Rural banking, skills training, private schooling and more!

In this week’s episode of Economics Unpacked, Mushfiq Mobarak explores the role of the 1970 Bhola cyclone in shaping Bangladesh’s independence. Drawing on historical satellite imagery, archival records, and modern economic analysis, this research examines how the cyclone affected voting behaviour, support for the Awami League, and participation in the 1971 Liberation War.

How can artificial intelligence genuinely improve the lives of the world’s poorest people, rather than simply generating buzz? That is the question at the heart of J-PAL’S new AI Evidence Playbook. In this week’s episode of VoxDevTalks, Iqbal Dhaliwal discusses why the technology’s promise depends less on which AI model is used and more on whether it is grafted onto decades of existing evidence about what actually works.

Farmers have a suite of technologies, including irrigation, improved seed varieties, and better management practices, that can help them adapt to climate risk. Yet adoption remains stubbornly low, with financial constraints often cited as one of the most important barriers. Liang Bai, Camille Boudot-Reddy, and André Butler exploit India’s rural banking expansion programme in the 1980s to examine whether greater financial access helped farmers shift their investment choices, increase agricultural production, and become more resilient to adverse rainfall shocks.

In Liberia, Juliane Zenker, Jonas Stehl, Shubha Chakravarty, and Mattias Lundberg found that reassigning young women from oversubscribed job-skills training into business-skills training substantially improved their employment and earnings. However, the gains were concentrated among those with higher education and prior entrepreneurial experience, who had themselves underestimated their fit for business.

A new theoretical framework provides guidance about when adjusting for multiple hypothesis testing is likely to lead to better decisions – and when it might go too far and lead to policy mistakes instead. Davide Viviano, Kaspar Wuthrich, and Paul Niehaus illustrate the consequences with real-world applications to the drug approval process and to programme evaluations at J-PAL.

Private providers are central to this stage of education, accounting for roughly 37% of pre-primary enrolment in low- and middle-income countries, a much larger share than in primary school. Yet we know surprisingly little about how private preschools compare with public ones, even though this is the stage where foundational skills first develop. Petter Berg, Mauricio Romero, and Abhijeet Singh address this question using data from rural Tamil Nadu. They find that the private advantage in learning is large and near universal in preschool, but disappears in primary school.

Ethiopia’s Tigray War not only caused immense human suffering and economic disruption but also eroded trust within local communities. Richard Freund and Marta Favara outline evidence from the Young Lives study showing that individuals exposed to violence report lower trust in their neighbours, highlighting how civil war can damage the social ties that underpin cooperation and recovery after the fighting ends.

A randomised trial in rural Ethiopia found that a single one-hour screening of documentaries featuring relatable role models produced lasting increases in farm investment, schooling, and household wealth five years on. Tanguy Bernard, Stefan Dercon, Kate Orkin, Giulio Schinaia, and Alemayehu Seyoum Taffesse discuss.

Elsewhere in development: