Free Daily Podcast Summary
VoxDev Development Economics: Daily Summaries Delivered
by VoxDev.org
Hear about the cutting edge of development economics from research to practice.
Latest Episodes
The most recent episodes — sign up to get AI-powered summaries of each one.
- 2 days ago38 min
S7 Ep56: Why democracy alone does not build effective states
Many years ago, Tim Besley (LSE) had a "crazily simplistic" idea to categorise states by their capacity, and in his early work he suggested three groups. When ten years later, he gave an algorithm some data on the measures of state capacity, and left it to categorise states, it also found three groups.Which states are in which groups barely changes. Does that make a country's group its destiny? In the latest VoxDev Talk, based on his lecture in the IGC-BREAD series on political economy, Besley tells Tim Phillips why it does not. But he also explains why giving citizens the power to vote doesn't necessarily help solve the problems that create weak states. The lecture behind this episode:Besley, Tim. 2026. "State Capacity, Conflict and Development." Lecture 4, BREAD-IGC virtual PhD-level course on political economy, 29 September. Lecture slides. Watch the recording: [LECTURE RECORDING URL].The research behind this episode:Besley, Timothy, Chris Dann, and Torsten Persson. 2021. "Pillars of Prosperity: A Ten-Year Update." CEPR Discussion Paper 16256. Gated.Besley, Timothy. 2020. "State Capacity, Reciprocity, and the Social Contract." Econometrica 88 (4): 1307-35.Besley, Timothy, and Torsten Persson. 2011. Pillars of Prosperity: The Political Economics of Development Clusters. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Besley, Timothy, and Torsten Persson. 2010. "State Capacity, Conflict, and Development." Econometrica 78 (1): 1-34.To cite this episode:Phillips, Tim, and Tim Besley. 2026. "Why democracy alone does not build effective states." VoxDev Talks (podcast).About the guestSir Tim Besley is School Professor of Economics and Political Science and W. Arthur Lewis Professor of Development Economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is known for research spanning political economy, development economics and public economics, with a focus on how governments can design and deliver economic policy more effectively. He served on the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee from 2006 to 2009 and was an academic director of the LSE-Oxford Commission on State Fragility, Growth and Development. He is a past president of the Econometric Society, the Royal Economic Society, the European Economic Association and the International Economic Association, and is affiliated with the Centre for Economic Policy Research.Research cited in this episodeState capacity. In Besley's work, state capacity has three dimensions. Fiscal capacity is the breadth of the tax system, legal capacity is the ability to enforce contracts and property rights, and collective capacity is the ability to provide services such as health and education. Besley and Persson (2011) built the first two on Adam Smith's recipe for prosperity, "peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice".Quasi-voluntary compliance. Margaret Levi's term for what happens when people pay tax because they accept the arrangement, and not only because they fear punishment (Levi, Margaret. 1988. Of Rule and Revenue. Berkeley: University of California Press). Besley (2020) models this as a reciprocal contract; citizens pay their taxes and the state provides public goods.Circular causation. Gunnar Myrdal, who shared the 1974 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Friedrich Hayek, described development as a system in which "if one changes, others will change in response" (Myrdal, Gunnar. 1974. "What Is Development?" Journal of Economic Issues 8 (4): 729-36). Besley uses the idea as a metaphor for state capacity and development. One does not cause the other; common processes lie behind both.Institutions. Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson used differences in European settler mortality to estimate the effect of institutions on income (Acemoglu, Daron, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson. 2001. "The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation." American Economic Review 91 (5): 1369-1401). Besley's addition is that state capacity moves
- 1 weeks ago46 min
Ideas in Development: Ken Opalo on the research Africa needs
This is an episode from VoxDev's new podcast series, Ideas in Development. This series has a separate podcast feed, where you can find every episode of Oliver Hanney’s conversations on evidence.YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DYOzIhbZlI Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/does-africa-need-development-economics/id1866874059?i=1000793373513 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3naR6n03DiTzzokWqaJ6cs?si=-CrMmOO1RYi_spJwpm3HNA Audioboom: https://audioboom.com/posts/8960400-does-africa-need-development-economics Substack: https://ideasindevelopment.substack.com/p/does-africa-need-development-economics If every development economist stopped their research tomorrow, would Africa's growth rate in 2040 look any different?Ken Opalo, associate professor at Georgetown's School of Foreign Service and author of the Substack An Africanist Perspective, joins Oliver Hanney to argue that the constraint on African growth is not knowing what to do but knowing how to get it done. He also explains why Kenya's evidence boom has coincided with declining policymaking, and what happens when policymakers outsource their ambitions.In this wide-ranging conversation we cover: Why the SDGs are the wrong goal for an ambitious minister. How narrow evidence reshaped education policy in Tanzania and Kenya. The craft of policymaking. When a policymaker should actually listen to a development economist. How to learn the right lessons from growth success stories. What the third wave of philanthropy should fund. Ideas in Development is a VoxDev podcast on economic policy and research.
