Development Policy Review is an online-only peer-reviewed journal focusing on the relationship between research and policy in all aspects of international development. It covers various social science disciplines, intellectual persuasions, institutional backgrounds, and regions.

Before getting into the summary of the new issue, we are delighted to announce that ODI Senior Visiting Fellow Ganeshan Wignaraja has joined the editorial team of DPR. Ganeshan brings a wealth of experience from his impressive career. We are very much looking forward to working with him. He has big shoes to fill, stepping in as Colin Kirkpatrick retires from the DPR editorial team after eight years. We take this opportunity to thank Colin for his remarkable contributions to DPR: he has been a powerhouse of editorial energy, commitment and expertise.

Back to the latest issue, here is a summary of the rationale and research questions of the ten articles in this new issue:

• Women’s empowerment in Tanzania. In rural sub-Saharan Africa, patriarchal social norms and customs often lead to unequal resource access, decision-making power, and intra-household power relations between women and men co-heads of smallholder farm households. In their paper, Els Lecoutere and Lan Chu investigated the effects of a programme introducing participatory intra-household decision-making to challenge household gender relations on women's empowerment in smallholder coffee farming households in rural southwest Tanzania.
  
  
• Civil society responses to the Canadian Feminist International Assistance Policy. Sheila Rao and Anne Delorme examined how Canada's Feminist International Assistance Policy (FIAP) shaped the efforts of civil society organisations to address gender equality through organisational and programmatic change. FIAP and other feminist policies directly affect how organisations design and administer their work to address gender inequality and how funding agencies and foundations administer and support this work.
  
  
• Aid allocation to politically excluded groups. Despite an increased focus on inclusive development, we know little about the extent to which development aid reaches politically excluded groups or how this varies across different donors. Siri Aas Rustad and co-authors developed and tested a framework arguing that areas, where politically excluded groups live, are less likely to receive development aid, and there are differences between donor countries and organisations in how they instrumentally address inclusive development.
  
  
• Foreign aid and migration. In European policy debate, conflict, economic crisis, lack of development, population growth, and climate change are often seen as the root causes of migration from Africa. Aid has thus been directed towards these perceived causes to deter irregular migration to Europe. This seems, however, not to deter irregular migration. In their paper, Lars Engberg-Pedersen, Ida Marie Savio Vammen and Hans Lucht explored the discrepancy between the official discourse of root causes and insights from research on migration decisions; and how discourse and evidence relate to aid. They focused on the motivations and drivers of migration and how development co-operation may influence these.

• Non-farm activity reduces migration: Evidence from Bangladesh. Anecdotal evidence suggests that local non-farm opportunities slow down rural-urban migration. However, there is hardly any empirical evidence on the relation between household non-farm income and migration. Understanding this relation is essential for rural development strategies, sustainable urban development, and policies that influence domestic migrations. Kazi Iqbal and co-authors examined whether households' decision to send a member to urban areas for employment depends on the extent of their non-farm income and, in turn, on local non-farm opportunities. They also study how this impact depends on household income, education of the household head, and land holdings.

• Chinese agriculture and sustainability certification schemes. Initiatives to promote sustainable practices in China's agriculture have been little documented in the literature. Preliminary investigations suggested that the way agricultural certification schemes worked in China differed considerably from those in Europe and the United States. In their paper, Xiaorui Wang and Shen Hu investigated how sustainability certification schemes were perceived by farmers, processors, government staff, and other stakeholders in Chinese agriculture.

• The resilience of systems-thinking approaches: the case of Mumbai. India has seen severe economic and social impacts from COVID-19, with the most vulnerable suffering. Mumbai's response has been multi-faceted, drawing on numerous actors such as local and state governments, businesses, and citizens. Disaster management is increasingly necessary, and Mumbai's policy response during wave two of COVID-19 provides relevant lessons. In their paper, Lina Sonne Vyas and Maren Duvendack explained Mumbai's policy response to wave two of COVID-19, termed the Mumbai model, applying a systems-thinking approach.

• Monetary incentives to improve tax compliance: A Brazilian case study. Monetary incentives may be used to enhance tax education and increase citizen participation in combatting tax evasion. In December 2021, the state government of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil launched the Receita Certa project. The programme aims to encourage new taxpayer habits by refunding part of the tax collected by retailers back to citizens, contingent on its performance exceeding inflation rates. Taxpayers add their tax identification to receipts and request redemption every three months. In their paper, Jorge Luis Tonetto, Adelar Fochezatto and Josep Miquel Pique analysed the impact of the Receita Certa project on the behaviour of consumers as taxpayers.

• Effectiveness of capacity building: The case of Korea. Previous studies on the effectiveness of capacity-building training have drawn from the experience of traditional donors. This is particularly problematic given the increasing prevalence of such training and the emergence of new donors with different approaches. In this article, Ga-Young So investigated the effectiveness of capacity-building training across different participants and different training types through the case of an emerging donor, the Republic of Korea.