Supported by CIDER, the Collaboration for International Development Economics Research at Cornell University Supported by CIDER at Cornell
Subscribe

Economics That Really Matters

Labor & Migration · Vietnam When Non-Compliance Gets Costlier, Do Firms Become More Formal? When Vietnam made it costlier for small manufacturers to ignore a ten-worker labor rule, firms registered with the government but kept many workers without formal contracts, becoming formal on paper rather than in practice. Alix Naugler · October 7, 2026
Food & Agriculture · Uganda Tell Me Why: How Mechanistic Explanations Improve Technology Adoption Anirudh Sankar · February 26, 2026 Nepal Breastfeeding, sons, and the power to say “not yet” Jijee Bhattarai · December 22, 2025
Most of the people in the world are poor, so if we knew the economics of being poor, we would know much of the economics that really matters.
Theodore Schultz · Nobel Lecture, 1979

Latest research

Older posts →
Environment & Climate · Kenya

How Household Responsibilities Limit Small Firms’ Green Investments

Jiayue Zhang · December 20, 2025 Environment & Climate

Too cold to cope, too hot to work: heterogeneous effects of extreme weather on intimate partner violence

Julieth Saenz-Molina · December 19, 2025 Labor & Migration · India

Buccal Up! Poor Oral Health Has a Labor‑Market Penalty

Rubina Hundal · December 18, 2025 Methods · India

Can household loans boost women’s agency without targeting women?

Tarana Chauhan · December 17, 2025 Firms & Markets · India

Industrial Policy and Quality Traps: Lessons from India’s Small-Scale Industry Reservation

Kamalesh Pahurkar · December 15, 2025 Food & Agriculture

Paying for Carbon that Lasts: Lessons from Farmers and Soils

Khyati Malik · December 13, 2025 Job Market Paper Series

Governing Environmental Markets: Lessons from Chile’s experiment on water markets

Maximiliano Garcia · December 11, 2025 Food & Agriculture · India

When irrigation isn’t enough: protecting wages from rainfall shocks

Roshan Saha · December 10, 2025

Job Market Paper Series 2026–27

Every winter, PhD candidates and postdocs on the job market explain their papers for a wider audience.

See every series post →
When Non-Compliance Gets Costlier, Do Firms Become More Formal?Alix Naugler

Interviews

All interviews →
Interview · Nov 2025

Jing Cai

On the future of development economics, and advice for young researchers Interview · Oct 2025

Jacob Moscona

On the future of development economics, and advice for young researchers Interview · Sep 2025

Nicolás de Roux

On the future of development economics, and advice for young researchers Interview · Aug 2025

Douglas Gollin

On the future of development economics, and advice for young researchers

Browse by topic

Food & AgricultureFarms, food security, livestock Health & NutritionDisease, care, nutrition Environment & ClimateWeather, carbon, water GenderHouseholds, violence, empowerment Labor & MigrationJobs, wages, moving for work Firms & MarketsSmall business, trade, finance EducationSchools and human capital TechnologyDigital tools, media, AI Poverty & RiskAid, insurance, resilience Conflict & CrimeWar, violence, crime Public Sector & PolicyGovernance, cities, policy MethodsExperiments, data, behavior
By region Sub-Saharan Africa South Asia Latin America East & Southeast Asia Other & cross-country