- 1 weeks ago42 min
S7 Ep55: Armed groups as states: Taxation, security, and civilian support
In parts of eastern Congo, the organisation that collects your taxes, settles your disputes and holds the monopoly on cigarettes is not the state.Raúl Sánchez de la Sierra (LSE) has spent years investigating how Congo's armed militias work. He tells Tim Phillips how he won the trust of its commanders without building the bomb they requested. He was allowed to see administrative records, and what they reveal about how the group raises and spends its money. He also interviewed recruits and their neighbours to find out who chooses to fight and why. It's a fascinating insight into a system of government that many economists never see.The research behind this episode:Sanchez de la Sierra, Raul, Louis Dunia, and Hilary Yu. 2025. "Moral Violence: At the Heart of One of Congo's Major Armed Groups." Working paper.Henn, Soeren J., Christian Mastaki Mugaruka, Miguel Ortiz, Raul Sanchez de la Sierra, and David Qihang Wu. 2025. "Monopoly of Taxation without a Monopoly of Violence: The Weak State's Trade-Offs from Taxation." Review of Economic Studies 92 (2): 1126-56.Sanchez de la Sierra, Raul, Kristof Titeca, Haoyang (Stan) Xie, Albert Malukisa Nkuku, and Aimable Amani Lameke. 2024. "The Real State: Inside the Congo's Traffic Police Agency." American Economic Review 114 (12): 3976-4014.Sanchez de la Sierra, Raul. 2020. "On the Origins of the State: Stationary Bandits and Taxation in Eastern Congo." Journal of Political Economy 128 (1): 32-74.Humphreys, Macartan, Raul Sanchez de la Sierra, and Peter van der Windt. 2019. "Exporting Democratic Practices: Evidence from a Village Governance Intervention in Eastern Congo." Journal of Development Economics 140: 279-301.To cite this episode:Phillips, Tim, and Raul Sanchez de la Sierra. 2026. "Armed groups as states: Taxation, security, and civilian support." VoxDev Talks (podcast).About the guestRaul Sanchez de la Sierra is Associate Professor of Management at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His research spanning political economy and development economics draws on sociology, anthropology and psychology to study the origins of the state, the internal organisation of armed groups, the hidden workings of state agencies and the psychology of the choice to use violence. He was one of the founders of Marakuja Kivu Research, a Congolese research organisation based in Goma.Research cited in this episodeCommunity-driven development in eastern Congo. Raul's first work in the region was as a research assistant on the impact evaluation of a large village governance programme funded by the UK's Department for International Development. It aimed to bring elected committees to villages run by chiefs. Villagers objected when chiefs were barred from standing, and objected again when a chief stood and lost. Humphreys, Sanchez de la Sierra and van der Windt (2019) report the results.Stationary bandits. Mancur Olson's idea: a roving bandit takes everything and moves on, but a bandit who stays has an interest in next year's harvest, so he taxes rather than plunders and keeps rivals out (Olson, Mancur. 1993. "Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development." American Political Science Review 87 (3): 567-76). Sanchez de la Sierra (2020) tested it in eastern Congo; his VoxEU column On the origins of the state: Stationary bandits and taxation in eastern Congo summarises the evidence.When the state takes back territory. Henn et al. (2025) study a Congolese army operation that stopped armed groups taxing villages they had controlled for years. Unable to tax, the same groups turned to pillage. Raul uses it to show how policy that looks only at the legal map can backfire.Who joins an armed group. Most studies of combatants interview veterans, who are survivors and have been changed by fighting. Sanchez de la Sierra, Dunia and Yu (2025) set up a phone alert with the armed group's 55 human resources commanders, so survey teams could interview recruits as they enlisted and, at the same time, a random sample o
- 2 weeks ago12 min
S7 Ep54: Tracking Kenya's tractors
