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作者:Olsson, Ola; Baaz, Maria Eriksson; Martinsson, Peter
作者单位:University of Gothenburg; Uppsala University; Linkoping University
摘要:In many post-conflict states with a weak fiscal capacity, illicit domestic levies on trade remain a serious obstacle to economic development. In this paper, we explore the interplay between traders and authorities on Congo River - a key transport corridor in one of the world's poorest and most conflict-ridden countries; DR Congo. We outline a general theoretical framework featuring transport operators who need to pass multiple taxing stations and negotiate over taxes with several authorities o...
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作者:Panza, Laura
作者单位:University of Melbourne
摘要:This paper provides new and comprehensive evidence on the relationship between ethnic segregation and Arab and Jewish human capital formation in Mandate Palestine, the historical period in which the roots of the current reality of inter-ethnic separation were built. Using a novel panel dataset (1927-1945), I exploit geographic and time variation in the degree of segregation across Palestine to assess whether it affected schooling outcomes, observed on average for each ethnic group. The empiric...
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作者:Cassidy, Rachel; Fafchamps, Marcel
作者单位:The World Bank; Stanford University
摘要:Efforts to promote financial inclusion have largely focused on microcredit and micro-savings separately, less so on promoting financial intermediation across poor borrowers and savers. Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs) may enable borrowers and savers to meet each others' needs, by combining a borrowing and a commitment savings technology. On the other hand, frictions such as imperfect information and enforcement may limit VSLAs' ability to attract both borrowers and savers into the...
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作者:Banerjee, Rakesh; Maharaj, Riddhi
作者单位:University of Exeter
摘要:We examine the impact of extreme heat during pregnancy on infant mortality and check if public interventions can serve as effective adaptation strategies. We show that 2 children die as infants out of 1000 births in India for high temperature during pregnancy, tentatively due to reduced agricultural yields, wages, and greater disease prevalence like diarrhea. The heat-infant mortality relationship holds in rural India only. Using phased introduction of an employment guarantee program and parti...
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作者:Alberola, Enrique; Urrutia, Carlos
作者单位:Bank for International Settlements (BIS); Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico; Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico
摘要:Informality is a structural trait in emerging economies affecting the behavior of labor markets, financial access and economy-wide productivity. This paper develops a simple general equilibrium closed economy model with nominal rigidities, labor and financial frictions to analyze the transmission of shocks and of monetary policy. In the model, the informal sector provides a flexible margin of adjustment to the labor market at the cost of lower productivity. In addition, only formal sector firm...
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作者:Bhalotra, Sonia; Brule, Rachel; Roy, Sanchari
作者单位:University of Essex; New York University; New York University Abu Dhabi; University of London; King's College London
摘要:We investigate whether legislation of equal inheritance rights for women modifies the historic preference for sons in India, and find that it exacerbates it. Children born after the reform in families with a firstborn daughter are 3.8-4.3 percentage points less likely to be girls, indicating that the reform encouraged female foeticide. We also find that the reform increased excess female infant mortality and son-biased fertility stopping. This suggests that the inheritance reform raised the co...
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作者:Hodler, Roland; Srisuma, Sorawoot; Vesperoni, Alberto; Zurlinden, Noemie
作者单位:University of St Gallen; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK; Leibniz Association; Ifo Institut; University of Surrey; University of London; King's College London
摘要:We conjecture that mistrust and social conflict in a society may depend on ethnic stratification, i.e., the extent to which the hierarchy in socio-economic positions across individuals follows ethnolinguistic lines. We define and axiomatically characterize an index of ethnic stratification that generalizes the idea of between-group inequality to situations where data on economic and ethnolinguistic distances between pairs of individuals is available. We use Afrobarometer survey data to measure...
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作者:Thomas, Daniel Robert; Harish, S. P.; Kennedy, Ryan; Urpelainen, Johannes
作者单位:Columbia University; William & Mary; University of Houston System; University of Houston; Johns Hopkins University
摘要:Governments in developing countries are investing billions of dollars to increase electricity access in rural areas, but the literature on the impact of these investments has produced mixed results. We leverage a unique characteristic of household electrification policy in Uttar Pradesh, India, whereby only households within 40 m of an electricity pole are eligible for a legal electrical connection, to estimate the causal impact of electrification using a pre-registered instrumental variable d...
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作者:Hakizimfura, Emmanuel; Randall, Douglas; Zia, Bilal
作者单位:The World Bank
摘要:We implement a large-scale field experiment with 200 Savings and Credit Cooperative Associations (SACCOs) in Rwanda, and test competing models of local financial education delivery. One-third of SACCOs were invited to a comprehensive training-of-trainers (TOT) workshop and stipulated to send the SACCO manager, a loan officer, and a community board member to be trained. Another one-third were allowed free selection of trainers, which resulted in greater community representation and lower loan o...
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作者:Chen, Chaoran
作者单位:York University - Canada
摘要:I document that cross-country differences in capital intensity are much larger in the agricultural sector than in the nonagricultural sector. To explain this fact, I build a model featuring technology adoption with fixed costs among heterogeneous farmers. More productive farmers operating larger farms pay the fixed cost and adopt a modern capital-intensive technology, while less productive ones choose a traditional labor-intensive technology. The model is calibrated using historical data on fa...