion outcomes in favor of leaders’ home regions.” ( Morales-Arilla ) #FE

· In Brazil, a 1 percentage point increase in the share of Pentecostals increased Evangelical and far-right candidates’ vote share by 18 percent and 16 percent, respectively. These effects are larger in municipalities with less educated, poorer, and more rural populations. ( Solá Cámpora ) #DID

· During a social media ban at the climax of the Uganda 2021 election campaign, those maintaining access through the use of virtual private networks (VPNs)—who are more likely to be opposition partisans—came to view the dominant National Resistance Mmovement party relatively positively. This is driven by an increase in pro-NRM social media content during the ban. ( Bowles, Marshall, and Raffler ) #DID

Taxes and subsidies

· Simulations suggest that removing subsidies for electric vehicles in China would raise the effective marginal costs of vehicle production, reducing total welfare by 7.4 billion yuan (RMB) per quarter, amounting to 13.9 percent of the total subsidy expenditure. ( Kwon ) #IV

· In South Africa, "firms with paid tax practitioners exhibit sharper bunching, driven primarily by a lower lumpiness parameter rather than by a different income elasticity." ( Anagol et al. ) #Other

· In Liberia, creating a new property database and including identifying information from it (the name of the owner and a property photograph) in tax bills more than quadruples the tax payment rate, from 2 percent to almost 10 percent, when the notice also includes details on the penalties for noncompliance. Compliance goes up even more when the tax bill warns delinquent property owners that they’re in the “next batch” of properties designated for “intensive follow-up.” ( Okunogbe ) #RCT

· An increase in the subsidy for liquefied natural gas (LNG) in India leads to a surprising decrease in LNG purchases by poor households. Why? The subsidy goes up when the market price rises—i.e., the government keeps the price to consumers stable—but consumers only receive the subsidy as a refund a few days after they purchase the LNG, and “poor households may find it difficult to pay the higher unsubsidized price upfront.” ( Afridi, Barnwal, and Sarkar ) #FE

Regulation and government

· In Argentina, “serving in the military leads to stronger national identity and openness to fellow countrymen several decades after serving.” ( Ronconi and Ramos-Toro ) #FE

· In Pakistan, policymakers who received a special training in econometrics are twice as likely to actually choose policies for which there is evidence from randomized controlled trials. They triple the funding for those same policies. ( Mehmood, Naseer, and Chen ) #RCT

· In Brazil, state judges with higher grades on admission examinations perform better than their lower-ranked peers. ( Dahis, Schiavon, and Scot ) #FE

· In India, improving the maintenance of fee-funded community toilets improved delivery and reduced free riding, but excludes a share of residents from using the service. ( Armand et al. ) #RCT

· In, Kenya’s nationwide electrification program, imposing audits improved network size, voltage, household connectivity, and electricity usage at African Development Bank (AfDB) sites. (World Bank sites already had lots of inspections, so random audits didn’t affect those.) The World Bank’s procedures delayed construction at the average site by 9.6 months relative to AfDB sites but improved construction quality by 0.6 standard deviations. ( Wolfram et al. ) #RCT

· In Bihar, India, instituting a complaint filing system for politicians who run into bureaucratic obstacles in the implementation of their projects led to a 26 percent rise in the implementation of public projects in constituencies run by low-caste local politicians. ( Kumar and Sharan ) #RCT

· Informing government agents about illegal (gold) mining in Colombia, reduced illegal mining by 11 percent in the disclosed locations and surrounding areas. ( Saavedra ) #ML

· In India, switching the approving authority of economic development projects that require forest diversion from central to state government “leads to a modestly adverse impact on forest conservation while approving lower quality development work.” ( Chiplunkar and Das ) #DID

· When two districts in India share groundwater resources, extraction is more likely to be unsustainable and districts are more likely to have defunct wells. ( Bhogale and Khedgikar ) #DID

Agriculture, infrastructure, and the environment

Agriculture and land

· In Mozambique, contract farming has spillover effects: “both contracted farmers and non-contracted farmers from villages with contracted farmers earn approximately 11 percent more in price per kilogram of maize” than farmers in areas without contract farming. ( Ingram ) #FE

· The vanilla price boom in Madagascar led to increased asset accumulation and higher informal savings, improved performance on cognitive tests, well-being, and optimism. There were positive effects for smallholder vanilla farmers, but without spillover benefits on non-producing households. ( Boone, Kaila, and Sahn ) #FE

· In Rwanda, using text messages to remind agricultural extension workers of their self-set goals increased their performance by 0.08 SD. ( Abel et al. ) #RCT

· How do rural marketplaces shape local development? In Kenya, “while rural population quadrupled, two thirds of weekly markets operating in 1970 no longer do so today.” Population concentrated around markets that were active in 1970, and markets further from large cities saw the most population concentration. ( von Carnap ) #FE

· If you rely on farmer reports on what seeds they’re using in Ethiopia, you’ll see apparently small, negative returns to using new seed varieties. But that’s because farmers are including “older and genetically diluted varieties, for which” they “may be paying a premium.” If you just look at seed varieties with “higher-purity germplasm, drought-tolerant maize, and newly released varieties,” you do see positive returns. ( Michuda et al. ) #Other

· How much is one farmer in Uganda willing to pay for their neighbor to use a pest-control technology? A “novel incentive-compatible elicitation mechanism” finds that “a farmer’s willingness-to-pay for one other farmer [to use the technology] is equal to two days’ wage on average, about half the willingness-to-pay for self.” ( Lerva ) #RCT

· Maybe farmers don’t train their workers in modern planting technologies because they know they won’t get all the benefits of that training: the workers may go and use it somewhere else. In Burundi, providing a contract that guaranteed farmers the benefit from training their workers increased farmers’ willingness to train their workers by about 90 percentage points! ( Cefala et al. ) #RCT