A tractor can plough an acre of Kenyan maize land in about an hour and a half. By hand, it takes a farmer nearly a week. Few smallholders can afford to buy a tractor, so they rent one. The tractor’s owner often lives in town, and employs an operator to drive the tractor to the fields and do business. To minimise risk, the owner keeps their tractor close to home, even when the best work is far away.Sophie Nottmeyer studied what changed when owners could observe exactly where the tractor was. She used GPS records from about 1,200 tractors fitted with a tracking app from the start-up Hello Tractor, covering close to a million fields, and satellite images of the land they worked. As owners learned to use the app, their tractors travelled further, finding better business opportunities. A year after adoption, they worked about 55 km further from home than in their first month.Nottmeyer presented the research at STEG's sixth Annual Conference in Nairobi in January 2026. She tells Tim Phillips what satellites reveal about the fields the tractors reached, and why a fuel subsidy that did the same job would cost hundreds of times more.The research behind this episodeNottmeyer, Sophie. 2025. "Trac(k)tors of Change: Monitoring, Tractor Mobility and Agricultural Mechanization in Kenya." Working paper, November 2025. A summary is available as a STEG policy brief: "Following the tracks: how digital monitoring expands access to agricultural mechanisation across space" (2026).To cite this episodePhillips, Tim, and Sophie Nottmeyer. 2026. "Tracking Kenya's tractors." Conversations on Transformation (podcast).About the guestSophie Nottmeyer is a Research Economist in the Directorate General of Economic Research at Banco de Mexico. She was previously a Postdoctoral Researcher at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, and holds a PhD in Economics from CEMFI in Madrid. Her research spans market access, organisational frictions and informal institutions, and how they interact with geography and climate. She has also worked with remote-sensing scientists to estimate maize yields in Kenya from satellite data.Research cited in this episodeHello Tractor is an agricultural technology company based in Nairobi. In 2018 it introduced a GPS tracking device for tractors, fitted by a mechanic, with a mobile and web app that shows owners where their tractor is in real time. The app reports how many jobs the tractor did, how many acres it worked, how long it ran and how far it drove, and it can replay the tractor's exact path across a field. In 2023 owners paid US$125 to install the device and US$60 a year to use the app. Nottmeyer's data cover every job done by tractors that adopted it between 2018 and 2025, about 917,000 in total.Moral hazard arises when one party cannot observe what another does on its behalf. Kenyan tractor owners hire operators, who are often paid from the revenue they collect. Because the owner cannot see how many acres were ploughed, an operator can under-report jobs, take unauthorised work or use fuel for other purposes. Owners respond with surprise visits, fuel checks and rules that the tractor must come home every night. All of these work only if the tractor stays nearby. The problem is sharper because many owners are not farmers at all; according to Kenya's 2019 census, 33% of tractor owners live in cities.Misallocation describes an economy in which capital or labour does not go where it would produce the most. Chang-Tai Hsieh and Peter Klenow showed in "Misallocation and Manufacturing TFP in China and India" (Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2009) how large the cost of such gaps can be. Nottmeyer measures misallocation as the spread in the returns that tractors earn in different places. If a tractor would earn more in a distant district than near home, but never goes there, the economy loses output.Counting Kenya's tractors is harder than it sounds. No official source records tractor ownership or use, Kenya's last nationwide agricultural census was in 1979, and the Food and Agriculture Organization stopped publishing its global series on agricultural machinery in 2009. The roughly 1,225 tractors in Nottmeyer's data represent between 1.73% of the tractors counted by the 2019 census and 8.75% of the last FAO figure, from 2008.Comparing each tractor with itself is how Nottmeyer deals with the lack of a control group. The data begin only when a tractor adopts the app, so she uses each tractor'
- 2 weeks ago26 min
