Economic Development
How Should Policymakers Respond to Rising Fertilizer Prices?
The Iran war has driven up the cost of fertilizer, squeezing farmers in the developing world. Prof. Kevin Donovan says that governments can respond most effectively by shifting from broad subsidies to a more targeted approach.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Can Mobile Cash Transfers Help the Very Poor Survive COVID-19?
In the developing world, many of those most at risk from the economic effects of COVID-19 are beyond the reach of aid programs. Yale SOM’s Kevin Donovan is testing the use of the transfers in a slum on the outskirts of Nairobi.
Helping the Hardest Hit
Even when the economy was roaring along, far too many Americans lacked the savings and support to respond to an unexpected loss of income. The COVID-19 crisis has thrown that fragility into stark relief.
