There are more than 1.4 million papers about cash transfers. They inspired Ugo

Gentilini, lead economist for social protection at the World Bank, to spend five years

researching the surprisingly long and rich history of these cash transfers. The

resulting book, called “Timely Cash: Lessons From 2,500 Years of Giving People

Money”, shows that the political and ethical debates that cash transfers inspire are

centuries, sometimes millennia, old. In a special episode to mark the launch of his

book, Ugo explains to Tim Phillips how we can draw on history to understand the

current, sometimes heated, debates about why, when, and where cash transfers

should be used.



Read the full show notes on VoxDev: https://voxdev.org/topic/institutions-political-economy/history-cash-transfers