S6 Ep40: Understanding the global construction sector

Policymakers and politicians like to talk about creating infrastructure like roads, schools and transport systems: how it grows the economy, provides jobs, and strengthens domestic firms. But that infrastructure needs raw materials, people and constructors to create it. Martina Kirchberger of Trinity College Dublin is an expert on how stuff gets built in developing countries. Are the materials they need expensive? Will a construction boom also create jobs? Are there local firms who can do the work and, if not, who makes projects happen in the global construction sector? She talks to Tim Phillips about investment, partnership, and the surprising cost of cement. 

Everywhere, women’s labour force participation is lower than men’s. There are many reasons to close this gap, but there are just as many reasons why it’s hard to do it. Research is discovering new and important insights into how financial constraints, social norms, the backlash from man and the problems of travelling safely reduce the opportunities to work from home. But which policies can change this? Release 2 of the VoxDev Lit on Female Labour Force Participation sets out this research, and Rachel Heath of the University of Washington tells Tim Phillips what it tells us about how work helps women, and policy helps women to find work. 

When children are victims of bullying or social exclusion at school, it can be devastating for every part of their lives. This is a global problem, but with a global solution: if we can teach kids about empathy, self-control, or the effects of their violent behaviour, it can reduce bullying. How well do these policies work, and can they be scaled up successfully?  JPAL is about to publish a policy insight on this topic, bringing together the research and summarising what we know. Sule Alan of Cornell University tells Tim Phillips about how we can spot bullying and exclusion in the classroom, and the interventions that work.

Macroeconomists know that our economic activity influences – and is influenced by – the natural environment in which it is embedded, but we have learned that modelling those effects is far from easy. The scientific consensus around climate change is strong, but there’s not similar agreement over appropriate economic policies to deal with it. On the eve of COP 30, a new review of macroeconomics and climate shows how far we have come but also points out where the gaps in our knowledge are. Adrien Bilal of Stanford University tells Tim Phillips about the state of research, its missing links, and the limits of what economists can do to influence the policy agenda.

How does culture affect development policy, and how does development policy affect culture? If we don’t take account of cultural norms or fail to learn about how they interact with well-intentioned polices, then this gap in our knowledge may be undermining development projects. Can better measurement and collaboration with other social sciences fill these gaps? A new paper investigates what we know about the culture, policy, and economic development, and Natalie Bau of UCLA, Sara Lowes of UC San Diego, and Eduardo Montero of the University of Chicago tell Tim Phillips about the potential, and pitfalls, of research into culture.

With record levels of armed conflict around the world in recent years, the study of conflict has gone from being a niche corner of economics into a thriving discipline that learns from, and interacts with, development economics. Rigorous empirical research on conflict is, however, relatively recent.  The Reducing Conflict and Improving Performance in the Economy (ReCIPE) programme aims to provide a better understanding of the links between conflicts, economic growth, and public policies. this week we speak to Dominic Rohner (Geneva Graduate Institute), the Research Director of the programme, and Oliver Vanden Eynde (Paris School of Economics), the Head of Engagement about their new research that attempts to link the attributes of countries to the types of conflict they experience, how economic methods can advance our knowledge of conflict and the policies to reduce it, and what the work of ReCIPE can do to influence policy around conflict and development. 

In 2025, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) is 50 years old. “Lessons and Priorities for a Changing World”, its 2025 Global Food Policy Report, runs to just under 600 pages and covers the last five decades of progress in improving the world’s food systems – but also the challenges that remain, and the need for policy to keep evolving if we are going to build sustainable, healthy food systems.  Johan Swinnen and Purnima Menon of IFPRI talk to Tim Phillips about the importance of agrifood resilience. With changes in the global economy, the equity and effectiveness of these food value chains will affect the livelihoods of billions of people. But has the progress in the last 50 years stalled? Read the full show notes on VoxDev: https://voxdev.org/topic/health/food-policy-lessons-and-priorities-changing-world Download the report: https://www.ifpri.org/global-food-policy-report/

What happens from the moment goods are manufactured or harvested, until they are bought by consumers? As we know from experience, most of the things we consume reach us having been bought and sold, sometimes many times, by intermediaries – most of us don’t order a phone from the factory. Many interventions designed to increase the welfare of consumers in developing economies are designed to shorten these supply chains by cutting out those traders in the middle. But what happens when you do that in the real world?  Meredith Startz of Dartmouth College tells Tim Phillips why the story of what intermediaries deliver, and even their effect on the prices consumers pay, is more nuanced than our economic models often suggest. 

Like all of us, healthcare providers bring their biases to work. But if those biases result in a reduced level of care for their patients, how can we correct them?  An innovative experiment in three very different countries attempted to reduce bias in contraceptive care for women. Zachary Wagner of USC and Manisha Shah of UC Berkeley were two of a multidisciplinary team that implemented program and evaluated the results. They talk to Tim Phillips about how biases shape contraceptive care, the methods that can help us to understand why they arise, and the challenges of creating a program that can work in different cultural and religious settings. 

In the second of our two podcasts with Francis Annan of UC Berkeley on his research on mobile money first in Ghana, then beyond, Tim Phillips discusses how he worked with commercial providers, not just to set up the RCTs designed to investigate the extent and reduce financial fraud, but to ensure that the insights could be scaled up.  While contacting sceptical commercial providers can often meet with little or no response, he says, the ability to frame research in a way that makes them realise the commercial value as well as the social value can get, and keep, their attention – and lead to a long-run partnership that achieves more than working independently or through regulators.