S7 Ep53: Implementation science in education: Scaling what works
Nearly every child in a low- or middle-income country now goes to school, but about 70% of 10-year-olds still cannot read or understand a simple text. Researchers have tested ways to fix the problem, and governments want them to work. So why has the needle not moved?Noam Angrist (Oxford) and nine co-authors argue that the missing piece is the study of implementation itself. In this week's VoxDev Talk, Tim Phillips asks Noam about their framework, just published in Science, that sets out how small tightly controlled experiments can scale to large real-world trials, then into government policy and finally into classrooms. As Noam describes, it's not easy to convert good intentions and a clear need to real change. Listen to this week's episode to find out why.The research behind this episode:Angrist, Noam, Tahir Andrabi, Stefan Dercon, Sharnic Djaker, James Habyarimana, Michelle Kaffenberger, Clare Leaver, Akshay Mangla, Nompumelelo Mohohlwane, and Abhijeet Singh. 2026. "An Agenda for Implementation Science in Education." Science 393 (6816): 1084-87.To cite this episode:Phillips, Tim, and Noam Angrist. 2026. "Implementation science in education: Scaling what works." VoxDev Talks (podcast). About the guestNoam Angrist is Academic Director of the What Works Hub for Global Education and a Senior Research Fellow at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. He co-founded Youth Impact, an NGO headquartered in Botswana that scales and tests health and education programmes. His research spans the scale-up and implementation of education programmes, global learning data, and A/B testing in the social sector. He led key parts of the education pillar of the World Bank Human Capital Index.Research cited in this episodeLearning poverty. A World Bank measure: the share of children who cannot read and understand a simple text by age 10. A 2022 report by the World Bank, UNESCO, UNICEF, FCDO, USAID and the Gates Foundation estimated it at about 70% in low- and middle-income countries, up from 57% before the pandemic. It is the gap between schooling and learning in a single number.Structured pedagogy and teaching at the right level. Two of the approaches with the strongest evidence for improving learning cheaply. Structured pedagogy gives teachers detailed lesson plans, materials and coaching. Teaching at the right level groups children by what they can do, not by their age or grade. The Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel reviews this evidence for cost-effectiveness; Angrist led the research behind its first report.The economist as plumber. Esther Duflo's 2017 Richard T. Ely Lecture to the American Economic Association. She argued that economists who help governments design policy must work on the details of implementation, tinkering and adjusting as plumbers do. Duflo, Esther. 2017. "The Economist as Plumber." American Economic Review 107 (5): 1-26.The voltage effect. John List's term for the drop in impact when a programme that worked in a pilot is expanded. List, John A. 2022. The Voltage Effect: How to Make Good Ideas Great and Great Ideas Scale. New York: Currency.The What Works Hub for Global Education. A research centre based at the Blavatnik School of Government, funded initially by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the Gates Foundation. It studies how proven education programmes can be implemented and sustained at scale. More at wwhge.org.Efficacy and effectiveness trials. Terms borrowed from health research. An efficacy trial asks whether something can work under controlled conditions. An effectiveness trial asks whether it works in the real world: at scale, delivered by government, at a cost governments can pay, and for different groups of children. Most education evidence today comes from efficacy trials.Adaptive trials and A/B testing. Instead of one large, static experiment, researchers run many small randomised tests, change the programme between rounds, and test again. Angrist's shorthand is three Rs: rigorous, as in a standard randomised trial, but also rapid and regular. Using data already in government systems keeps the cost of each round low.How research affects policy. An experiment
- 3 weeks ago23 min
S7 Ep52: Is electricity a weak link in development?
