PositiveNegatives and Ipas awarded Funding from KEISG 

Professor Ernestina Coast has been awarded £96,000 by the LSE’s Knowledge Exchange & Impact Strategy Group (KEISG) to work with PositiveNegatives and Ipas to create contextually-relevant stories, likely with a social media focus – to reach and engage adolescents aged 10-19 years in Ethiopia, Malawi and Zambia about abortion, contraception, and abortion-related care. This funding is based on interviews with more than 300 adolescents who sought abortion-related care – either safe abortion or postabortion care following an unsafe abortion - in the public health sector in urban settings in these three countries, as part of Professor Coast’s MRC/DFID-funded research project, “Improving adolescent access to contraception and abortion-related care”. 

There are currently no adolescent-specific communications about abortion in any of the three countries, and this funding will help us work with artists and communicators from within these countries to use our research findings to inform country-specific communications tailored to adolescents. Collaborating on this project provides a unique opportunity to share and scale up low literacy versions of our findings specifically targeting young people in their own languages in private and impactful ways.    
 

Professor Kabeer's new documentary: Rice and Fish Curry

The documentary, Rice and Fish Curry, produced by Professor Naila Kabeer and directed by Gautam Bose is about a project intended to help some of its poorest families in West Bengal to move out of extreme poverty onto more sustainable livelihood trajectories.

This film spoke to six of these women in 2007 when they were just joining the project. It returned in 2018, a decade later, to find out to what extent the project had fulfilled its promise.

Watch the full documentary here. 

Update from our Head of Department, Professor Ken Shadlen 

Professor Shadlen presented the keynote lecture at a seminar in Buenos Aires on Argentina's possible accession to the Patent Cooperation Treaty. The event took place in the Bolsa de Comercio de Buenos Aires (the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange) on Wednesday 28 August. His presentation was entitled "Argentina en el mundo de TRIPS/ADPIC: patentes secundarias y los desafíos por venir" (Argentina in the World of TRIPS: Secondary Patents and the Challenges to Come).

Professor Shadlen also presented a paper "TRIPS, Patents, and Drugs in India," co-authored with Margaret Kyle (ParisMines) and Bhaven Sampat (Columbia) at the annual meeting of EPIP (European Policy for Intellectual Property), 11-13 September, in Zurich. 

Dr Kar and Dr Sequeria on this year’s Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences

Dr Sohini Kar and Dr Sandra Sequeria we interviewed by sciencemag.com for their opinions about this year’s Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Whilst Dr Sequeria congratulates the winners, Dr Kar encourages caution when using randomized controlled trials in the fight against poverty. 

You can read the full article here. 

One Year Anniversary for the CRP Blog

The CRP Blog turned one on Thursday 3 October. Over the past year, the blog has published insightful and thought provoking articles on Syria, Iraq, DRC and Somalia, covering an array of topics.

You can check out the CRP blog here. 

Local and regional dynamics in Syria within a historical context

Thursday 31 October 2019, 6pm-8pm
PAN.G.01, Pankhurst House, LSE 

Speakers: Francesco Belcastro, Haian Dukhan, Raymond Hinnebusch
Chair: Rim Turkmani

This event and book launch will explore the contemporary dynamics in Syria, positioned within its historical context. The panel will discuss the state’s regional alliances and the state-society relations. 

Find out more about the event here.

How Nations Learn - Book discussion

Thursday 21 November 2019 | 6:30 - 8:00pm

Venue: Staff Common Room, Floor 5, Old Building 
Speakers: Arkebe Oqubay
Chair: Professor Robert Wade

Arkebe Oqubay is a senior Ethiopian politician from Tigray, a Minister and Special Advisor to the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed. Oqubay also served as a Minister and Special Advisor to the former Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Hailemariam Desalegn. 

An IMF for the 21st Century

Thursday 5 December 2019, 6.30pm-8pm
Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building, LSE

Speakers: Professor José Antonio Ocampo
Chair: Professor Jean-Paul Faguet

This talk by José Antonio Ocampo will look at the different dimensions of IMF reform on the occasion of its 75th anniversary: the role of the international monetary system, global macroeconomic cooperation, prevention and management of crises, and the governance of the system. It will be based on his book, Resetting the International Monetary (Non)System.

Find out more about the event here. 