· In Odisha, India, villages with more variation in castes have lower adoption of flood-resistant seeds. Adoption is more likely to spread within castes and less likely to spread to castes with lower status. ( de Janvry, Rao, and Sadoulet ) #RCT

· In India, bureaucrats who are assigned to their home states decrease protests or riots in opposition to land acquisition projects by 9-12 percent. ( Tóth ) #DID #RD

· Lake Chad shrunk by 90 percent between the 1960s and the late 1980s: the reduced water supply had negative effects for neighboring communities in Cameroon, Chad, Nigeria and Niger—25 percent of sub-Saharan Africa’s population—on fishing, in addition to farming and herding which outweighed any positive land supply effects. ( Jedwab et al. ) #DID

Climate and pollution

· Households from heavily damaged communities in Indonesia after the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami saw a 75 percent decline in real wealth immediately after the tsunami. The large adverse effects persisted 10 years after the tsunami. ( Lombardo et al.) #FE

· In India and Pakistan, the incidence of fires from crop burning drops by 10 percent when air pollution is likely to be borne by the bureaucrats’ own constituents. “Reduction in fires is present or larger when bureaucrats can better monitor (due to road proximity) or manage fires (due to changes in experience during a turnover), and when they have incentives to act (e.g., when pollution is most visible).” ( Dipoppa and Gulzar ) #DID

Infrastructure

· In Kenya and Ethiopia, the “impact of bundled road and electricity investments on reducing the sectoral employment share in agriculture is … 2.5 times larger than the impact of roads alone.” ( Dappe and Lebrand ) #FE #IV

· Aerial bundled cables (an infrastructure improvement) in Karachi, Pakistan, reduced utility losses and increased revenue recovery, with the greatest gains in the worst-performing areas pre-intervention. Gains come via two channels: the formalization of customers previously informally (illegally) connected and the improvement in payment behaviors among existing, formal consumers. ( Ahmad et al. ) #DID

· A large-scale roll-out of electric transmission infrastructure in Nigeria from 2009 to 2015 increased individuals’ likelihood of migrating by 6 percent and reduced household size by 0.8 individuals, mainly driven by young adults and older teenagers. ( Budjan ) #DID #IV

· How does transportation infrastructure investment affect spatial inequality of opportunity in Benin, Cameroon, and Mali? “On average only 6 of the top 10 aggregate opportunity-increasing roads also decrease inequality of opportunity.” ( Milsom ) #IV

Macroeconomics

Growth and inequality

· Gaining subnational capital status leads to an influx of public investments, an increased population, skilled migration and foreign investments, with positive spillovers to nearby cities. ( Bluhm, Lessmann, and Schaudt ) #FE #DID

· In China, state-level special economic zones (SEZs)—"geographically delimited areas targeted by governments to implement” policies like tax incentives, government innovation grants, and policies that favor human capital mobility—"have a positive and significant impact on patent output,” but SEZs established at geographic areas smaller than the state don’t have significant impacts. ( Wu, Lu, and Zhao ) #DID

· Initial foreign direct investment into China “was mainly driven by the Chinese diaspora,” particularly to prefectures in China that members of the diaspora came from. Later, foreign investment that didn’t come from the diaspora was more likely to enter those same prefectures. ( Chen, Xiong, and Zhang ) #DID

· “Countries are more likely to enter ‘nearby’ industries, i.e., industries that require fewer new occupations.” Also, “countries are more likely to diversify into products that require fewer new inputs,” which means that countries can get stuck on particular paths in their quest toward industrial development, “with certain routes leading to stagnation and others on a pathway to prosperity.” ( Diodato, Hausmann, and Schetter ) #Other

· “The construction process of many residential buildings in African cities proceeds very slowly and may take over a decade.” Data from Nairobi plus a new theoretical model suggest that “improvements in credit provision can (a) substantially speed up the expansion of the aggregate housing stock which facilitates rural-urban migration, and (b) increase the city’s density by enabling the construction of taller buildings.” ( Gomtsyan ) #Other

· Giving information about market prices and official border costs to traders in Kenya increases switches across markets and routes, leading to a large improvement in traders’ profits and significant formalization of trade. ( Wiseman ) #RCT

· Can temporary trade disruptions lead to a persistent change in domestic trade? Yes. In India, COVID-19 induced lockdowns led to a collapse in trade across states, driven by plants reorienting “trade towards their home states to ... insure against any future disruptions.” ( Chakrabati, Mahajan, and Tomar ) #DID

· The 2001 US-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement reduced US import tariffs from Vietnam, leading to rapid Vietnamese export growth with “entry responses, driven by foreign and Vietnamese private firms. Entrants—rather than incumbents—drive the tariff-induced employment growth, particularly foreign entrants.” ( McCaig, Pavcnik, and Wong ) #FE

The order of authors on this blog was determined by a virtual coin flip. This blog post benefited from research assistance from Amina Mendez Acosta .

Senior Economist, Education Global Practice

Senior Fellow, Center for Global Development

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research questions about international development

Rethinking international development strategy—and hearing echoes of global challenges in the United States

HKS faculty members ponder major changes in strategies to foster global growth.

For three major development economists at Harvard Kennedy School, development strategy needs a wholesale rethink. Too many of the current approaches simply follow traditional approaches in which Western development agencies set the direction with little regard for local needs and strengths. And too often, the wealthy countries forget that the problems in the developing world are similar to their own. These were among the themes teased out in a recent Dean’s Discussion on international economic development, introduced by HKS Dean Douglas Elmendorf and moderated by Sarah Wald , his chief of staff and adjunct lecturer in public policy.

Here are excerpts from the conversation with Matthew Andrews , the Edward S. Mason Senior Lecturer in International Development; Rema Hanna , the Jeffrey Cheah Professor of South-East Asia Studies and Chair of the International Development Area at HKS; and Asim Ijaz Khwaja , the Sumitomo-FASID Professor of International Finance and Development, and director of the Center for International Development. (The conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.).

