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Widespread acceptance of COVID-19 vaccines is crucial for achieving sufficient immunization coverage to end the global pandemic, yet few studies have investigated COVID-19 vaccination attitudes in lower-income countries, where large-scale vaccination is just beginning. We analyze COVID-19 vaccine acceptance across 15 survey samples covering 10 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in Asia, Africa and South America, Russia (an upper-middle-income country) and the United States, including a total of 44,260 individuals. We find considerably higher willingness to take a COVID-19 vaccine in our LMIC samples (mean 80.3%; median 78%; range 30.1 percentage points) compared with the United States (mean 64.6%) and Russia (mean 30.4%). Vaccine acceptance in LMICs is primarily explained by an interest in personal protection against COVID-19, while concern about side effects is the most common reason for hesitancy. Health workers are the most trusted sources of guidance about COVID-19 vaccines. Evidence from this sample of LMICs suggests that prioritizing vaccine distribution to the Global South should yield high returns in advancing global immunization coverage. Vaccination campaigns should focus on translating the high levels of stated acceptance into actual uptake. Messages highlighting vaccine efficacy and safety, delivered by healthcare workers, could be effective for addressing any remaining hesitancy in the analyzed LMICs.

The delivery of basic health products and services remains abysmal in many parts of the world where child mortality is high. This paper shows the results from a large-scale randomized evaluation of a novel approach to health care delivery. In randomly selected villages, a sales agent was locally recruited and incentivized to conduct home visits, educate households on essential health behaviors, provide medical advice and referrals, and sell preventive and curative health products. Results after 3 years show substantial health impact: under 5-years child mortality was reduced by 27 percent at an estimated average cost of $68 per life-year saved.

The recent spikes of global food prices induced a rapid increase in mass media coverage, public policy attention, and donor funding for food security and for agriculture and rural poverty. This has occurred while the shift from law to high food prices has induced a shift in (demographic or social) location of the hunger and poverty effects, but the total number of undernourished and poor people has declined over the same period. We suggest that the observed pattern can be explained by the presence of a global urban bias on agriculture and food policy in developing countries, and we discuss whether this global urban bias may actually benefit poor farmers. We argue that the food price spikes have succeeded where others have failed in the past: to move the problems of poor and hungry farmers to the top of the policy agenda and to induce development and donor strategies to help them.

Does higher resource inequality between ethnic groups lead to ethnic conflict? In this paper, we empirically investigate this question by constructing a new measure of inequality using rainfall on ethnic homelands during the plant-growing season. Our dataset covers the period 1982-2001 and includes 214 ethnicities, located across 42 African countries. The analysis at the country level shows that one standard-deviation increase in rainfall-based inequality between ethnic groups increases the risk of ethnic conflict by 16 percentage points (or 0.43 standard deviations). This relationship depends on the power relations between the ethnic groups. More specifically, the analysis at the ethnicity level shows that ethnic groups are more likely to engage in civil conflicts whenever they receive less rain than the leading group. This effect does not hold for ethnic groups that share some political power with the leading group and is strongest for groups that have recently lost power. Our findings are consistent with an increase in resource inequality leading to more ethnic conflicts by exacerbating grievances in groups with no political power.

We study how armed conflicts affected educational outcomes in Rwanda during the nineties, relying on two waves of population census data and on a difference-in-differences identification strategy. Our results indicate that the conflicts caused on average a 22% drop in schooling attainments, corresponding to about one year less of education, and that the drop was relatively larger for girls. Primary and secondary schooling attainments were both affected, although through different channels. While increased drop-outs and school delays explain the drop in primary schooling, secondary schooling was mainly affected by a drop in enrollments. Finally, in a within-country analysis, we find no robust link between subnational variations in the drop in schooling and the intensity of any specific form of violence, despite the refined geographical measures at our disposal and a large set of checks. We present possible explanations for the observed patterns and provide related policy implications.

The nature of the Rwandan state and its role in the country's post-war economic recovery is much debated. In a recent article, we investigate the post-war recovery of the Rwandan economy through the lens of its coffee sector. The recent transition from the ordinary to the specialty coffee segment has been portrayed as emblematic of Rwanda's rise from the ashes, after decades of dramatic violence. Our study, however, shows that this success needs to be qualified.

Investigating the impact of armed conflict on schooling in Rwanda, we present four key findings. First, we find a strong drop in schooling, both when using DHS data and when relying on two waves of population census data bracketing the violence. Second, in contrast to previous findings, we show that there is no leveling off, i.e. the drop is not stronger for non-poor and boys. Third, we demonstrate that the armed conflict caused a drop both in primary and secondary schooling attainment, be it through different channels; the drop in primary schooling driven by slower grade progression and increased drop-outs, while the drop in secondary schooling mostly due to a decline in school initiation. Finally, our results reveal a spatial mismatch between commune-level genocide intensity and the drop in schooling. We test for several potentially confounding factors, but find that none of these factors can fully account for the mismatch. We conjecture that the impact of armed conflict on schooling in Rwanda was nationwide, both because the disruption caused by the genocide affected every corner of the country and because - besides the genocide - other forms of violence took place in Rwanda in the nineties.