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作者：McKenzie, David; Puerto, Susana
作者单位：The World Bank
摘要：A common concern with efforts to directly help some small businesses to grow is that their growth comes at the expense of their unassisted competitors. We test this possibility using a two-stage randomized experiment in Kenya that randomizes business training at the market level and then within markets to selected businesses. Three years after training, the treated businesses are selling more, earn higher profits, and their owners have higher well-being. Point estimates of the spillovers on th...
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作者：Chu, Jian; Fisman, Raymond; Tan, Songtao; Wang, Yongxiang
作者单位：Nanjing University; Boston University; Renmin University of China; The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen; The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen; Shanghai Jiao Tong University
摘要：Audits are a standard mechanism for reducing corruption in government investments. The quality of audits themselves, however, may be affected by relationships between auditor and target. We study whether provincial chief auditors in China show greater leniency in evaluating prefecture governments in their hometowns. In city-fixed-effect specifications-in which the role of shared background is identified from auditor turnover-we show that hometown auditors find 38 percent less in questionable m...
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作者：Carter, Michael; Laajaj, Rachid; Yang, Dean
作者单位：University of California System; University of California Davis; University of Cape Town; Universidad de los Andes (Colombia); University of Michigan System; University of Michigan; University of Michigan System; University of Michigan
摘要：The Green Revolution, which bolstered agricultural yields and economic well-being in Asia and Latin America beginning in the 1960s, largely bypassed sub-Saharan Africa. We study the first randomized controlled trial of a government-implemented input subsidy program (ISP) in Africa intended to foment a Green Revolution. We find that this temporary subsidy for Mozambican maize farmers stimulates Green Revolution technology adoption and leads to increased maize yields. Effects of the subsidy pers...
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作者：Deshpande, Manasi; Gross, Tal; Su, Yalun
作者单位：University of Chicago; National Bureau of Economic Research; Boston University; University of Chicago
摘要：What is the relationship between disability programs and financial distress? We provide the first evidence on this relationship using several markers of financial distress: bankruptcy, foreclosure, eviction, and home sale. Rates of these adverse financial events peak around the time of disability application. Using variation induced by an age-based eligibility rule, we find that disability allowance reduces the likelihood of bankruptcy by 20 percent, foreclosure by 33 percent, and home sale by...
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作者：Elder, Todd; Zhou, Yuqing
作者单位：Michigan State University; University of California System; University of California Los Angeles
摘要：Using two nationally representative datasets, we find large differences between Black and White children in teacher-reported measures of noncognitive skills. We show that teacher reports understate true Black-White skill gaps because of reference bias: teachers appear to rate children relative to others in the same school, and Black students have lower-skilled classmates on average than do White students. We pursue three approaches to addressing these reference biases. Each approach nearly dou...
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作者：Bertrand, Marianne; Crepon, Bruno
作者单位：University of Chicago; Institut Polytechnique de Paris; ENSAE Paris
摘要：We assess whether imperfect knowledge of labor regulation hinders job creation at small and medium-sized firms. We partner with a labor law expert organization that provides information about labor regulation via newsletters and access to a specialized website. We randomly assign 1,800 firms to get access to this service for a 21-week period. Six months later, the average employment level at treatment firms was 12 percent higher than at control firms. The intervention decreased the perception ...
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作者：Emran, M. Shahe; Mookherjee, Dilip; Shilpi, Forhad; Uddin, M. Helal
作者单位：Columbia University; Boston University; The World Bank; University of Dhaka
摘要：Traders are often blamed for high prices, prompting government regulation. We study the effects of a government ban of a layer of financing intermediaries in edible oil supply chain in Bangladesh during 2011-2012. Contrary to the predictions of a standard model of an oligopolistic supply chain, the ban caused downstream wholesale and retail prices to rise, and pass-through of the changes in imported crude oil price to fall. These results can be explained by an extension of the standard model t...
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作者：Gelber, Alexander M.; Jones, Damon; Sacks, Daniel W.; Song, Jae
作者单位：University of California System; University of California San Diego; National Bureau of Economic Research; University of Chicago; Indiana University System; Indiana University Bloomington; IU Kelley School of Business
摘要：We estimate the impact of the Social Security Annual Earnings Test (AET) on older workers' employment. The AET reduces social security claimants' current benefits in proportion to their earnings in excess of an exempt amount. Using a regression kink design and Social Security Administration data, we document that the discontinuous change in the benefit reduction rate at the exempt amount causes a corresponding change in the slope of the employment rate, suggesting that the extensive margin of ...
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作者：Stuart, Bryan A.; Taylor, Evan J.
作者单位：George Washington University; IZA Institute Labor Economics; University of Arizona
摘要：This paper studies how birth town migration networks affected long-run location decisions during historical US migration episodes. We develop a new method to estimate the strength of migration networks for each receiving and sending location. Our estimates imply that when one randomly chosen African American moved from a Southern birth town to a destination county, then 1.9 additional Black migrants made the same move on average. For White migrants from the Great Plains, the average is only 0....
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作者：Gershoni, Naomi; Low, Corinne
作者单位：Ben-Gurion University of the Negev; University of Pennsylvania
摘要：Israel's 1994 adoption of free in vitro fertilization (IVF) provides a natural experiment for how fertility time horizons impact women's marriage timing and other outcomes. We find a substantial increase in average age at first marriage following the policy change, using both men and Arab-Israeli women as comparison groups. This shift appears to be driven by both increased marriages by older women and younger women delaying marriage. Age at first birth also increased. Placebo and robustness ch...