Matt Andrews

I think that’s the big problem—the way that we do it. I think that we need to do it differently. That means shutting down a lot of what we do from the West and shutting down a lot of what we do from international development banks completely. Because I don't think that they can be trusted with actually picking up and doing it properly as we move ahead. I don't think that they've been trustworthy in doing it in the past. What we should be doing as a community of people who throw ideas out there is pushing ourselves, shifting our attention to the governments and to the people in these countries, and building their capabilities so that they don't have to be that stranded again.

Asim Ijaz Khwaja

What is failing is that we don’t view our role in the development process as an investor would view that role. We often think of ourselves as grantors, as individuals who come from a place of privilege and are helping the underprivileged. And I think that relationship is fundamentally problematic, whether we localize or not. Because even when we [listen to] local voices, it’s still a very unequal relationship because in those local conversations, the individual receiving aid is supposed to act the role of the victim.

[In the climate change debate, for example] that's a conversation where you are forcing poor countries and poor people to sell their plight and to sell their victimhood instead of saying "we are at the front lines of a global challenge, and you should invest in our solutions with us. Which means you bring your human capital in as well. You bring your technology, you bring your money, and we are bringing our resources in as well, and we’re going to co-invest together and we’re going to find solutions." And who knows, once we find a way to deal with floods in Pakistan, maybe we'll be able to deal with Florida as well. The United States faces inequality as well. So when I think about extreme wealth issues, they’re just as prevalent in Pakistan as here.

When you talk to policymakers, one thing they’re very concerned about is the backsliding in education. The pandemic shut down education systems in many countries so there are issues about kids who left school when they were 15 or 16; will they come back? One of the big issues everybody is facing is we know early childhood programs actually make a huge difference on kids and their life outcomes. You have kids out of school during these early ages, and you think about transitioning back to school, and can you play catch up? Are you left with a generation that is handicapped in this way just because of the time they were born? What can you do to fix that?

Another set of challenges is also similar to what we’re facing in the United States, although magnified by the fact that economies aren’t as large and tax collection is harder. Many countries had to react when the pandemic hit. They spent; they did what we did. They had a fiscal stimulus; they spent on cash transfers; they spent on tax cuts to stimulate business. They were bringing in less revenue because of recessionary concerns…. And so there are all these questions about what we should do. What’s the right way to spend? How can we improve tax collection? How should we be thinking about the next couple of years with all these different shocks coming our way? How can we be thinking creatively about handling these situations?

People are people, we should stop thinking of them in these different buckets. The challenges we face in some sense as humanity are very universal. They might be more extreme or less extreme due to the circumstance of birth. But we should all be thinking creatively about solutions that make sense for us in these hard times.

More from HKS

He predicted globalism’s failure, now he’s planning what’s next - dani rodrik, research footprint: spotlight on international development, how governments can prepare for crises: the lessons from covid.

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What are the most important questions for global development?

T he post-2015 decision-making process has taken over the world of international development. Nearly every conference and every research or policy paper must now include the number 2015 in its title, thus making it "relevant". It is easy to be jaded by it all. Are these discussions really worthwhile? Will they really somehow trickle down into real change? As I have written before , I think this process has been valuable; we are going through a paradigm shift which will have (largely positive) repercussions on policies and budgets.

One of the concerns many people have with regard to the new set of sustainable development goals (SDGs) is that it will resemble a garish Christmas tree, covering too many issues, and thus losing the prioritising role that most agree the millennium development goals (MDGs) played fairly well. The open working group's preliminary list has somewhat confirmed this suspicion, although attempts are now under way to reduce its 19 thematic areas to a more manageable number with more likelihood of influencing public decision making.

But there is an alternate danger: over-focusing on a select group of priorities could lead the international development community to take its eye off the ball with regard to a range of important issues that didn't make it on to the final list. Maybe they were too politically provocative. Maybe they weren't considered as important. For whatever reason, they didn't win consensus (in one sense goals agreed by all the countries of the world will represent the lowest common denominator). One of the main criticisms of the MDG era is that they did precisely that. While they succeeded in focusing funding and energy on some critical anti-poverty priorities, the other side of that coin was a diminishing concern for issues considered (by the handful of people who wrote the MDGs) less important.

So good luck to the SDGs. May they be bold, unambiguous and few. But they are not the end of the matter. There has to be a way of prioritising some issues politically, without leaving the unchosen issues neglected. Which is why I am pleased to be associated (as an adviser) with what could be an important complementary research project. The Sheffield Institute for International Development (SIID) is leading a process collating not the 10 or so most important development objectives, but the 100 most important international development questions.

Building on the themes in play in the SDG discussion, but not limited to them, the ID100 project will seek to do for researchers what the SDG global talkfest is doing for policy-makers, achieve some kind of meaningful consensus (or maybe proposed consensus) on the most important priorities for international development research in the coming years.

If 100 sounds like a large number for a prioritising exercise, it is a tried-and-tested method that has had some success in other fields and in the world of academics. Getting down to 100 will be little short of a miracle, especially given that the questions are being crowdsourced. There are criteria for what makes for good questions, they cannot have a yes/no answer, they have to be hard but not too hard, and the answer cannot be "it depends".

Unhindered by political constraints, and encouraging a profound reflection on the state of our world, from the perspective of international development, this exercise looks likely to be at once more ambitious than the SDG slog, and more satisfying – if you are more inclined to searching questions than goals and indicators.

But it will be most useful if it serves as something of a complement to the new era's goals, anticipating and discussing some of the "how" questions sparked by the SDG's "what" questions. Here are some of the questions I will be submitting:

What place is there (if any) for the profit motive in the provision of basic services such as primary healthcare and education?

