EGC Quarterly Newsletter, Fall 2024

EGC and the International Growth Centre (IGC) will host a conference on “Firms, Trade, and Development", October 24-25, 2024.

Marcela Eslava of Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Santiago Levy of the Brookings Institution, and Yale political scientist Ana de la O discuss a shared vision for research and action to address inequality in the region.

Islamul Haque, a Postdoctoral Associate at Y-Rise, and EGC Affiliate Mushfiq Mobarak discuss their new project focusing on the water crisis in Bangladesh – and the importance of conducting development research based on the needs on the ground.

Why do gender gaps in employment opportunities and outcomes persist in countries around the world, how can policy close them, and what do women and economies stand to gain? This summer, EGC researchers convened policy-research dialogues in Accra, Ghana and Delhi, India to help answer these questions. The events were organized by the EGC's Gender and Growth Gaps project and Inclusion Economics, in collaboration with in-country partner organizations.

In May EGC brought together esteemed economists, historians, law experts, and policy experts to celebrate the career of Naomi Lamoreaux. Charting the Future of Economics, Governance, and Economic Development in the United States and Beyond was a mini-conference examining the future direction of multidisciplinary research in history, economics, and public policy.

Growing up in a working-class family in Brazil, Mayara Felix benefitted from a policy that enabled her father to get work as a security guard. Now, as an incoming Yale Department of Economics faculty member, she is conducting innovative research to quantify the economic benefits of that policy – domestic outsourcing – on workers and the labor market.

Attanasio & Meghir on the impact of targeting high school scholarships to the poor in Mexico; Attanasio et al. on preschool quality and child development in Colombia; Attanasio et al.’s presidential address to the Econometric Society; Caliendo et al. present a model of a small open economy with product differentiation; Goldberg & Khandelwal on the US-China trade war; Mobarak et al. on how refugees in Bangladesh are hosted in highly vulnerable communities; Neilson et al. on the effect of colleges’ participation in Chile’s centralized higher-education platform; Neilson et al. on the effect of providing parents with information on school quality in Haiti; Pande et al. on the long-run impacts of a liquidity shock in India; Pande et al. on how public information incentivizes politicians to increase pro-poor spending; Pande et al. present experimental evidence of Saudi women’s take-up of unemployment assistance.