
Insights / Research Brief•May 26, 2023
Gang Rule: Understanding and Countering Criminal Governance
Christopher Blattman, Gustavo Duncan, Benjamin Lessing, Santiago Tobón
In Medellín, Colombia, gangs provide residents of low- and middle-income neighborhoods with key governing services to reduce the need for state presence, thereby protecting their drug profits. Increased state presence leads to increased gang presence, suggesting new strategies for countering criminal governance.
Topics:
Development Economics

Insights / Research Brief•Dec 01, 2022
Measuring Religion from Behavior: Climate Shocks and Religious Adherence in Afghanistan
Oeindrila Dube, Joshua E. Blumenstock, Michael Callen
A new measure of religious adherence, developed using cell phone data, shows that when economic conditions in Afghanistan worsen, people become more religiously observant.

Insights / Research Brief•Oct 18, 2022
Calculating the Costs and Benefits of Advance Preparations for Future Pandemics
Rachel Glennerster, Christopher M. Snyder, Brandon Joel Tan
Without additional action we should expect to lose an average of at least $800 billion every year to future pandemics. Investing to expand vaccine production so that we could vaccinate 70% of the global population against a new virus within six months would cost $60 billion up front and $5 billion a year and generate an expected net present value of over $400 billion. If the US went it alone it would generate $47 billion in net benefits or $141 per head, just from the first significant pandemic.
Topics:
COVID-19

Insights / Video
Innovations in Market Design
In the twenty years since UChicago’s Rachel Glennerster and Michael Kremer proposed Advanced Market Commitments...

Insights / Video
Policy Innovation through Experimentation (for Development): Drawing on Lessons from Public Policy in China and the Chilean Government
This event featured two case studies on policy innovation through experimentation (for development). David Yang,...

Insights / Video
Innovation, Experimentation, and Economics: Keynote Address by Michael Kremer
In this lecture, Nobel laureate Michael Kremer, University Professor at the University of Chicago, discussed...

Insights / Video
Scaling Innovation in the Developing World, Featuring the International Finance Corporation’s Makhtar Diop
If there was a silver lining in the pandemic, it was the role of innovation...
Insights / Research Brief•Dec 11, 2019
Impacts of Industrial and Entrepreneurial Jobs on Youth · The Long-Term Impacts of Grants on Poverty
The old adage about fighting poverty is that if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day; but if you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.
Topics:
Economic Mobility & Poverty