Why is human dignity so little discussed in international development circles, which are more obsessed with material well-being, and how can the concept be integrated in a meaningful way?

The ethical treatment of animals is a subject almost never raised in international development discussions. What is the place of animal rights in a sustainable development agenda?

Why do development professionals, while believing they are acting in the interests of recipients, so often act in the interests of their own (donor) country or organisation, and how can this tendency be mitigated?

Submit your own question via the project's website by 4 June.

Jonathan Glennie is a research associate at the Overseas Development Institute . Follow @jonathanglennie on Twitter.

Articles on International development

Displaying 1 - 20 of 66 articles.

International development can tackle the climate and migration crises together

Nathan Einbinder , University of Plymouth

How governments use IMF bailouts to hurt political opponents – new research

M. Rodwan Abouharb , UCL and Bernhard Reinsberg , University of Glasgow

How white saviourism harms international development

Maïka Sondarjee , L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa and Dickson Kanakulya , Makerere University

4 signs of progress at the UN climate change summit

Rachel Kyte , Tufts University

US is becoming a ‘developing country’ on global rankings that measure democracy, inequality

Kathleen Frydl , Johns Hopkins University

Why men overwhelmingly wear the UN’s blue helmets – a former US ambassador explains why decades of recruiting women peacekeepers has had little effect

Dennis Jett , Penn State

Wealthy countries still haven’t met their $100 billion pledge to help poor countries face climate change, and the risks are rising

Rishikesh Ram Bhandary , Boston University

4 strategies for a global breakthrough on energy and climate change

Morgan Bazilian , Colorado School of Mines and Dolf Gielen , Colorado School of Mines

While rich countries experience a post-COVID boom, the poor are getting poorer. Here’s how Australia can help

Amrita Malhi , Australian National University

Climate adaptation finance is ineffective and must be more transparent

Jessica Omukuti , University of York

Foreign aid can help stem the decline of democracy, if used in the right way

Rachel M Gisselquist , United Nations University and Miguel Niño-Zarazúa , SOAS, University of London

China’s ‘mask diplomacy’ wins influence across Africa, during and after the pandemic

Dinko Hanaan Dinko , University of Denver

Wanted in 2021: A coherent global health strategy for Canada

Erica Di Ruggiero , University of Toronto and Garry Aslanyan , University of Toronto

Immigrants are still sending lots of money home despite the coronavirus job losses – for now

Laura Caron , Columbia University and Erwin R. Tiongson , Georgetown University

Canada is starting to answer the call on UN Sustainable Development Goals

Filipe Duarte , University of Windsor

WE Charity’s international development efforts offered quick fixes, not real impact

Allison Daniel , University of Toronto and Erica Di Ruggiero , University of Toronto

Canada must use its ‘soft power’ to champion global human rights

Sadia Mariam Malik , York University, Canada

In Haiti, climate aid comes with strings attached

Keston K. Perry , SOAS, University of London

‘Leaving no one behind’ conveys a paternalistic approach to development

Maisam Najafizada , Memorial University of Newfoundland and Sunisha Neupane , Université de Montréal

Theresa May in Africa: cynical post-Brexit development agenda smacks of desperation

Michael Jennings , SOAS, University of London

Top contributors

Professor in Global Development, SOAS, University of London

University of Nottingham

Associate Professor, Urban & Regional Planning, Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning, University of Sydney

Director, Centre for Global Health & Associate Professor, University of Toronto

Adjunct Professor, Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University

Visiting Fellow, Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, Australian National University

Honorary Associate Professor in Strategic Studies, Deakin University

Associate Professor, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford

Lecturer, Western Sydney University

Professor of African and Development Studies, The University of Edinburgh

Professor of Economics, University of Glasgow

Visiting Professor of Building Physics, University of Bath

Professor in the Political Economy of Asia, SOAS, University of London

Foundation Director and Professorial Fellow, LH Martin Institute, The University of Melbourne

Adjunct Professor/ Strategy/ Foresighting/ Ecosystem Services, Australian National University

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Research themes

Our research is grouped into four broad themes that encompass key issues in development

Economics of Development

Research on the economics of development has been a long-standing strength of the department. Characterised by an emphasis on the testing of analytical models on primary empirical data, research on this theme engages with the full spectrum of development economics.

Political & International Dimensions of Development

Development, as managed change, is an inherently political process. The exercise of power and resistance to it are at the heart of that process. Research on development, therefore, requires a critical approach to the state and dominant institutions – local, national and international – and an analysis of how power is created and contested at multiple levels.

Human Development, Poverty and Youth

Poverty and human development have long been core areas of research for the department. Going beyond a narrow conception of per capita income, our approach incorporates health, education, living standards and quality of work – all of which enable productive, creative and autonomous lives.

Migration & Refugees in a Global Context

Migration in its various forms has become a central feature of international development in its economic, political, legal, social and cultural dimensions. Oxford now leads the world in research on this vital subject.

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Research in international development: bridging the gap between production and use

The recent awarding of the Nobel Prize to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer for their work in developing experimental research methods to assess the impact of development interventions might be seen as a testament to the important role of research in improving development practice. But the perceived value of research in informing policy and practice, in fact, comes and goes as a fad in international development – waxing and waning with the wider political climate.

In many donor countries, a renewed focus on ‘research and learning’ has been apparent since the global financial crisis, influenced by austerity measures and a sense of aid budgets being under attack . A range of donors and governments invest in research and evidence with the intention of delivering more effective aid programs or policy outcomes – putting in place wonky sounding policies and units. There’s DFID’s ‘ Evidence into Action Team ’, USAID’s Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning Innovations (MERLIN) Program , DFAT’s Aid Evaluation Policy and Innovation Strategy , and South Africa’s Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation ‘ Evidence and Knowledge Systems Branch ’.

