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Insights / Research BriefMay 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 BriefDec 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 BriefOct 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 BriefDec 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