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作者:Ham, Andres; Michelson, Hope C.
作者单位:Universidad de los Andes (Colombia); University of Illinois System; University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
摘要:We study whether Honduran municipalities exposed to a conditional cash transfer program from 2000 to 2005 experience lasting effects on human capital and labor market outcomes. The government randomly assigned three forms of delivering program benefits across targeted municipalities: demand (vouchers), supply (clinic and school subsidies), and a combination of both. This program provides an opportunity to explore if and how differential exposure to incentives produces longer term effects. Usin...
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作者:Chen, Yvonne Jie; Li, Pei; Lu, Yi
作者单位:National University of Singapore; Xiamen University; Xiamen University; Tsinghua University; National University of Singapore
摘要:This paper examines whether a target-based performance evaluation system can properly motivate local bureaucrats to implement an environmental regulation policy at the cost of slow economic growth. In late 2005, the Chinese central government made cutting sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions the main performance evaluation criterion for prefectural city mayors and Party secretaries. Using a difference-in-differences framework, we find that the performance evaluation system caused a significant decre...
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作者:Handa, Sudhanshu; Natali, Luisa; Seidenfeld, David; Tembo, Gelson; Davis, Benjamin
作者单位:University of North Carolina; University of North Carolina Chapel Hill; Istituto degli Innocenti; American Institutes for Research; Food & Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
摘要:In Africa, state-sponsored cash transfer programs now reach nearly 50 million people. Do these programs raise long-term living standards? We examine this question using experimental data from two unconditional cash transfer programs implemented by the Zambian Government. We find far-reaching effects of the programs both on food security and consumption as well as on a range of productive outcomes. After three years, household spending is on average 67 percent larger than the value of the trans...
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作者:Kast, Felipe; Meier, Stephan; Pomeranz, Dina
作者单位:Columbia University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Columbia University; University of Zurich
摘要:We test the impact of a peer group program on savings in a sample of microcredit clients. We conduct two randomized trials among these 2687 microcredit clients. The first finds that a Savings Group Treatment, which combines public goal setting, monitoring in the group and non-financial rewards, increases savings in a new savings account significantly. The number of deposits grows 3.7-fold and the average balance almost doubles. In contrast, a more classical measure, a substantially increased i...
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作者:Alix-Garcia, Jennifer; Walker, Sarah; Bartlett, Anne; Onder, Harun; Sanghi, Apurva
作者单位:Oregon State University; University of New South Wales Sydney; University of New South Wales Sydney; University of New South Wales Sydney; The World Bank
摘要:We combine nighttime lights data, official statistics, and new household survey data from northern Kenya in order to assess the impact of long-term refugee camps on host populations. The nighttime lights estimates show that refugee inflows increase economic activity in areas very close to Kakuma refugee camp: the elasticity of the luminosity index to refugee population is 0.36 within a 10 km distance from the camp center. In addition, household consumption within the same proximity to the camp...
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作者:Keats, Anthony
作者单位:Wesleyan University
摘要:This paper examines the role of women's education on both fertility and child health in Uganda. To identify causal effects, I exploit the timing of a national reform that eliminated primary school fees in 1997 to implement a regression discontinuity design. At the cutoff, the reform increased educational attainment by nearly one year on average, with impacts across all grade levels through the end of secondary school. Women with more schooling both delay and reduce overall fertility, increase ...
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作者:Seror, Avner
作者单位:Paris School of Economics
摘要:This paper provides a theory of religious prohibition against usury and innovation and its consequences on economic activities and occupations. As an economic prohibition from the majority religion is sustained by a threat of social exclusion from that cultural group, it has less effects on religious minorities. It then creates an occupational pattern where only the religious minorities choose activities that transgress the prohibition. By creating resentment against the religious minorities, ...
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作者:Hicken, Allen; Leider, Stephen; Ravanilla, Nico; Yang, Dean
作者单位:University of Michigan System; University of Michigan; University of Michigan System; University of Michigan; University of California System; University of California San Diego; University of Michigan System; University of Michigan; University of Michigan System; University of Michigan; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要:We report the results of a randomized field experiment in the Philippines on the effects of two common anti-vote selling strategies involving eliciting promises from voters. An invitation to promise not to vote-sell is taken up by most respondents, reduces vote-selling, and has a larger effect in races with smaller vote-buying payments. The treatment reduces vote-selling in the smallest-stakes election by 10.9 percentage points. Inviting voters to promise to vote your conscience despite accept...
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作者:Ito, Takahiro; Tanaka, Shinsuke
作者单位:Kobe University; Tufts University
摘要:This study examines the effect of abolishing user fees from the maternal and child health (MCH) services on child quantity and quality in South Africa in the post-apartheid era. Exploiting exogenous variation in exposure to the policy effect, we find that the policy resulted in lower fertility in households and greater educational attainment of children a decade later. The absence of the effects among children not subject to the policy eliminates channels through heterogeneous preexisting tren...
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作者:Dustan, Andrew
作者单位:Vanderbilt University
摘要:This paper uses variation in school assignments generated by Mexico City's public high school choice mechanism to document a strong causal influence of older siblings on their younger siblings' school choice behavior. The effects of older sibling admission on the probabilities of choosing both the sibling's school and distinct but observably similar schools are large and positive, even when siblings are too far apart in age to attend school together. The evidence is more consistent with inform...