This interest in research has also trickled down into aid programs. We increasingly see large aid programs supported by ‘learning or knowledge partners’ that undertake research alongside programming to inform it and capture its lessons – such as the Water for Women Fund , or the Australia Pacific Training Coalition .

Yet despite these good intentions, when the rubber hits the road in programming, it is frequently the ‘research and learning’ components that get trimmed first. In this sense, research and learning is a bit of an add on – something that’s nice to have but not necessary. Why is this the case when we know that it should be a valuable investment?

The general consensus on the importance of research masks some differences that – when we start to unpack – contribute to a disconnect between research production and research use . These differences have important implications for what we research, how we research, what questions and findings are valued, and so on. Without clarifying these differing views, the focus on ‘knowledge’ and ‘research’ is likely to be frustrated, as different actors working in support of this agenda confront the reality that they might actually be interested in quite distinct things. There are many ways in which this plays out but let’s just take three.

First, what is the purpose of research? Is it to spend taxpayer money more effectively? To provide a platform for citizen voices? To demonstrate impact? To understand complexity and make more informed decisions? None of these answers is wrong or necessarily mutually exclusive. But they speak to different objectives of why research might be valued in the first place.

Second, what methods are most useful? Often donors want firm answers or solutions with strong lines of causation between inputs and outputs. This can favour econometric methods, such as randomised control trials , which may be suitable in some instances. In others, qualitative methods, such as case studies or ethnographic methods, may be better placed to open up complexity and context specificity; or participatory action research may be used to give voice to the marginalised. While disciplinary battles are ongoing, the point is less that certain methods are better than others and more that they simply do different things and treat different things as relevant evidence.

Third, what research outputs are most important? For academics, professional bodies such as the Australian Research Council and others stipulate that academic publications ‘count’ more than commissioned reports. Yet these are often seen as dense and impractical by aid programs, donors or NGOs which want succinct, easy to comprehend products. Or, if you work with communities directly, you may not want text-based outputs at all but value other forms of ‘ reporting back ’.

These disconnects can mean both that research produced does not always ‘scratch the itch’ for practitioners and policymakers; and that practitioners and policymakers are not always well equipped to integrate the findings from research.

To address this disconnect, the Research for Development Impact (RDI) Network is funding the ‘ Enhancing Research Use in International Development Action Research Project ’, supporting research partners to unpack their internal political economy and ways of working to understand what constrains and enables better research use. The project brings together 12 organisations working in different parts of the international development sector – spanning donor agencies and intergovernmental organisations, NGOs, private sector consultancies and universities.

Over the coming six months, small groups of research advocates in each organisation will undertake their own internal research and trial initiatives to improve research use. While these are still being developed , they range from instituting research and learning strategies within NGOs, to demonstrating the value of research to senior government bureaucrats, to carving out time for investment in research within the cost recovery model of consulting firms, to facilitating greater interdisciplinary research and outreach with non-researchers within universities.

Researchers from La Trobe University’s Institute for Human Security and Social Change and Praxis Consultants will accompany the research advocates, documenting their learning about the obstacles and opportunities to better research use across the international development sector in Australia.

We’ll be sure to report back in the coming six months on what is being learned and how different research partners are addressing the challenge. We’d love to hear from others in the sector too on how they are trying to cultivate a smoother relationship between research and practice.

Education reform and the learning crisis in developing countries: a review
Building capacity for locally led development research
International development research impact: 10 key insights
International development research in the time of COVID
Devpol Annual Appeal 2023

Lisa Denney

Lisa Denney is a senior research fellow and Deputy Director of the Institute for Human Security and Social Change at La Trobe University and a research associate with ODI.

The field of program evaluation has a body of literature explaining the different types of evaluation use and factors affecting the take up of evaluation findings.

Thanks for the post, Lisa. DT Global is pleased to be one of the organisations participating in this RDI Network initiative. It is a topic of great importance to us, practically and intellectually, and we recognise that we need to explore better ways to address the research/policy/practice intersect in what we do. We are looking forward to our own exploration and in particular the learning we can take from working with this positively diverse peer group.

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Urban Studies and Planning

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Developmental Economics
International Development
Regional Politics
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Introduction to international development planning, study questions.

This section contains questions for each session that you might want to consider as you progress through the course.

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International development research areas, introduction.

Work and economy

Our multidisciplinary research in this area explores the historical and contemporary dynamics of economic systems and transformations in the world of work.

Capitalism and uneven development
Global value chains
Natural resource economies
Trade and investment
Financialisation of markets
Labour market transformation,
Digital labour and platform economy
Refugee and migrant economies
Employment and unemployment
Informal economy
Entrepreneurship

Migration and forced displacement

Migration and forced displacement have been key factors in shaping international development processes and humanitarian concerns around the world. Our research in this area takes a diversity of directions and frequently aims to understand larger transnational dynamics through people-centred research rooted in specific places and countries.

Labour migration
Transnationalism and diaspora
Forced displacement and refugee studies
Mobility and immobility
Migration control and management
Justice and rights in displacement and migration,
Digital technology and ICTs in the context of displacement

Peace and conflict

Conflict and peace are crucial factors that shape international development processes around the world, with conflict and violence being one of the key reasons for growing humanitarian needs.

The humanitarian impact of conflicts
Political violence
Identity and conflict
Militaries and international security interventions
Peacekeeping
Mutinies
Conscientious objectors and pacifism
Post-conflict transitions, state building and transitional justice
Conflict-induced displacement and migration
Settler colonial conflicts

Sustainability and environment

With questions of sustainability at the forefront of international development policies, our research engages critically with the definitions and implications of sustainable development and the complex relationships among environmental, economic and social imperatives on a changing planet.

Energy and low-carbon energy futures
Climate change
Ecology and biodiversity
Resource extraction and resource politics
Agriculture and food
Environmental justice
Cultural and political dynamics of scarcity, security, and abundance

Health and wellbeing

We have a unique interdisciplinary expertise and strength in the field of health and well-being, with one of the largest concentrations of Medical Anthropologists in Europe in the Edinburgh Centre for Medical Anthropology (EdCMA).