In many cities in low-income countries, the grid fails often enough that businesses keep a diesel generator out the back. So an unreliable electricity grid looks like it is holding poor economies back. In many countries, lenders are putting money behind that idea.But Martin Shu and his co-authors, Jonathan Colmer and David Lagakos, set out to test it. They assembled data on power plants, fuel, workers and imported generators in 89 countries, and measured how productive each electricity sector was. In the poorest countries, electricity was about three-quarters as productive as in the US — in other words, much closer tot he frontier than their economies. And in the economic model they built using their data, bringing every country up to the world frontier adds only about 1% to long-run GDP.Shu presented the research at STEG's sixth Annual Conference in Nairobi in January 2026. He tells Tim Phillips where the productivity gap in electricity lies, why a shoe factory that is better at left shoes than right shoes explains the small gains, and which part of the economy is the real bottleneck.The research behind this episodeColmer, Jonathan, David Lagakos, and Martin Shu. 2026. "Is the Electricity Sector a Weak Link in Development?" Working paper, January 2026 version presented at the STEG Annual Conference, Nairobi. An earlier version appeared as NBER Working Paper 32041 (2024).To cite this episodePhillips, Tim, and Martin Shu. 2026. "Is electricity a weak link in development?" Conversations on Transformation (podcast).About the guestMartin Shu is Assistant Professor of Economics at the School of Management and Economics and the Shenzhen Finance Institute of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen. His research spans macroeconomics, development and labour economics, including what household and firm data reveal about structural transformation, and why children in poor countries are more likely to follow their parents into the same occupation. He holds a PhD in Economics from Boston University and bachelor's and master's degrees from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.Research cited in this episodeWeak links are sectors whose problems hold back the whole economy. When inputs are strong complements, output depends heavily on the least productive link in the chain, so a small sector can matter far more than its size suggests. The idea draws on Albert Hirschman's The Strategy of Economic Development (1958), and Charles Jones formalised it in "Intermediate Goods and Weak Links in the Theory of Economic Development" (American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 2011), which uses electricity as a motivating example. Shu and his co-authors ask whether electricity fits that description in poor countries today.Total factor productivity (TFP) measures how much output an economy or a sector gets from its inputs. If two countries have the same capital and the same number of workers, but one produces more, it has higher TFP. Shu measures each country against the United States. The figures for whole economies come from the Penn World Table, hosted by the Groningen Growth and Development Centre and described by Robert Feenstra, Robert Inklaar and Marcel Timmer in "The Next Generation of the Penn World Table" (American Economic Review, 2015). The paper uses version 9.1; the current release, PWT 11.0, is supported by STEG.Agriculture's productivity gap is the comparison Shu uses to show why measuring TFP is not enough. Farming in poor countries is far less productive than the rest of the economy, as Francesco Caselli ("Accounting for Cross-Country Income Differences," Handbook of Economic Growth, 2005) and Diego Restuccia, Dennis Tao Yang and Xiaodong Zhu ("Agriculture and Aggregate Productivity: A Quantitative Cross-Country Analysis," Journal of Monetary Economics, 2008) document. Farmers are also the majority of workers in many developing countries. Yet few economists call agriculture a weak link. Whether a sector is a bottleneck depends on how it connects to the rest of the economy, and answering that needs a model as well as data.The electricity data combine several sources. Generating capacity comes from S&P Global Platts' World Electric Power Plants database, which lists more than 200,000 plants; the authors use generating capacity alone because it tracks transmission and distribution capacity closely. Power output and fuel use come from the International Energy Agency, and employment from national statistics of
- 3 weeks ago26 min
S7 Ep51: The critical minerals scramble
