is there much unmet demand for clinical trial populations? could developing countries that get good at organizing clinical trials use this as leverage to build up research capabilities, attract FDI, get lower drug prices, participate in other links in the supply chain?
there is lots of TB in Latin American prisons. should they trial Far UV and ventilation technologies there to combat TB and other respiratory diseases?
are there pro-growth policies in wealthy countries that can lower interest rates in dollars, euros, yen etc and make credit cheaper in low-income countries? for instance if shelter inflation in the US is a disproportionate contributor to overall inflation and therefore prompts monetary policymakers to raise the price of credit to attenuate inflation, could policies like allowing more SROs, ADUs, TOD, townhomes lower interest rates for third world sovereign and non-sovereign borrowers (and their export customers)?
in Ecuador we have some dumb NIMBY rules about setbacks, parking requirements, staircase and elevators rules in relatively short buildings in important cities etc. do you think this kind of thing is an important impediment to growth in many parts of the developing world?
if Europe, the US, China, developed East Asia grow faster, ceteris paribus, does that help growth much in poor countries? is a poor country almost by definition a country that doesn’t export very much to those markets? are remittances, technology diffusion a lot more important than exports for most of the poorest countries?
how did smallpox eradication become an appealing idea to powerful people? should there be a sexy tabloid about pharma researchers and campaign leaders that glams them up to encourage more GAVI-like endeavours?
The Time Traveling Economist claims mass literacy is very important. I learned to read in large part thanks to newspapers. They appear cheaper to produce than books. I barely see them in Ecuador. Should states subsidize newspapers for students—perhaps with humor columns and short stories or serialized novels and health columns and transit maps/schedules, concert calendars etc?
Should states heavily subsidize meals in schools?
What should I read about whether Duterte’s anti-crime efforts succeeded or failed?
do you think China’s success in quickly cleaning up air quality in cities like Beijing will be very hard for other developing economies to emulate? what is an example of a development problem that is harder and another that is easier to give us an idea of how hard it is?
congratulations. I look forward to reading more articles in In Development
I imagine some development projects require more study than others, and that study requiring lots of verification and expertise can reduce the velocity of aid execution. Are there some broadly and/or narrowly applicable technologies that are raising the volume and efficacy of aid in general—say LLMS or whatsapp or camera phones—or in specific areas—maybe Lenocapovir being easier to administer than higher-frequency PrEP, or solar panels being easier to put to use at different scales than combined cycle gas plants that need complex engineering and high-caliber customers, say
what do you think of the Malawi Miracle’s fertilizer subsidy policies? are we close to technologies that make more natural gas available for fertilizer production, or make meaningfully more fertilizer production from electricity economically viable?
The Jakarta transit article gave me so much hope for my beloved traffic-clogged tropical South American cities. I imagine driver wages account for a lower portion of taxi and mass transit operator expenses in developing countries than they do in rich countries. But buses and taxis seem also to have a bigger mode share in developing country cities than in rich country cities. What effects do you expect from AVs in the developing world? Should we look at rideshare/ AV taxes to fund mass transit?
Is regenerative braking going to make EVs especially useful in the Andes?
Lauren has written interesting articles on electricity pricing in Africa. Do the World Bank’s new stances on nuclear and hydroelectric plants stand to make much of a difference? Can solar power installation be a worthwhile make-work program for countries with lots of unemployment, electricity shortages, and messy political economy around construction of new power plants and power lines?
Big stars of poverty reduction like China, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam seem to use a lot of coal. Are there desirable policy changes that could make more coal available to poor countries? When a country like the US figures out how to reduce coal use, does it usually become much cheaper for poorer countries to buy it?
in my middle-income country the 2 dollar sunglasses at the supermarket as well as the four hundred dollar mobile phones are made in China. with China still so efficient at production of low-end goods, is there much opportunity for other poor and middle income countries to gain manufacturing market share in textiles etc?
is there a localized flying geese thing, or like a gravity model of development? if emigration helps source countries a lot, should donors, MDBs etc focus on helping promising countries low and middle income countries that receive lots of economic migrants and border less promising low-income countries? for example South Africa seems to have some interesting industrial capabilities, has a lot of native poverty, and also receives lots of migrants from other poor countries. in that way it may be a better candidate for credit and investment than its neighbors, and bolstering its success may also help its neighbors a lot. is this kind of thing worth development professionals’ attention? I also think of India as a manufacturer of generic drugs, fertilizers, and solar panels, and an importer of natural gas, oil, coal, and Himalayan hydro that could become more abundantly available to other poor countries if more investment in nuclear power, solar, mass transit, EVs etc can reduce their import volumes. Egypt is another country with nuclear power on the way, plenty of desert to build solar in, lots of manufacturing, plenty of refugees, and a large fertilizer production industry
are GLP-1s about to be protagonists in a massive public health success story in poor and mid income countries? should we expect benefits for economic growth?
does it help for most everyone in a country to speak the same language? should states, dev orgs try to get Portuguese-dubbed content subtitled in Portuguese in front of audiences for fluency and literacy purposes (English, French, Hindi, Arabic stand out too)?
thank you for working for poverty relief and more happiness!