Global health and public health
Disease and Illness
Pharmaceuticals
Diagnostic technologies
Sexual and reproductive health, and maternal and child health.
Health infrastructures
Responses to HIV/AIDS crises
Mental health
Indigenous public health practices
Health care in the context of forced displacement

Technology and infrastructure

Technology, and especially digital technology, is taking up an increasingly central role in international development and humanitarianism. Our research in this area concerns the economic socio-political, ethical, legal and cultural implications of the adoption and penetration of technologies in development.

Digital finance and mobile money
Governance of digital platforms
Digital labour, the gig economy, and digital livelihoods
Urban transport infrastructures and urban technologies
Artificial Intelligence
Data practices in international development
Digital humanitarianism and humanitarian technologies

Identity, culture and religion

Dynamics of identity, culture, and religion have long been at the heart of international development, including through movements for social justice, gender equality, indigenous rights, and culture appreciation. Our diverse work in this field reflects the richness of local cultural practices while maintaining a concern with global processes and inequalities.

Gender politics and gender-based social movements
Culture politics
Identity politics
Race and inequality
Indigenous struggles and politics
Religious activism and faith-based organizations
Nationalism and identity
Public morality

Governance, politics and law

Discussions of the role of governance, political institutions, and the rule of law in development have long been a central part of debates amongst both policy makers and academics. Our research in this area engages with these debates while also speaking to emergent issues and wider considerations, including on topics such as:

Humanitarian governance
Politics and policies in international development
Democracy and elections
Criminal justice and courts
Legal pluralism
State bureaucracies
Humanitarian law and conflict
Legal means of oppression
The role of law in conflicts, including land-based conflicts

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International Development Dissertation Topics

Published by Owen Ingram at January 4th, 2023 , Revised On August 15, 2023

Undergraduate, Master and PhD students are awarded the degree only after they successfully complete their dissertations according to university guidelines. If you are required to complete a dissertation project on an international development topic that demonstrates your knowledge and expertise in the chosen study area but have no idea where to begin, then you are not alone.

Many students become victims of time constraints during this process. Others are just unsure of the topic that would best work for them. This article provides a list of well-researched international development dissertation topics for students to choose from.

A significant development has occurred in international development in the modern world. A precise set of standards must be mastered in order to produce flawless dissertations in this field. Most dissertation topics on the subject of an international development deal with potential commercial development within individual countries. The issue of conducting business overseas can also be addressed as part of the international development dissertation.

So without further ado, let’s now look at some interesting international development dissertation topics and ideas developed by our business writers.

How Can ResearchProspect Help?

ResearchProspect writers can send several custom topic ideas to your email address. Once you have chosen a topic that suits your needs and interests, you can order for our dissertation outline service which will include a brief introduction to the topic, research questions , literature review , methodology , expected results , and conclusion . The dissertation outline will enable you to review the quality of our work before placing the order for our full dissertation writing service!

Consider any one of the above topics for your next dissertation. Our dissertation writers have addressed many international development themes in depth over the years, providing customised solutions to students. Feel free to contact us if you need assistance with the topic selection, proposal writing or the full dissertation paper.

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How to find international development dissertation topics.

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Among scholars, the question of when and why international laws work has triggered a lively debate that the Laboratory on International Law and Regulation strives to settle with better theories and research findings. Emilie Hafner-Burton , professor and director of the lab, is the author of “Making Human Rights a Reality” that looks at the emergence of a massive body of legal norms and procedures aimed at protecting human rights. The book explores why it has been so hard for these international laws to have much of an impact in parts of the world where human rights are most at risk.

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Jennifer Burney

Professor; Marshall Saunders Chancellor’s Endowed Chair in Global Climate Policy and Research

Research Fields: climate impacts and adaptation, food-energy-water systems, food and nutrition security, land use, economic development

Rafael Fernández de Castro

Professor; Aaron Feldman Family Chancellor's Endowed Chair in U.S.-Mexican Studies in Memory of David Feldman; Director, Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies

Research fields: U.S.-Mexico relations, foreign policy, immigration and security in Latin America

Michael Davidson

Assistant Professor

Research Fields: China, electricity markets, energy policy, climate change policy

Francisco Garfias

Research Fields: comparative political economy, state capacity, taxation, social conflict, Latin American politics, Mexican politics, econometrics

Teevrat Garg

Associate Professor of Economics

Research Fields: environmental economics, development economics, decarbonization, South and Southeast Asia

Joshua Graff Zivin

Professor; Pacific Economic Cooperation Chair in International Economic Relations; Director, Peter F. Cowhey Center on Global Transformation

Research Fields: environmental, public health, development, innovation economics

Emilie Hafner-Burton

Professor; Research Director, Future of Democracy (IGCC); Peter Cowhey Chancellor’s Endowed Chair in Global Policy; Director, Laboratory on International Law and Regulation

Research Fields: international law and regulation, human rights, election violence, trade and investment, behavioral economics, political psychology, and social networks

Associate Professor

Research Fields: China, development economics, economic history, political economy

Gaurav Khanna

Research Fields: development economics, labor economics, applied econometrics

Munseob Lee

Assistant Professor; Director, Korea-Pacific Program

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Elizabeth Lyons

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Lauren Prather

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Krislert Samphantharak

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Barbara F. Walter

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SCIENCE & ENGINEERING INDICATORS

Research and development: u.s. trends and international comparisons.

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Introduction

This report analyzes research and experimental development (R&D) trends in the United States and internationally. R&D refers to creative and systematic work aimed at increasing the stock of knowledge and is broken down into three categories: basic research, applied research, and experimental development (Moris and Pece 2022; OECD 2015). The Glossary section of this report summarizes key definitions.

