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作者：Podhorsky, Andrea
作者单位：York University - Canada
摘要：The Fairtrade program transfers income to farmers by establishing a price floor and an alternate distribution channel that bypasses intermediaries between the raw commodity and world markets. I develop a model of the international commodity supply chain, with monopolistically competitive final goods producers and consumers who value the ethical quality of goods. A small number of oligopsonistic intermediaries purchase the raw commodity from farmers in a given country and then sell to final goo...
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作者：Majid, Muhammad Farhan
作者单位：McGill University
摘要：More than a billion Muslims living today were potentially exposed to their mother's fasting in utero. This paper uses the Indonesian Family Life Survey to study the persistent effects of in utero exposure to Ramadan over the life cycle. The exposed children perform more child labor, score 7.4% lower on cognitive tests and 8.4% lower on math test scores. As adults, the exposed children work 4.7% fewer hours per week and are more likely to be self-employed. Estimates are robust to the inclusion ...
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作者：Basu, Karna; Wong, Maisy
作者单位：City University of New York (CUNY) System; Hunter College (CUNY); City University of New York (CUNY) System; University of Pennsylvania
摘要：Predictable annual lean seasons occur in many rural areas, including West Timor in Indonesia. Imperfections in savings and credit markets make it difficult for staple farmers to convert harvest season output into lean season consumption. We conduct a randomized evaluation of a seasonal food storage program and a food credit program. By providing improved ways to transfer assets across seasons, each program functions as a subsidy on lean season consumption. We find that neither program had effe...
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作者：Ambler, Kate
作者单位：CGIAR; International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
摘要：Although most theoretical models of household decision making assume perfect information, empirical studies suggest that information asymmetries can have large impacts on resource allocation. I demonstrate the importance of these asymmetries in transnational households, where physical distance between family members can make information barriers especially acute. I implement an experiment among migrants in Washington, DC, and their families in El Salvador that examines how information asymmetr...
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作者：Czura, Kristina
作者单位：University of Munich
摘要：Despite remarkable repayment rates in microcredit group lending, anecdotal evidence from the field suggests that there is excessive punishment among group members. To quantify excessive peer punishment, I conduct a lab-in-the-field experiment with actual microcredit borrowers in rural India. I design a repayment coordination game with strategic default and the possibility of acquiring information about a peer's investment return (peer peeking) and of sanctioning a peer (peer punishment). I obs...
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作者：Szabo, Andrea; Ujhelyi, Gergely
作者单位：University of Houston System; University of Houston
摘要：Nonpayment for public utilities is an important constraint to expanding service access in developing countries. What are the causes of nonpayment and which policies are effective at addressing them? To study these questions, we implement and evaluate a randomized water education campaign in a low income pen-urban area in South Africa. We estimate substantial short-run treatment effects: on the order of a 25% increase in payments over a three-month period after which the effect dissipates. The ...
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作者：Bellemare, Marc F.; Novak, Lindsey; Steinmetz, Tara L.
作者单位：University of Minnesota System; University of Minnesota Twin Cities; University of California System; University of California Davis
摘要：Why does female genital cutting (FGC) persist in certain places but has declined elsewhere? We study the persistence of FGC-proxied for by whether survey respondents are in favor of the practice continuing in West Africa. We use 38 repeated cross-sectional country-year data sets covering 310,613 women aged 15 to 49 in 13 West African countries for the period 1995-2013. The data exhibit sufficient within-household variation to allow controlling for the unobserved heterogeneity between household...
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作者：Firpo, Sergio; Ponczek, Vladimir; Sanfelice, Viviane
作者单位：Getulio Vargas Foundation; University of Rochester
摘要：The objectives of this paper are twofold. First, we investigate whether politicians use resources from the federal budget to maintain and expand their political capital. Second, we examine whether such strategy is rewarded by voters. Do they vote for politicians who assist their municipalities through federal expenditures? We use data from legislative elections in Brazil, a country that does not use a single member district system to form its Chamber of Deputies. We use a regression discontinu...
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作者：Acht, Martin; Mahmoud, Toman Omar; Thiele, Rainer
作者单位：University of Bonn; Leibniz Association; Institut fur Weltwirtschaft an der Universitat Kiel (IFW)
摘要：A core result of the aid allocation literature is that the quality of governance in recipient countries does not affect the amounts of foreign aid received. Donor countries may still give aid to poorly-governed countries because of a dilemma they face: those countries most in need typically also lack proper institutions. This paper argues that donors try to resolve this dilemma by delivering aid through non-state actors. Using aid shares as well as absolute amounts of aid allocated through sta...
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作者：Flueckiger, Matthias; Ludwig, Markus
作者单位：University of Basel
摘要：For a panel of 109 coastal countries, we show that negative economic shocks in the fisheries sector are associated with an increase in maritime piracy. Our identification strategy uses the variation in the phytoplankton abundance off the individual countries' coasts, measured by satellite data, as a source of such shocks. We find that plankton abundance is positively related to fish catches, but negatively associated with the incidence of piracy, the onset of piracy and the absolute number of ...
