"I was really happy to be there for three days, sitting down not only with researchers but also communicators and journalists. It was a really nice experience to work with them, to understand what are the best ways to communicate with society. Not only our results but also our passion, our emotion and our vulnerability – and the fact that we researchers are also human, so people can identify with us... It also helped us to understand how we can tell stories better visually, not only in terms of ...

My research was about a set of public policies to support the semiconductor industry in Brazil. These policies started to be designed in the early 2000s, when it was identified that developing a semiconductor industry in the country would foster innovation in the electronics industry. The latter was already present in the country, but it focused on assembling goods and relied on imported components to do so. Thus, several complementary policies were put in place over the years, including a state...

A joint post by Prof. Carlo Pietrobelli and Beatriz Calzada. Since the mid-1990s, Latin American countries have become an attractive destination for foreign mining investment — largely thanks to established regulatory frameworks that provide legal stability and security of mining ownership, as well as incentives for exploration and exploitation. This process led to major investments in the metals sector, mainly by international firms. However, despite this growth in mining activity, there ...

Latin American countries have long been major exporters of mineral resources and are therefore some of the main recipients of mining investments. It is no surprise, then, that the region showed strong economic performance during the last commodity boom super-cycle. However, there are few world-class, highly-innovative mining firms in the region – as are found in Australia and Canada. Against this backdrop, UNU-MERIT and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) are researching how Latin American...

For this edition of Alumni Watch, we caught up with Dr. Andres Mideros Mora of Ecuador, who graduated from our PhD programme in December 2017. He defended his thesis, ‘Essays on the Economic Effects of Non-contributory Social Protection’, while taking a short break from his role as Minister of Planning and Development of Ecuador....

Many policymakers have backgrounds in academia – a fact that goes a long way to building understanding and trust. Trust not only among individuals but also in academic research per se. UNU-MERIT’s 10th ‘MEIDE’ conference put this theory to the test, revealing among other things how much, and under what conditions, academic researchers are able to influence decision makers. Held in Montevideo, Uruguay, 16-17 November 2017, this edition of the ‘Model-based Evidence on Innovation and Development’ (...

In the world of science reporting, researchers are rightly afraid of being misinterpreted — but journalists are equally frustrated by a lack of clear data to write their articles. One way to break the deadlock is to build trust and partnerships across the ‘media divide’. Partnerships based around data storytelling on everything from human survival to gender equality to environmental challenges. This was the key innovation of our third science reporting workshop, ‘Reach & Turn’, co-hosted with Pa...

Is eradicating poverty, a goal the United Nations’ hopes to achieve by 2030, actually feasible? New research out of Ecuador says yes – if governments are willing to pay for it....

“Peru is at a critical juncture politically, economically and socially,” says Dr. Michiko Iizuka. “Their economy has been growing significantly for the past 10-15 years and during that period, poverty has decreased – but now economic growth is slowing due to the decline in commodity prices. This means that productivity gains, via increasing innovation, are crucial to maintain the current pace of development. In other words, Peru’s newly-elected president, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski,...

Female research scientists are more productive than their male colleagues, though they are widely perceived as being less so. Women are also rewarded less for their scientific achievements....