R&D and other intangibles or intellectual property products (IPPs), such as software investment, contribute to innovation, output and productivity growth, competitiveness, and public policy goals across countries—from defense, cybersecurity, and information infrastructure to sustainable energy, environmental protection, and health (Baily, Bosworth, and Doshi 2020; CRS 2020a; NASEM 2020; Pece 2023b; OECD 2023d, 2023h). The COVID-19 pandemic impacted global science by highlighting the importance of resiliency and security in domestic and international global research networks (OECD 2022, 2023a, 2023b, 2023c, 2023d).

In the private sector, R&D is also a leading component of global value chains (GVCs) for industries at the forefront of advanced manufacturing, emerging and critical technologies, and high-technology services across the globe. International production arrangements and global R&D networks, built over the past decades (Kano, Tsang, and Yeung 2020; Papanastassiou, Pearce, and Zanfei 2020), have been challenged by pandemic-related and geopolitical factors that are impacting the organization of international R&D and economic activity and the role of critical or emerging technologies (IMF 2023; OECD 2023e).

This report is organized into four sections. The first covers U.S. R&D across the major performing and funding sectors, followed by a section on international comparisons. The last two sections focus on business R&D and federal R&D. The report also includes new information on semiconductor and other critical or emerging technologies R&D that feeds into business high-technology supply chains and public policy goals (CRS 2022a, 2022b; USG 2023).

Related Science and Engineering Indicators 2024 reports include “ Academic Research and Development ” and the forthcoming “The STEM Labor Force: Scientists, Engineers, and Skilled Technical Workers.” Three other related reports focus on production supply chains and other post-R&D activities: “ Publications Output: U.S. Trends and International Comparisons ,” “ Invention, Knowledge Transfer, and Innovation ,” and “ Production and Trade of Knowledge- and Technology-Intensive Industries .”

The principal data sources of this report are surveys and the National Patterns of R&D Resources (henceforth, National Patterns) database (NCSES 2024) from the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES), National Science Foundation (NSF). The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Main Science and Technology Indicators (MSTI) database (OECD 2023c) is the source for international R&D statistics. All amounts are reported in U.S. current dollars unless otherwise noted. All years are calendar years unless otherwise noted.

Understanding How Digital Media Affects Child Development

A man and a smiling little boy sitting in his lap look at a mobile phone.

Technology and digital media have become ubiquitous parts of our daily lives. Screen time among children and adolescents was high before COVID-19 emerged, and it has further risen during the pandemic, thanks in part to the lack of in-person interactions.

In this increasingly digital world, we must strive to better understand how technology and media affect development, health outcomes, and interpersonal relationships. In fact, the fiscal year 2023 federal budget sets aside no less than $15 million within NICHD’s appropriation to investigate the effects of technology use and media consumption on infant, child, and adolescent development.

Parents may not closely oversee their children’s media use, especially as children gain independence. However, many scientific studies of child and adolescent media use have relied on parents’ recollections of how much time the children spent in front of a screen. By using software embedded within mobile devices to calculate children’s actual use, NICHD-supported researchers found that parent reports were inaccurate more often than they were on target. A little more than one-third of parents in the study underestimated their children’s usage, and nearly the same proportion overestimated it. With a recent grant award from NICHD, researchers at Baylor College of Medicine plan to overcome the limitation of relying on parental reports by using a novel technology to objectively monitor preschool-age children’s digital media use. They ultimately aim to identify the short- and long-term influences of technology and digital media use on children’s executive functioning, sleep patterns, and weight. This is one of three multi-project program grants awarded in response to NICHD’s recent funding opportunity announcement inviting proposals to examine how digital media exposure and use impact developmental trajectories and health outcomes in early childhood or adolescence. Another grant supports research to characterize the context, content, and use of digital media among children ages 1 to 8 years and to examine associations with the development of emotional regulation and social competence. A third research program seeks to better characterize the complex relationships between social media content, behaviors, brain activity, health, and well-being during adolescence.

I look forward to the findings from these ongoing projects and other studies that promise to inform guidance for technology and media use among children and adolescents. Additionally, the set-aside funding for the current fiscal year will allow us to further expand research in this area. These efforts will help us advance toward our aspirational goal to discover how technology exposure and media use affect developmental trajectories, health outcomes, and parent-child interactions.

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Education, training and skills
Inspections and performance of education providers

Teachers’ professional development in schools

An independent review of teachers’ and leaders’ professional development since April 2021: phase 1 and 2.

Applies to England

Independent review of teachers’ professional development in schools: phase 2 findings, institute for employment studies report: teachers’ professional development journeys.

PDF , 1.11 MB , 69 pages

YouGov survey data: 2023 questions in counts

ODS , 659 KB

This file is in an OpenDocument format

YouGov survey data: 2023 questions in percentages

ODS , 654 KB

Independent review of teachers’ professional development in schools: phase 1 findings

The Department for Education ( DfE ) commissioned Ofsted to carry out an independent review of teachers’ professional development. See the terms of reference for the review . Our interim findings focused on the experiences of the training and development that teachers have engaged in since April 2021.

The second phase of our study found that, as in our phase 1 findings, the early career framework (ECF) is generally being implemented successfully, with early career teachers agreeing that their training is effective and having a noticeable impact on their career. National professional qualification (NPQs) are also largely seen as relevant and high-quality by those studying them. However, for those not on an ECF or NPQ pathway, teachers were generally less positive about the quality of the training and development opportunities that they have recently received.

The report highlights some innovative ways in which the most effective schools that we visited are navigating barriers to provide their staff with accessible, relevant and high-quality professional development.

Our mixed-method approach

As part of our mixed-method approach, we drew evidence from a longitudinal cohort study of 40 teachers that we commissioned from the Institute for Employment Studies ( IES ). The views expressed in this report are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily represent the views of Ofsted.