King Leopold II of Belgium told his envoy in London that he did not want to lose his slice of "this magnificent African cake". The cake was the Congo Free State. Today the Democratic Republic of Congo holds 70% of the world's cobalt reserves, and so the cake is back on the table.Christopher Adam (Oxford) is one of the editors of a special issue of the Oxford Review of Economic Policy on the new scramble for critical minerals. The minerals lie mostly in the Global South, and the demand comes mostly from the North. In this week's VoxDev talk, Chris explains why a mining boom may create few jobs, why it might not last, and why hiring the best lawyers could be the smartest way to use an aid budget.The research behind this episode:Adam, Christopher, Rabah Arezki, and Frederick van der Ploeg. 2026. "The scramble for critical minerals." Oxford Review of Economic Policy 42 (1): 1-13. Open access. The introduction to Volume 42, Issue 1, a special issue on critical minerals.To cite this episode:Phillips, Tim, and Christopher Adam. 2026. "The critical minerals scramble.” VoxDev Talks (podcast). About the guestChristopher Adam is Professor of Development Economics at the Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford. He is managing editor of the Oxford Review of Economic Policy, an associate editor of the Journal of Development Economics, a Lead Academic for the International Growth Centre, and a Visiting Scholar at the International Monetary Fund. His research spans the macroeconomics of low-income countries, monetary economics and public finance, and growth and structural change, including the response to climate change and natural disasters.Research cited in this episodeLeopold II and the "magnificent African cake". The opening quotes a letter from King Leopold II of Belgium to his envoy in London, in the English translation used by Adam Hochschild in King Leopold's Ghost (Houghton Mifflin, 1998). Leopold went on to rule the Congo Free State as a personal possession. Chris uses the comparison to ask whether today's scramble will end any better for the people who live on top of the minerals.What makes a mineral critical. There is no single list. The usual working definition, from the US National Research Council (2008), is that a mineral must be both essential to a modern technology and subject to supply chain risk. In the same special issue, geologist Jon Blundy compares the critical mineral lists of 12 countries and finds that only lithium and the rare earths appear on all of them.Demand to 2040. The International Energy Agency (IEA 2021) projects that demand for minerals for clean energy technologies will rise at least fourfold by 2040 if the world meets its climate goals. Chris adds two further sources of demand, digital infrastructure and defence.China's grip on processing. Mining is spread across many countries; refining is not. China controls between 60% and 80% of final global supply of processed critical minerals (Leruth et al. 2022, cited in the paper). Chris argues this concentration is what makes the current scramble different from the earlier one for oil and gas.The presource curse. A term from World Bank economist James Cust and David Mihalyi (IMF 2017). Governments and citizens start spending in anticipation of a resource boom, before any revenue arrives, and growth can fall as a result. Chris warns against the same over-exuberance about local processing of critical minerals.Battery substitution. Lithium-ion batteries dominate today, but sodium-based alternatives are in development (Vu 2025, cited in the paper). High prices raise the incentive to find substitutes, so a producer country cannot assume today's price will hold.Take-or-pay contracts. In a take-or-pay contract, the buyer pays for a minimum quantity of output whether or not it takes delivery. The paper proposes such long-term contracts, used in natural gas, as one way to share the risk of technological change between mining companies and producer governments.Taxing value that sits downstream. In the special issue, Gregoire Rota-Graziosi argues that the rent from critical minerals is moving away from the mine and towards processing plants and intangible assets. His proposals in
- 4 weeks ago55 min
Ideas in Development: GiveDirectly's journey to scale
This is an episode from VoxDev's new podcast series, Ideas in Development. This series has a separate podcast feed, where you can find every episode of Oliver Hanney’s conversations on evidence.YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8eCnQy5fF4 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/givedirectlys-quest-for-scale/id1866874059?i=1000791048981 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2ffbhYkt9bYNiWUc5KPIuZ?si=13787b330c604508 Audioboom: https://audioboom.com/posts/8955404-givedirectly-s-quest-for-scale GiveDirectly started out as a small nimble team founded by PhD economists, who had a novel approach to ending poverty – just give cash. But they are no longer the new kids on the block, and have been scaling their operations rapidly in recent years, a trend that could intensify if the third wave of American philanthropy materialises.That’s a huge opportunity, but the potential of operating across entire countries is a radically different proposition. So what does an evidence-driven organisation research when it's trying to go from moving millions a year to billions?Caitlin Tulloch, Senior Director for Research, Learning and Product at GiveDirectly, joins Oliver Hanney for a wide-ranging conversation on cash transfers at scale. We cover running a research portfolio like the treasury, the macro forecasting work around a new Malawi project, the trade-off between fraud and reach, building a global emergency response capability, and the politics of putting a lot of cash into someone else's economy.Ideas in Development is a VoxDev podcast on economic policy and research. Find us wherever you get your podcasts, and read the full write-up on our Substack: https://ideasindevelopment.substack.com/
Get VoxDev Development Economics summaries in your inbox
Free AI-powered daily recaps. Key takeaways, quotes, and mentions — in a 5-minute read.
