Launching the Data Powered Positive Deviance Initiative
For almost a decade, development organizations have used digital human behavioral data, or “digital crumbs,” to gauge responses to the increasingly complex development challenges of the 21st century. Large quantities of data generated from social media interactions, financial transactions, or mobile phone usage allow for insights into people’s behaviors, movements, and choices. When analyzing such data, the common practice has been to focus on the aggregate — the collective behavior of individuals and groups — while discarding extreme observations, or outliers. In cases where outliers are analyzed, the focus is typically on negative outliers such as crime hotspots or high deforestation areas. read more…
So, you’re a social science research student – what does Covid-19 mean for you?
Covid-19 is affecting all of us, but in varying ways. It helps to map some of these diverse effects – and possible responses – for a particular group that we’re part of or support: social science research students. Because Covid-19 is having such far-reaching effects on society, both short- and longer-term, many such students are having to ask themselves how they should, or could, adapt their work. This is especially for students in development-related fields.
Here are some things to consider. A premise of these broad suggestions is that different students will face varying implications of the current crisis, so we encourage you to discuss this with your advisor, mentors, or peers. read more…
Who will survive the coronavirus in Indonesia?
Gindo Tampubolon, Lecturer in Poverty, Global Development Institute
The pandemic of novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, has infected unwitting hosts all around the world. Some estimate suggests up to three in four of a population can be infected with about 4% of those infected contracting a severe level of coronavirus disease (Covid-19), and of those about 1% succumb to death. By the end of March 2020, nearly 30,000 people have died globally. The pandemic is still spreading across countries and within countries. If alarming news from developed countries has dominated the wireless thus far, that from developing countries such as Indonesia is not far behind. And coronavirus can have a catastrophic impact on an already unequal society. read more…
Covid-19 and low-income households in central Bangladesh
How the approach of Covid-19 has affected low-income households in central Bangladesh.
Liaqat (not his real name) is a newspaper vendor and a volunteer ‘diarist’ in the Hrishipara Daily Financial Diaries project. We have been tracking all his money transactions on a daily basis since October 2015. read more…
Dealing with Covid-19 in the towns and cities of the global South
Diana Mitlin, Professor of Global Urbanism, Global Development Institute
The global spread of Covid-19 poses particular risks for the one billion people living in informal urban settlements in the global South. A range of factors make transition of the virus more likely and strategies to tackle it extremely difficult to implement.
Despite these challenges, this is an opportunity to forge new partnerships between agencies that – if they work together – can reach the populations in need. read more…
COVID-19 pandemic brings into sharp relief the risks faced by South African gig workers
The Fairwork Project has launched its second round of yearly ratings for digital platforms in South Africa, which highlight the precarious nature of work in the gig economy
South Africa’s has recently declared a “national state of disaster” because of coronavirus. This will especially impact the most vulnerable groups in the country. That includes those in casual or insecure employment who face two possibilities in the reality of social distancing: loss of income, or ongoing exposure to the virus through the front-line nature of their work. Today the Fairwork Project is releasing a set of scores which evaluate gig economy platforms such as Uber, SweepSouth, and OrderIn against a set of fair work standards. In the current circumstances, their findings about the situation of gig workers in South Africa are more relevant than ever. read more…
Podcast: Addressing inequality in the labour market in South Africa with Imraan Valodia
Professor Imraan Valodia, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, recently visited the GDI to give a talk entitled ‘A National Minimum Wage – Addressing inequality in the labour market in South Africa?
Hrishipara daily financial diaries: Low-income households in Bangladesh give as well as take loans
The Hrishipara Daily Diaries project has been recording the daily money transactions of 70 low-income households in central Bangladesh, in some cases since May 2015. Bangladesh is famous for its microfinance banks (MFIs) and most of our ‘diarists’ have accounts with MFIs, so it is perhaps no surprise that we have recorded them taking more than 8 million taka’s worth of loans from MFIs, the equivalent of about a quarter of a million dollars at the ‘Purchasing Power Parity’ (PPP) exchange rate. Please see our publications page for other blogs about how diarists take and use loans.
Less well known is the fact that low-income households lend as well as borrow, and in this blog we will look at the phenomenon in more detail.
In conversation: Siobhan McGrath on forced labour and marketising anti-slavery
In this episode, Dr Rory Horner talked to Dr Siobhán McGrath about her research into forced labour and the marketising anti-slavery.
Siobhán McGrath is Assistant Professor in Human Geography at Durham University.
Rory Horner, Senior Lecturer in Globalisation and Political Economy in the Global Development Institute.
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Note: This article gives the views of the author/academic featured and does not represent the views of the Global Development Institute as a whole
The US-China Trade War: The End of Multilateralism or the Search for a New Bargain?
Shamel Azmeh, Lecturer in International Development, Global Development Institute, Ken Shadlen Professor in International Development, London School of Economics and Political Science
In recent years, the collapse of the multilateral economic regime has become a regular theme. In Davos, at the World Economic Conference in January, this issue emerged in a number of speeches, with the German Chancellor Angela Merkel warning that the end of multilateralism and the fragmentation of the multilateral world will only end in misery. Indeed, for people like us who teach international political economy, material in our courses on the role of international trade rules in providing predictability appear almost outdated with the routine and blatant violations of existing trade rules, by the Trump administration and also other countries in response. The World Trade Organization (WTO), which was established in the 1995 with an aim of providing a rules-based trade regime, has for some time suffered from paralysis as a forum for negotiating new rules (as made evident by the failure to complete the Doha Round, which started in 2001), but nonetheless the existing rules, which cover extensive areas of economic activity, remained in force. That no longer seems to be the case either: the WTO’s rules are being flaunted on a regular basis by virtually all countries, large and small, and the ability to enforce these rules is challenged by the United States refusal to nominate judges to the Appellate Body of the organization’s dispute settlement system. read more…