What is the state of sub-national governance in Papua New Guinea? Maholopa Laveil continues his data driven assessment on devpolicy.org and comes to pessimistic conclusions: devpolicy.org/subnational-go…

🚨 📄 New Discussion Paper Reviewing the evidence on Social Protection and Labour Market policies on Informally employment in low/ middle income countries. We review 200+ papers to understand which policy instruments can promote formalisation, protection, and productivity

Excellent review of global evidence on policies aimed at formalisation and protection of informal workers in this new SPJ (World Bank) discussion paper

Happy birthday to Albert Hirschman, who would be 109 today. Hirschman—anti-fascist, resistance hero, later a development economist—may be the most interesting person to ever take up the profession. 🧵 and blog post on his remarkable life and work.

classic

What led to East Asia's rapid fall in fertility?? - Strong states - Economic growth, or - Culture? And how important was this for rising female employment? ggd.world/p/what-led-to-…

Here’s a cool map of M’sian states blown up in proportion to their contribution to national GDP Visually, what jumps out is that more than half of national GDP comes from just 3 states / FTs: 1. Selangor (~26%) 2. KL (~16%) 3. Sarawak (~10%)

In fact, we find that in any given M'sian state and sector... For every 10 migrant workers, there're +2 ADDITIONAL employed Malaysians...mostly above 30 yo & w/ secondary education (Fig) PS: Stay tuned for a detailed paper on this by Matthew Dornan & colleagues!

So migrant workers are complements & not substitutes to native M’sians Btw, concern they're weakening MYR is demonstrably false Sure, remittances have been⬆️over time but remittance outflow-to-GDP ratio has been⬇️since 2016! And even a simple correlation is -ive (Fig)

This begs the Q: Why the adverse perception of migrant workers, beside, well, it's convenient to blame outsiders when times get tough? (btw aren't "expats" also migrant workers? But I digress) Here's one overlooked expln of this perception: “lumpy labor fallacy”...

...which is, the belief that # of jobs in the economy are FIXED (ie, "lumpy") But that's a fallacy 'cos in a growing economy, ⬆️demand for migrant workers means... ⬆️aggregate demand, which means... ⬆️labor demand, which means... MORE jobs created for EVERYONE (as we find)

Relevant for countries other than the UK also

Key takeaway: Look beyond subsidies and matching contributions for providing social insurance to gig workers in #Malaysia. Approaches to tap into the high WTP, complementary private insurance products can be promising. #gigeconomy #gigwork #Malaysia

We @OurWorldinData now have a topic page on foreign aid! It allows you to explore data on who gives and receives foreign aid, the different types of assistance, and a few examples of when it has been successful. A thread on what the page has in store:

This is so extremely misunderstood by the average American. One of the main causes of undocumented immigration is the mismatch between the US economy’s need for workers & the types of visas our legal system does NOT provide. Learn more here: zekehernandez.net/resource/but-w…

A short thread on the adequacy of minimum income benefits in Australia vs the USA : Trends over time for a single person 1/4

New and open access book: Refugee Protection in Southeast Asia: Between Humanitarianism and Sovereignty Edited by Susan Kneebone, Reyvi Mariñas, Antje Missbach and Max Walden berghahnbooks.com/title/Kneebone…

Had a wide ranging conversation on the state of development cooperation with Robin Davies at the development center at ANU in Canberra. We are at a point of inflection - but where to? Welcome comments here or by email to [email protected]. devpolicytalks.simplecast.com/episodes/masoo…

If the kids aren't in school, they aren't learning as much. sciencedirect.com/science/articl… (But they may still be learning *some* good things! nature.com/articles/s4158…)