Public Outreach

Conditional Cash Transfers grant money to poor households with children provided that their members meet certain conditions. A common feature of many CCT programs in Latin America is that payments are targeted to the mother. Could this policy be a way for women to gain autonomy? Marcelo Bergolo and Estefanía Galván find that a CCT program in Uruguay results in women gaining greater responsibility for decisions in specific spheres of household expenditure. On the negative side, however, it has discouraging effects on their formal employment.

The growing support for whistle-blowers’ right to protection illustrates the challenges facing democracy in its attempt to ensure transparency and accountability. With technology allowing new forms of governance, the scope for secrecy and obfuscation of state power has increased. In the attempt to balance the democratic need for transparency against existential threats to security, whistle-blowing is becoming the new standard for accountability.

In this little country located in Southern Africa, birth complications are not treated and access to contraception remains difficult. Besides having poor access to medical services, traditional beliefs make pregnant women hide their problems, a silence that increases the already high maternal mortality rate.

Combining markets and ethics isn’t easy, and the numerous frauds and scams that intervene at regular intervals don’t help. Should we be looking for more competition to reach efficiency or, on the contrary, seeking market regulation? To respond to this dilemma, economist Marie Claire Villeval uses experimental tools.

The Qatari Sovereign Wealth Fund owns the PSG football team, more than 6 hotels and shares in Lagardère or Total, to name but a few of their assets. That’s enough to attract some concern. However, it’s simply following a world trend since the beginning of the 21st century. More than 45% of existing wealth funds were created between 2000 and 2009. Economists C. Lecourt, J. Amar, and V. Kinon explain what’s behind this “craze”.

In April 2019, at the insistence of the civil society, the European Parliament enacted a new agreement for better protection of whistle-blowers. This is potentially good news not only for human rights but also in the fight against corruption. This proposal is bound to take the EU a step closer in its fight against corruption and push the member states to move in a similar direction.

Microcredits help microenterprises get started. They are an innovative way to address financial exclusion and unemployment. But business performance is closely linked to entrepreneurial motivation. Renaud Bourlès and Anastasia Cozarenco show that businesses started by « necessity » are less likely to make profits than those that are the result of « opportunity ». So differentiating between entrepreneurial motivations is a challenge for public policies.

Whistle-blowing has been the subject of far-reaching discussions regarding its justification and its legal support. Although there is a range of laws protecting those who blow the whistle, especially in the G20 countries, whistle-blowers are still at risk. Enhancing their protection seems to be a challenge. Examining the issue, political philosophers Manohar Kumar and Daniele Santoro call for better protection backed up by a set of assessments. They reopen the debate through a three-part series of articles.

From the Angkor Empire to Democratic Kampuchea, Cambodia has been in turn a land of plenty and of poverty, a prosperous and then battered country. Connecting these two stories, historian Ben Kiernan draws a line: Cambodia has always been a master in the art of rice-growing. Since the glacial era, climatic conditions have shaped a fertile land, home to both the Khmer civilisation and modern Democratic Kampuchea.

Econdialog interviewed Ben Kiernan, professor of History at Yale University, about Cambodian history. He explains how its natural resources are a key to understanding the glory of the Angkor Empire. Cambodia was a land of plenty.