Journal of International Development最新文献

This article challenges the prevailing resource curse explanations for Colombia's failure to achieve inclusive development through its natural resource wealth. It argues that historically evolved power balances are at the root of institutional failures to achieve higher value-added growth. By analysing national, transnational, spatial, and geographical developments affecting the interdependency between power and institutions, this article finds that Colombia's political settlement, where landed elites and international actors hold significant power and the state has limited capacities, explains disappointing development outcomes. This power structure has led to a focus on low-productivity sectors and a failure to effectively channel resource rents into high-value activities, perpetuating Colombia's position at the lower end of global value chains. The article contributes to a deeper understanding of the complex interplay between power, institutions, and resource governance in shaping economic development outcomes.

This article contributes to the relatively limited literature on how the poverty level of households led by young people relates to their occupation status and, in turn, offers reflections on the precariousness of young workers, particularly in Benin. Data from the 2021–2022 Harmonized Survey on Household Living Conditions were used to analyse the occupation status (i.e. multiple-income-generating activities and salaried work) of young heads of households in relation to their households' poverty level (i.e. absolute, subjective and relative). The estimates, derived using the Distributive Analysis Stata Package, probit method and propensity score matching, revealed that regardless of the type of poverty, engaging in multiple income-generating activities increases household poverty, whereas salaried work reduces it. Considering that most young individuals involved in multiple-income-generating activities are not salaried, economic policies targeting young people should focus on regularly adjusting the minimum wage according to the cost of living and encouraging young people's entrepreneurship by addressing the various challenges associated with it, including lack of funding and entrepreneurial training.

Given the extended hours demanded by the labour market and the health risks posed by pollution from nonrenewable energy sources, the question of whether households are willing to prioritise clean energy over leisure remains unresolved. This study addresses this gap by investigating the impact of time constraints, encompassing both paid and unpaid work, on the Multidimensional Energy Poverty Index (MEPI) using data from the seventh round of the Ghana Living Standards Survey (GLSS 7). Our findings indicate that households experiencing time constraints are more inclined to adopt clean energy fuels. A decomposition analysis of time constraints reveals that while those stemming from paid work encourage the adoption of clean energy fuels, those associated with unpaid work hinder it. This suggests that households prioritise clean energy when faced with time pressures related to paid employment. Our results hold across various estimation methods and withstand robustness checks using different time and energy poverty metrics. The adverse impact of time constraints on energy poverty is particularly pronounced in rural areas, male-headed households and communities with accessible roads. We posit that household income serves as a key mechanism through which time constraints influence energy poverty.

Pharmacists are perceived as protectors of public health, advancing trust in pharmacies and the drugs provided. However, this trust is often misplaced in Mexico, where pharmacists frequently dispense dangerous fentanyl-based counterfeits without prescription orders and on-demand. The convergence of four trends occurring in Mexico—the influx of international tourists seeking pharmaceuticals without prescription orders, increased domestic consumption of illicit fentanyl, expanded domestic production of illicit fentanyl, and the rise of fentanyl-based counterfeits in Mexican pharmacies—has created a substantial risk to regional public health. Mexican cartels manufacture and distribute these counterfeit drugs, facilitated by corrupt officials engaged in limited drug enforcement. To address this emerging public health crisis, an independent fentanyl enforcement division should be established in Mexico to oversee expanded drug enforcement operations targeting cartels and their intermediaries. This division should conduct rigorous and surprise inspections of pharmacies accompanied by international observers and provide anonymous whistleblower channels for pharmacists and the public. Pharmacy owners found knowingly selling fentanyl-based counterfeits should face severe penalties, including forfeiture of pharmacy licences, lifetime bans from owning and operating pharmacies, significant fines, and incarceration. By enacting these enforcement and public health reforms, Mexico can more effectively minimize the dispensation of fentanyl-based counterfeits and safeguard regional public health.

We estimate the long-term impact of child poverty on adult labour market outcomes in Indonesia, a middle-income country. Our instrumental variable estimation shows that a child who lived in a poor family when aged between eight and 17 years old suffers from an 87% earnings penalty as adults relative to a child who did not grow up in a poor family. The direct effect remains large after we account for a large set of mediators. Depending on the set of mediators that we use, we estimate an earnings penalty of between 85% and 90%. Similarly, we do not find any evidence that receiving various government transfer programs mediates the effect of growing up poor on earnings as adults.

Despite significant advancements, disparities in access to financial services persist across developing nations. The Covid-19 pandemic has significantly influenced the adoption of digital finance, particularly in West African Economic and Monetary Union countries. Using World Bank Global Findex data (2017 and 2021), this study employs heteroscedastic binary choice and difference-in-differences methodologies to evaluate the impact of digital finance on financial inclusion, considering factors such as gender, age, income, location and the pandemic. The findings indicate that while overall financial inclusion experienced a decline, the increased adoption of digital finance mitigated this trend, suggesting the importance of system interoperability.