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Economists have long surmised that people’s knowledge and skills contribute significantly to economic development, but to what degree can access to an education change lives? Amory Gethin has compiled data from surveys from more than 150 countries to measure what economists have never measured before: the correlation between education and individual incomes. Gethin is an economist in the World Bank Development Research Group working on growth and inequality and has sought to quantify the economic value of education as it relates to global poverty reduction. In this podcast, Gethin says investing in education advances those who pursue degrees and those who don’t. Transcript
Read the article in Finance & Development magazine
Driving Change: Women-Led Development Economics from the Ground Up
The International Economic Association’s Women in Leadership in Economics Initiative (IEA-WE) connects women economists worldwide and helps showcase their important empirical research, especially in developing countries. IMF Podcasts has partnered with the IEA-WE to produce a special series featuring the economists behind the invaluable local research that informs policymakers in places often overlooked. This episode of Driving Change features Bangladeshi economist Rumana Huque, whose research into the real costs of tobacco consumption is prompting a rethink of the country’s tobacco tax system. Transcript
Other episodes include Kenyan economist Rose Ngugi, whose indices help local counties design policies that work, Colombian economics Professor Marcela Eslava, whose research looks to fix Latin America’s dysfunctional social security network, and Ipek Illkaracan who makes the business case for investing in social care infrastructure.
The series is also featured in the IMF's Finance and Development magazine
The pandemic was a brutal reminder of how crucial public health systems are, yet health budgets in many countries are still underfunded. Developing economies generally do not allocate sufficient domestic resources to health and external financing is becoming increasingly difficult to secure. Sanjeev Gupta is a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development and coauthor with Victoria Fan of How to Heal Health Financing, published in Finance and Development magazine. In this podcast, Gupta says greater revenue collection and improved budget execution would strengthen health systems in low-income countries and reduce the need for foreign assistance. Transcript
