Establishing an interdisciplinary community of practice The Challenge Cyber attacks have the capacity to cause great financial and physical harm to individuals and households, disrupt business operations, and destabilise entire communities. These threats are particularly acute for institutionally-fragile environments with poor penetration of training and education. A first-order concern are large-scale, state-sponsored cyber attacks that…
Helping workers from poorer backgrounds fulfil their potential The Challenge There is great focus today on providing equal-education opportunities for individuals from poorer backgrounds to help them attain socioeconomic mobility, thereby reducing the attainment gap and inequality. Organisations are the primary source of economic value-generation but, while some studies suggest that large organisations mitigate inequality,…
Can less flexible data plans make users better off? The challenge Through their increased prevalence, smartphones have become a key social development tool for slum-dwellers. Particularly, they are considered as a ‘force multiplier’ to effectively deliver services and information to isolated markets.Although smartphones carry great potential, accessibility alone may not be enough to make a…
What factors affect countries’ commitment to mitigating climate change? Climate change agreements are negotiated by countries at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), but countries differ greatly on who should bear the cost of mitigation initiatives: the greater the costs, the stronger the opposition from the country. These differences are particularly marked…
Measuring how business can empower female migrants Given its importance, many studies have sought to examine the phenomenon of migration. Arguably, the most important limitation of the existing literature is its focus on economic outcomes of migration, largely ignoring social outcomes among migrants and their communities of origin. The purpose of this research is to…
A field experiment on solar power adoption in off-grid Uganda Over a billion people live without access to modern electricity today, including 75% of the population of Uganda. Rooftop solar technology is providing a revolutionary alternative to grid-based electricity and has garnered great investor attention in the last few years, with studies showing that clean…
Examining the role of institutional quality Global markets integration means that policy uncertainty in a national economy can have major ramifications across the world at a macroeconomic level. However, the empirical literature on the microeconomic channels that underlie macro relationships have been less studied. How do global firms reallocate assets across geographies in uncertain times?…
The political economy of land and labour in sub-Saharan Africa How resources and wealth are distributed among the population has fundamental implications for welfare. When markets and institutions fail, power relationships between groups shape allocation of resources and yield to inefficient outcomes. These issues are particularly salient on the African continent. Economic inequalities between ethnic…
Examining organisational attention to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) The challenge Evidence suggests only a small proportion of institutional investors have made meaningful efforts to integrate environmental, social and governance considerations into their investment processes, in line with the United Nations’ SDGs. Many commentators believe that significant corporate action on the SDGs will only happen…