A growing number of urban areas around the world face water scarcity. Focusing on the prolonged drought that Cape Town experienced from 2015 to 2018, this column examines how adaptation shaped outcomes for the city’s residents and for its municipal water utility. While policy measures including higher prices and usage restrictions saved the city from […]
Pseudo-wealth is a perception of wealth that is not backed by real economic resources. When people have widely different beliefs, they create ‘wealth’ through betting. This column describes how this perceived wealth can rapidly inflate or deflate without changing real economic fundamentals, leading to volatility in spending and potential economic instability. It raises the question […]
In higher-income countries, urban proximity has been shown to enhance workers’ skills and income, but less is known about low- and middle-income countries. This column examines how the income of initially poor workers in Brazil changes after urban migration. Wages go up immediately for migrants to both southern and northern Brazilian cities, but only in […]