We also commissioned YouGov to survey teachers on their views of the quality of their recent training and development opportunities. The aggregated results from the wave 2 survey are available in the ODS datasets. Additionally, the DfE has published statistics on the ECF and NPQ programmes .

Added data from a YouGov survey of teachers on their views of the quality of their recent training and development opportunities.

Published the 'Independent review of teachers’ professional development in schools: phase 2 findings' report, a longitudinal cohort study of 40 teachers from the Institute for Employment Studies (IES) and YouGov data from a commissioned survey of teachers.

First published.

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Wearable devices get signal boost from innovative material

Rice engineer and collaborators overcome radio frequency performance challenges in skin-interfaced electronics.

A new material that moves like skin while preserving signal strength in electronics could enable the development of next-generation wearable devices with continuous, consistent wireless and battery-free functionality.

According to a study published in Nature , an international team of researchers from Rice University and Hanyang University developed the material by embedding clusters of highly dielectric ceramic nanoparticles into an elastic polymer. The material was reverse-engineered to not only mimic skin elasticity and motion types, but also to adjust its dielectric properties to counter the disruptive effects of motion on interfacing electronics, minimize energy loss and dissipate heat.

"Our team was able to combine simulations and experiments to understand how to design a material that can seamlessly deform like skin and change the way electrical charges distribute inside it when it is stretched so as to stabilize radio-frequency communication," said Raudel Avila, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Rice and a lead author on the study. "In a way, we are carefully engineering an electrical response to a mechanical event."

Avila, who was responsible for conducting simulations to help identify the right choice of materials and design, explained that electronic devices use radio frequency (RF) elements like antennas to send and receive electromagnetic waves.

"If you have ever been in a place with poor cellular reception or a very spotty Wi-Fi signal, you probably understand the frustration of weak signals," Avila said. "When we're trying to communicate information, we work at specific frequencies: Two antennas communicating with each other do so at a given frequency. So we need to ensure that that frequency does not change so that communication remains stable. The challenge of achieving this in systems designed to be mobile and flexible is that any change or transformation in the shape of those RF components causes a frequency shift, which means you'll experience signal disruption."

The nanoparticles embedded in the substrate served to counteract these disruptions, with a key design element being the intentional pattern of their distribution. Both the distance between the particles and the shape of their clusters played a critical role in stabilizing the electrical properties and resonant frequency of the RF components.

"The clustering strategy is very important, and it would take a lot longer to figure out how to go about it through experimental observations alone," Avila said.

Sun Hong Kim, a former research associate from Hanyang and now a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University, pointed out that the research team took a creative approach to solving the problem of RF signal stability in stretchable electronics.

"Unlike previous studies that focused on electrode materials or design, we focused on the design of a high-dielectric nanocomposite for the substrate where the wireless device is located," Kim said, highlighting the importance of collaboration across three different fields of expertise for developing "such a multidimensional solution to a complex problem."

"We believe that our technology can be applied to various fields such as wearable medical devices, soft robotics and thin and light high-performance antennas," said Abdul Basir, a former research associate from Hanyang and now a postdoctoral researcher at Tampere University in Finland.

Wearable technologies are having a profound impact on health care, enabling new forms of individual monitoring, diagnosis and care. Smart wear market predictions reflect the transformative potential of these technologies with health and fitness owning the largest share in terms of end use.

"Wireless skin-integrated stretchable electronics play a key role in health emergencies, e-health care and assistive technologies," Basir added.

To test whether the material could support the development of effective wearable technologies, the researchers built several stretchable wireless devices, including an antenna, a coil and a transmission line, and evaluated their performance both on the substrate they developed and on a standard elastomer without the added ceramic nanoparticles.

"When we put the electronics on the substrate and then we stretch or bend it, we see that the resonant frequency of our system remains stable," Avila said. "We showed that our system supports stable wireless communication at a distance of up to 30 meters (~98 feet) even under strain. With a standard substrate, the system completely loses connectivity."

The wireless working distance of the far-field communication system exceeds that of any other similar skin-interfaced system. Moreover, the new material could be used to enhance wireless connectivity performance in a variety of wearable platforms designed to fit various body parts in a wide range of sizes.

For instance, the researchers developed wearable bionic bands to be worn on the head, knee, arm or wrist to monitor health data across the body, including electroencephalogram (EEG) and electromyogram (EMG) activity, knee motion and body temperature. The headband, which was shown could stretch up to 30% when worn on the head of a toddler and up to 50% on the head of an adult, successfully transmitted real-time EEG measurements at a wireless distance of 30 meters.

"Skin-interfaced stretchable RF devices that can seamlessly conform to skin morphology and monitor key physiological signals require critical design of the individual material layouts and the electronic components to yield mechanical and electrical properties and performance that do not disrupt a user's experience," Avila said. "As wearables continue to evolve and influence the way society interacts with technology, particularly in the context of medical technology, the design and development of highly efficient stretchable electronics become critical for stable wireless connectivity."

Electronics
Wearable Technology
Materials Science
Mobile Computing
Spintronics Research
Artificial Intelligence
Electrical engineering
Information and communication technologies
Tensile strength
Passive infrared sensors
Computing power everywhere
Aspect-oriented programming

Story Source:

Materials provided by Rice University . Original written by Silvia Cernea Clark. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference :

Sun Hong Kim, Abdul Basir, Raudel Avila, Jaeman Lim, Seong Woo Hong, Geonoh Choe, Joo Hwan Shin, Jin Hee Hwang, Sun Young Park, Jiho Joo, Chanmi Lee, Jaehoon Choi, Byunghun Lee, Kwang-Seong Choi, Sungmook Jung, Tae-il Kim, Hyoungsuk Yoo, Yei Hwan Jung. Strain-invariant stretchable radio-frequency electronics . Nature , 2024; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07383-3

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