Idk about magnitudes but in my country, Ecuador, alcoholism is a huge problem. We have some sin taxes on alcohol, but it seems difficult to raise them in part because binge-drinking is such a popular passtime and in part because there is lots of illegal production of moonshine-type alcohol that would likely gain market share with higher taxes on formal-sector alcohol products
Does anyone know if satellite and AI technology authorities could more easily identify acreage dedicated to sugar cane cultivation and tax this land more heavily than land devoted to other crops? Sugar cane is an important input for much of the bootleg moonshine in Ecuador, to my knowledge. Sugar cane also produces other harmful products, so I think taxing its production in this way could have other helpful effects and lead to more land and other agricultural resources being devoted to healthier crops
Good point. If rulers worry about the consequences for social life, for instance, they could reduce taxes on some other good that is important to bar and restaurant operations, or even reduce taxes on low alcohol% beverage options while raising taxes on stiffer blends
One can also imagine monetary costs being inflicted on families whose drunk adults now have less money leftover from their binge for picking up takeout or groceries
I think this is a good thought. With loneliness and social capital underdevelopment such large and apparently consequential problems, it is important to think about alternate candidates that might perform alcohol’s social lubricant role
Thank you for this info. Am i understanding correctly that advocacy for taxes on sugary drinks is estimated to be 55x more effective than donation to givewell’s recommended charities?
I think it is also useful to consider some civic consequences of depletion of non-tradable professional workforces. In countries where premature deindustrialization from import competition and IT and industrial automation have reduced the number of clerks, engineers, and factory workers, teachers, policemen, and nurses not only perform their professional roles but may also be the school board, the church organizers and donor pool, the newspaper’s customer base, the treasurers of the local government, and maybe the base of a democratization movement. The nurse from Lagos at the medical post may be the only sympathetic, knowledgeable outsider to whom the village girls can look for advice or role modeling
To be fair, I can imagine remittances help thicken the civic fabric. Maybe by financing private school tuition for a nephew, or a family member’s internet cafe business / print shop
Have you set up this school in Uganda? How has it gone?
Are there any promising political or technical initiatives that exist or that you would like to see to increase the volume of exports and employment in low-income countries? What are some important barriers in the present? Tariffs? Inadequate infrastructure in very poor countries?
congrats. i hope content will include setbacks in the fight to keep GBG / bichera fly out of Central America and Mexico, Uruguay’s anti-bichera project and collaboration with Mexico, corn import tariffs’ potential for reducing chicken industry scale, Fiocruz dengue vaccine efforts, chikugunya vaccine prospects, use of Brazilian and Portuguese media products such as telenovelas and soccer competitions for improving Portuguese fluency in ex—Portuguese colonies in sub-Saharan Africa to aid in nation-state consolidation and development
I think there are already tons of really smart people working full time on making the futures where we survive more valuable. I think the likeliest existential and catastrophic risks are relatively neglected
are you seeking investors?
If increased homebuilding does not raise inflation economy-wide, might it still make credit a bit more expensive by raising competition for credit?
If more direct effects on interest rates of increased homebuilding are smaller than effects on policy rates via lower rent-->lower inflation, should we surmise that US yimbyism may be a useful intervention for augmenting global development and reducing global poverty?
We are currently having problems with inadequate electricity generation in Ecuador, where drought has weakened hydropower output. What do you think second-best solutions might be for countries in this boat? Waiting for foreign donors/investors/lenders to impose higher prices as a condition of major help? Waiting for solar and batteries to get better/cheaper and replace more of diesel’s role, and also to make generation cheaper for the energy firms so that their deficits are smaller and more bailout funds can be aimed at new investment?
Countries like Ecuador, Colombia, and Nigeria have recently demonstrated courage in reducing motor fuel subsidies (which, in Nigeria, may impact those firms and households who rely on diesel backup). Are electrical price subsidies politically even tougher due to electricity being so much more common than cars in low and middle-income countries?
What are the next steps for expanding this program? I read that the pharma firm Takeda and a Brazilian non-profit have each invented promising dengue vaccines, too
Dang I didn’t notice that
if Iran is able to negotiate better access for their gas to markets like Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh, East Africa, and India, should we expect faster development and poverty reduction in these countries?
do third world research centers like Embrapa and Fiocruz foster much of a cluster of private sector “spinoffs”?
is the Cuban pharmaceutical sector truly successful and innovative, or is that mostly false propaganda hype? how many developing countries can emulate that without threatening fiscal solvency?