Publication:

Consumers as tax auditors

Naritomi, Joana 
American Economic Review (2019)

To investigate the enforcement value of third-party information on potentially collusive taxpayers, I study an anti-tax evasion program that rewards consumers for ensuring that firms report sales and estab-ishes a verification system to aid whistle-blowing consumers in São Paulo, Brazil (Nota Fiscal Paulista). Firms reported sales increased by at least 21 percent over 4 years. The results are consistent with fixed costs of concealing collusion, increased detection probability from whistle-blower threats, and with behavioral biases associated with lotteries amplifying the enforcement value of the program. Although firms increased reported expenses, tax revenue net of rewards increased by 9.3 percent.

 

Publication:

The spread of ideas related to the developmental idealism model in Albania

Gjonça, Arjan 
Sociology of Development (2019)

In this paper we use data from a nationally representative survey conducted in Albania in 2005 to study the spread of the worldviews, values, and beliefs of developmental idealism in the country. We find that Albanians have adopted developmental idealism, with ideas about development and developmental hierarchies that are similar to those of international elites. A substantial majority of Albanians also endorse the developmental idealist belief of an association between socioeconomic development and family matters. Many perceive development as both a cause and an effect of family change, but with more seeing it as a cause than as an effect. Albanians also perceive development as more closely related to fertility and gender equality than to age at marriage. But despite believing that development and family change are related, most Albanians continue to endorse lifetime marriage and strong intergenerational relations. This unique perception of development and demographic behavior reflects Albania’s unique history with regard to economic, political and social change. We conclude that despite living in one of the most radical state socialist regimes in the world, which tried to keep its population sealed off from the outside world for many years, Albanians endorse many of the elements of developmental idealism.

 

Publication:

Chile's export diversification since 1960: A free market miracle or mirage?

Lebdioui, Amir
Development and Change (2019)

Conventional wisdom has proclaimed Chile's recent economic development a 'free market miracle'. In an examination of Chile's export diversification experience, this article departs from that view. By analysing the dynamics underlying the emergence of the salmon, fruit, forestry and wine sectors in Chile's export basket since the 1960s, the study sheds light on the crucial role of industrial policy in the process of capability accumulation that shapes new industries. The article undertakes a qualitative historical analysis of the scope and nature of policy interventions in each of the four sectors and conducts a quantitative policy evaluation using the difference-in-difference method. It finds that public institutions are essential in overcoming market failures inhibiting the emergence of new industries. Specifically, it shows that the government has a key role to play as a catalyst of human capital accumulation, as a venture capitalist, in trade promotion, and in ensuring 'national' sector reputation through a strong regulatory and quality control role. By elaborating on the dynamic process of structural transformation and capability accumulation, this article contributes to theoretical debates on the role of vertical policies in the emergence of new competitive sectors, and debates relating to static versus dynamic approaches to comparative advantage.

 

Publication:

Working in chains: African informal workers and global value chains

Meagher, Kate 
Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy (2019)

This article examines how global value chains alter the processes of value creation by reshaping the institutional systems that govern the livelihoods of poor rural workers in contemporary Africa. In connecting rural workers to distant markets, global value chains reconfigure local modes of organization and resource use, translating and redistributing value in unexpected ways. The capacity of global linkages to resolve problems of rural poverty and disaffection is explored in the context of informal workers in horticultural farms in South Africa and precarious women producers of exotic oil in the Argan forests of south-western Morocco. Particular attention is focused on the mechanisms through which global linkages reconfigure institutional systems in the creation of transnational value chains, realigning labor regimes, livelihoods, and local commercial systems, followed by a consideration of the social tensions created by the economic and organizational realignment needed to make global value chains work.

 

Publication:

Patents, trade and medicines: past, present and future

Shadlen, Ken 
Review of International Political Economy (2019)

This article analyzes the spread of intellectual property in trade agreements. We explain how the integration of intellectual property with international trade rules led to the globalization of pharmaceutical patenting, and then how additional provisions related to pharmaceutical products have been introduced by regional and bilateral trade agreements. We describe the additional ‘TRIPS-Plus’ rules contained in recent trade agreements, which go beyond the requirements of the World Trade Organization’s TRIPS Agreement, and explain the potential challenges that they may create for developing countries. We draw attention to the conceptual and methodological challenges of assessing the effects of patent provisions in trade agreements on prices and access to drugs, with particular emphasis on the importance of timing. Depending on when countries began allowing drugs to be patented, TRIPS-Plus provisions have different effects; and when pharmaceutical patenting has been in place for more countries for more time, the effects of TRIPS-Plus provisions will change again.

 

Publication:

Kenya’s Identity Ecosystem

Kirk, Tom
Caribou Digital (2019)

As international and civil society organisations increasingly show an interest in identification systems, this new report on Kenya aims to put the power and politics back into prevailing discourses on their potential to support development.