We analyze the economic costs and benefits of “community-led total sanitation” (CLTS), a sanitation intervention that relies on community-level behavioral change, in a hypothetical rural region in sub-Saharan Africa with 200 villages and 100,000 people. The analysis incorporates data on the effectiveness of CLTS from recent randomized controlled trials and other evaluations. The net benefits of this intervention are estimated both with and without the inclusion of a positive health externality, that is, the additional reduction in diarrhea for an individual when a sufficient proportion of other individuals in the community construct and use latrines and thereby decrease the overall load of waterborne pathogens and fecal bacteria in the environment. We find that CLTS interventions would pass a benefit–cost test in many situations, but that outcomes are not as favorable as some previous studies suggest. The model results are sensitive to baseline conditions, including the value of time, income level used to calculate the value of a statistical life, discount rate, case fatality rate, diarrhea incidence, and time spent traveling to defecation sites. We conclude that many communities likely have economic investment opportunities that are more attractive than CLTS, and recommend careful economic analysis of CLTS in specific locations.

In Mexico during the protectionist economic regime a process of industrial modernization was carried out which led to the incorporation of different types of technologies into the structures and processes of production or consumption. The patent policy was implemented with the interest of encouraging the attraction of novel technologies, but their contribution was quite limited due to the nature, design and operation, with which it was conformed. Therefore, the patent policy did not drive patenting activity in a high and sustained manner. It was ineffective to contribute to the development of technologies generated by local actors, and marginally propitiated the productive exploitation of patents.

Digital platforms have the potential to create benefits for their suppliers or workers as well as their customers, yet there is a heated debate about the character of this work and whether the platforms should be more heavily regulated. Beyond the high-profile global platforms, the technology is contributing to changing patterns of work. Yet the existing framework of employment legislation and public policy more broadly – from minimum wages to benefits and pensions – is structured around the concept of ‘the firm’ as the agent of policy delivery. To reshape policies in order to protect the interests of people as workers as well as consumers, it is important to understand why digital innovators make the choices they do, and therefore how labour market policies can improve working conditions without constraining the productivity and consumer benefits enabled by digital business models.