Get Free Summaries →Free forever for up to 3 podcasts. No credit card required.
You Might Also Like
Listeners also like.
The Development Podcast
Explores global development challenges through data, research, and innovative solutions from the World Bank Group.
Economist Podcasts
Daily global news analysis from correspondents on major international stories.
EconTalk
Long-form conversations on economics, philosophy, history, and human behavior with experts from diverse fields.
Scope Conditions Podcast
A podcast showcasing cutting-edge research in comparative politics.
Solutions with Henry Blodget
Henry Blodget interviews experts in business, tech, and politics about practical solutions for building a better future.
It's The Economy
A weekly breakdown of economic concepts and their real-world impact, explained by experts in short, accessible episodes.
Today, Explained
A daily news podcast that breaks down the most important stories of the day with hosts Sean Rameswaram and Noel King.
Planet Money Summer School
A crash course in economics that teaches fundamental concepts through real-world examples in everyday life.
Give Methods A Chance
The Society Pages
Into Africa
Examines cultural, political, and economic developments in Africa through interviews with experts and leaders across the continent.
The Intelligence from The Economist
Global news and analysis from The Economist, covering politics, business, and culture with weekday stories and a deep dive on weekends.
Optimist Economy
Economists analyze U.S. economic challenges like housing, healthcare, and retirement, pairing data and history with practical solutions.
About VoxDev Development Economics
Hear about the cutting edge of development economics from research to practice.
Customized Recaps
AI-powered recaps with compact key takeaways, quotes, and insights.
Straight to Your Inbox
Get key takeaways from VoxDev Development Economics in a 5-minute read.
Save Hours Every Week
Stay current on your favorite podcasts without falling behind.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Podzilla's VoxDev Development Economics daily summary?
It's a free AI-powered email that summarizes new episodes of VoxDev Development Economics as soon as they're published. You get the key takeaways, notable quotes, and links & mentions — all in a quick read.
How does the VoxDev Development Economics podcast summary work?
When a new episode drops, our AI transcribes and analyzes it, then generates a personalized summary tailored to your interests and profession. It's delivered to your inbox every morning.
Is this an official VoxDev Development Economics product?
No. Podzilla is an independent service that summarizes publicly available podcast content. We're not affiliated with or endorsed by VoxDev.org.
Can I get summaries of other podcasts too?
Absolutely! The free plan covers up to 3 podcasts, any in the catalog. Basic raises that to 15, Pro to 40 and Max to 100. Browse our full catalog at /podcasts.
How often does VoxDev Development Economics release new episodes?
VoxDev Development Economics publishes weekly. Our AI generates a summary within hours of each new episode.
What topics does VoxDev Development Economics cover?
VoxDev Development Economics covers topics including Science, News, Government, Social Sciences, Non-Profit. Our AI identifies the specific themes in each episode and highlights what matters most to you.
Start getting VoxDev Development Economics summaries tomorrow morning.
Free forever for up to 3 podcasts. No credit card required.
Free forever for up to 3 podcasts. No credit card required.