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Economic Development

When Essential Infrastructure Projects Involve Exceptional Risk, No Sector Can Go It Alone

At the World Bank’s Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, Laura Alonzo ’96 mobilizes private investment in the developing and conflict-wracked economies that need it most.

The M10 industrial park in Lviv, Ukraine
  • What Turkey Needs for Its Long Recovery

    Even as emergency relief continues, says Rana Kotan ’04, secretary general of Third Sector Foundation of Turkey, it is crucial to expand the capacity of the grassroots organizations that will be rebuilding long after the headlines have faded.

    Collapsed buildings in Kahramanmaras, Turkey, on February 10.
  • Pakistan’s Long, Uncertain Recovery from Devastating Floods

    Unprecedented floods have devastated Pakistan’s agricultural economy. Wasif Khan ’86 describes a human toll that will last for years.

    People wading through water with livestock
  • Building Bridges Can Boost Income for the Rural Poor

    Yale SOM’s Kevin Donovan and Wyatt Brooks of Arizona State University found that building footbridges in rural communities allows residents to access work in nearby towns, with benefits for themselves and their neighbors.

    People walking across a suspension footbridge in a rural area
  • Send Vaccines Where People Want Them: Developing Nations

    COVID-19 vaccine acceptance is significantly higher in low- and middle-income countries than wealthy ones. Prioritizing those countries for vaccine distribution could help save more lives and keep variants at bay.

    A COVID-19 vaccination site in Uganda, one of the countries surveyed in the study, in May 2021. Photo: Nicholas Kajoba/Xinhua via Getty Images.
  • How COVID-19 Is Making Gender Inequality Worse in Low-Income Countries—and What to Do About It

    Gender disparities in social and economic outcomes, already larger in the developing world than in rich countries, have been exacerbated by the pandemic. Policy action is badly needed to address the compounding of existing inequalities and protect the most vulnerable women.

    A Doctors Without Borders healthcare provider with a mother and her child at a mobile clinic in Sierra Leone in July 2020. Photo: Saidu Bah/AFP via Getty Images.
  • To Reduce Risk, Build Trust, in Developing Countries and the U.S.

    Mena Cammett ’12 of the World Bank says that the tools used to analyze risk in emerging markets are increasingly relevant to the United States. To mitigate vulnerabilities, build trust.

    The Taiba N’Diaye Wind Power Station in Senegal, a project underwritten by the World Bank’s Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency. Photo: MIGA.
  • How Systems Thinking Can Help Stop Neglected Tropical Diseases

    Despite being easy and inexpensive to treat, a group of common bacterial and parasitic infections kill hundreds of thousands of people in tropical countries each year. In a new paper, Yale SOM’s Teresa Chahine and her co-authors map the complex system of stakeholders surrounding the diseases and identify key leverage points for making progress.

    Students receiving a deworming treatment at a school in Rwanda.
  • Seeking Scalable Solutions to Poverty

    Prof. Mushfiq Mobarak describes the arc of his research on scalable, evidence-based policy responses to poverty and how existing research tools have been applied to fight COVID.

    Garment workers demonstrating in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on September 20, 2020. Photo: Mamunur Rashid/NurPhoto via Getty Images.
  • Can Religious Teachings Help Lift People Out of Poverty?

    A study in the Philippines, co-authored by Yale SOM’s James Choi, suggests that learning Protestant Christian values and theology can boost poor families’ income.

    A speaker in front of a whiteboard in the Philippines
  • Study Examines Spread of COVID-19 among Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh

    Yale SOM’s Mushfiq Mobarak and his co-authors investigated the prevalence of the disease in the crowded refugee camps and offered recommendations to slow its spread.

    Rohingya refugees at Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh on May 15, 2020. Photo: Suzauddin Rubel/AFP Via Getty Images.