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作者：Madajewicz, Malgosia; Pfaff, Alexander; van Geen, Alexander; Graziano, Joseph; Hussein, Iftikhar; Momotaj, Hasina; Sylvi, Roksana; Ahsan, Habibul
作者单位：Columbia University
摘要：We study how effectively information induces Bangladeshi households to avoid a health risk. The response to information is large and rapid; knowing that the household's well water has an unsafe concentration of arsenic raises the probability that the household changes to another well within one year by 0.37. Households who change wells increase the time spent obtaining water fifteen-fold. We identify a causal effect of information, since incidence of arsenic is uncorrelated with household char...
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作者：Kulshreshtha, Praveen
作者单位：Indian Institute of Technology System (IIT System); Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) - Roorkee
摘要：Governments often allocate commodities at low prices and on a first-come-first-served basis (rationing by waiting), while bureaucrats who distribute the commodities usually take bribes. A model is developed to classify the efficiency implications of bribery, and socially optimal pricing schemes in rationing by waiting. If the rationed good and individual income spent on other goods ('other' income) are 'complements', then bribery may enhance allocative efficiency, and a 'dual pricing' scheme c...
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作者：Tenreyro, Silvana
作者单位：University of London; London School Economics & Political Science
摘要：What is the effect of nominal exchange rate variability on trade? I argue that the methods conventionally used to answer this perennial question are plagued by a variety of sources of systematic bias. I propose a novel approach that simultaneously addresses all of these biases, and present new estimates from a broad sample of countries from 1970 to 1997. The estimates indicate that nominal exchange rate variability has no significant impact on trade flows. (C) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights res...
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作者：de Walque, Damien
作者单位：The World Bank
摘要：The responsiveness to information is thought to be one channel through which education affects health outcomes. This paper tests this hypothesis by examining the effectiveness of an information campaign that aims at preventing the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Uganda. It uses individual level data from a cohort study following and testing the general population of a cluster of villages in rural Uganda over 12 years and shows that, after more than a decade of prevention campaigns about the dangers of th...
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作者：Mariani, Fabio
作者单位：heSam Universite; Universite Pantheon-Sorbonne; IZA Institute Labor Economics
摘要：We develop a new mechanism through which skilled migration may influence economic performance in the sending country. If agents can choose between acting as rent-seekers and engaging in productive activities, and only productive skills are exportable, a positive probability of migration (to a more secure economy) reduces the relative expected returns from rent-seeking, thus decreasing the proportion of skilled workers who opt for parasitic activities. Such an improvement in the allocation of t...
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作者：Voigt, Stefan; Ebeling, Michael; Blume, Lorenz
作者单位：Universitat Kassel
摘要：It is argued that government credibility is an important resource and that it can be improved by delegating decision-making competence beyond the nation-state. It is hypothesized that such delegation should result in higher income and growth. Some former British colonies retained the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as their final court of appeals even after independence. This court is thus taken as a natural experiment to test our hypothesis. It turns out that retaining the jurisdictio...
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作者：Mansuri, Ghazala
作者单位：The World Bank
摘要：Informal lenders with access to markets or capital often find it attractive to delegate loan provision to downstream lenders who have an information or enforcement advantage in dealing with particular borrowers. In this paper we examine the conditions under which such an arrangement is preferred by two informal lenders, a landlord and a merchant, who compete in loan provision to tenant farmers differentiated by wealth. We show that credit layering is preferred only when tenants are sufficientl...
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作者：Soares, Rodrigo R.
作者单位：University System of Maryland; University of Maryland College Park; Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio de Janeiro; National Bureau of Economic Research; IZA Institute Labor Economics
摘要：This paper describes the pattern of reductions in mortality across Brazilian municipalities between 1970 and 2000, and analyzes its causes and consequences. It shows that, as in the international context, the relationship between income and life expectancy has shifted consistently in the recent past. But reductions in mortality within Brazil have been more homogeneously distributed than across countries. We use a compensating differentials approach to estimate the value of the observed reducti...
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作者：Huang, Ho-Chuan (River); Lin, Shu-Chin
作者单位：Tamkang University; Tamkang University
摘要：In contrast to the parametric (quadratic) specification used for examining the Kuznets hypothesis, this study relies on the semiparametric Bayesian inference of the partially linear regression to re-assess the validity of an inverted-U shape of the Kuznets curve. The simple framework permits us to perform estimation and model comparison in a unified way. Empirical results using cross-sectional data on 75 countries indicate that there exists an (approximately) inverted-V, hence, asymmetric rela...
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作者：Banerjee, Abhijit; Somanathan, Rohini
作者单位：Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Delhi School of Economics
摘要：We are interested in how public goods get allocated by a centralized state. We use data on public goods and social structure from parliamentary constituencies in rural India to understand the allocation of these goods over the 1970s and 1980s. National policies and political agendas during this period emphasized universal access to basic amenities and financed a rapid expansion in rural infrastructure. We find evidence of considerable equalization in many of these facilities, reflecting perhap...
