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作者：Karlan, Dean; Osman, Adam; Zinman, Jonathan
作者单位：Yale University; National Bureau of Economic Research; University of Illinois System; University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Dartmouth College
摘要：Measuring the impacts of liquidity shocks on spending is difficult methodologically but important for theory, practice, and policy. We compare three approaches for tackling this question: directly asking borrowers how they spend proceeds from a loan (direct elicitation); asking borrowers using a list randomization technique (indirect elicitation) that allows them to answer discretely in cases where loan uses are at odds with lender policies or social norms; and, a counterfactual analysis in wh...
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作者：Li, Pei; Lu, Yi; Wang, Jin
作者单位：Xiamen University; Xiamen University; National University of Singapore; Hong Kong University of Science & Technology
摘要：This paper examines a causal relationship between the flattening of a government hierarchy and economic performance by exploiting a panel data set on government reorganization in China from 1995 to 2012. Delayering has led to increases in revenue and inter-governmental transfers for county governments, but the associated enlarged span of control makes it difficult for upper-level governments to coordinate and monitor local ones. This has led to a reduction in county governments' total public e...
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作者：Ali, Daniel Ayalew; Collin, Matthew; Deininger, Klaus; Dercon, Stefan; Sandefur, Justin; Zeitlin, Andrew
作者单位：The World Bank; Center for Global Development - Europe; University of Oxford; Georgetown University
摘要：We present results from a field experiment using price incentives to address two obstacles to women's access to formal land ownership. First, the price of formal land titles is often prohibitive, restricting access for both men and women. Second, when formal titles are issued, men are recorded as the sole owners of household land in the vast majority of cases. In theory, these problems may be in tension: requirements to grant women equal ownership may reduce the overall household demand for ti...
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作者：Dai, Mi; Maitra, Madhura; Yu, Miaojie
作者单位：Beijing Normal University; Peking University
摘要：The firm level trade literature finds that exporters are exceptional performers for a wide range of countries and measures. Paradoxically, the one documented exception is the world's largest exporter, China. We show that this puzzling finding is entirely driven by firms that engage only in export processing the activity of assembling tariff exempted imported inputs into final goods for resale in the foreign markets. We find that processing exporters are less productive than non-processing expo...
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作者：Carter, Michael R.; Cheng, Lan; Sarris, Alexandros
作者单位：University of California System; University of California Davis; National Bureau of Economic Research; National & Kapodistrian University of Athens
摘要：Remote sensing and other advances have led to an outpouring of programs that offer index insurance to small scale farmers with the expectation that this insurance will enable adoption of improved technologies and boost living standards. Despite these expectations, the evidence to date on the uptake and impacts of insurance is mixed. This paper steps back and considers theoretically where index insurance might be most effective, and whether it should be offered as a standalone contract or expli...
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作者：Jones, Sam; Tarp, Finn
作者单位：University of Copenhagen
摘要：The notion that foreign aid harms the institutions of recipient governments remains prevalent. We combine new disaggregated aid data and various metrics of political institutions to re-examine this relationship. Long run cross-section and alternative dynamic panel estimators show a small positive net effect of total aid on political institutions. Distinguishing between types of aid according to their frequency domain and stated objectives, we find that this aggregate net effect is driven prima...
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作者：Bramoulle, Yann; Goyal, Sanjeev
作者单位：Aix-Marseille Universite; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); University of Cambridge; University of Cambridge
摘要：Favoritism refers to the act of offering jobs, contracts and resources to members of one's own social group in preference to others who are outside the group. This paper examines the economic origins and the consequences of favoritism. We argue that favoritism is a mechanism for surplus diversion away from the society at large and toward the group. As it usually entails inefficiencies, favoritism highlights the role of frictions in economic exchange. Favoritism is easier to sustain in a small ...
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作者：Fitzsimons, Emla; Malde, Bansi; Mesnard, Alice; Vera-Hernandez, Marcos
作者单位：University of London; University College London; UCL Institute of Education; University of London; University College London; City St Georges, University of London; University of London; London School Economics & Political Science
摘要：Incorrect knowledge of the health production function may lead to inefficient household choices and thereby to the production of suboptimal levels of health. This paper studies the effects of a randomized intervention in rural Malawi that, over a six-month period, provided mothers of young infants with information on child nutrition without supplying any monetary or in-kind resources. A simple model first investigates theoretically how nutrition and other household choices including labor supp...
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作者：Olsson, Ola; Paik, Christopher
作者单位：University of Gothenburg; New York University; New York University Abu Dhabi
摘要：This paper investigates the long-run influence of the Neolithic Revolution on contemporary cultural norms as reflected in the dimension of collectivism-individualism. We present a theory of agricultural origins of cultural divergence, where we claim that the advent of farming in a core region was characterized by collectivist values and eventually triggered the out-migration of individualistic farmers towards more and more peripheral areas. This migration pattern caused the initial cultural di...
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作者：Blattman, Christopher; Jamison, Julian; Koroknay-Palicz, Tricia; Rodrigues, Katherine; Sheridan, Margaret
作者单位：Columbia University; The World Bank; The World Bank; University of North Carolina; University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
摘要：Empirical social science relies heavily on self-reported data, but subjects may misreport behaviors, especially sensitive ones such as crime or drug abuse. If a treatment influences survey misreporting, it biases causal estimates. We develop a validation technique that uses intensive qualitative work to assess survey misreporting and pilot it in a field experiment where subjects were assigned to receive cash, therapy, both, or neither. According to survey responses, both treatments reduced cri...
