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作者：Meager, Rachael
作者单位：University of London; London School Economics & Political Science
摘要：Despite evidence from multiple randomized evaluations of microcredit, questions about external validity have impeded consensus on the results. I jointly estimate the average effect and the heterogeneity in effects across seven studies using Bayesian hierarchical models. I find the impact on household business and consumption variables is unlikely to be transformative and may be negligible. I find reasonable external validity: true heterogeneity in effects is moderate, and approximately 60 perc...
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作者：Brooks, Wyatt; Donovan, Kevin; Johnson, Terence R.
作者单位：University of Notre Dame; Yale University
摘要：We use a randomized controlled trial to demonstrate that - inexperienced female microenterprise owners in a Kenyan slum benefit from mentorship by an experienced entrepreneur in the same community. Mentorship increases profits by 20 percent on average with initially large effects that fade as matches dissolve. We - conduct a - formal business education intervention, which has no effect on - profits despite changes in business practice. Our results - demonstrate that missing information is a sa...
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作者：Garthwaite, Craig; Gross, Tal; Notowidigdo, Matthew J.
作者单位：Northwestern University; Boston University; Northwestern University
摘要：American hospitals are required to provide emergency medical care to the uninsured. We use previously confidential hospital financial data to study the resulting uncompensated care, medical care for which no payment is received. Using both panel-data methods and case studies, we find that each additional uninsured person costs hospitals approximately $800 each year. Increases in the uninsured population also lower hospital profit margins, suggesting that hospitals do not pass along all uncompe...
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作者：Dickens, Andrew
作者单位：Brock University
摘要：African political leaders have a tendency to favor members of their own ethnic group. Yet for all other ethnic groups in a country, it is unclear whether having a similar ethnicity to the leader is beneficial. To shed light on this issue, I use a continuous measure of linguistic similarity to quantify the ethnic similarity of a leader to all ethnic groups in a country. Combined with panel data on 163 ethnic groups partitioned across 35 sub-Saharan countries, I use within-group time variation i...
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作者：Geruso, Michael; Spears, Dean
作者单位：University of Texas System; University of Texas Austin; Indian Statistical Institute; Indian Statistical Institute Delhi
摘要：In this paper, we shed new light on a long-standing puzzle: India, Muslim children are substantially more likely than Hindu children to survive to their first birthday, even though Indian Muslims hove lower wealth, consumption, educational attainment, and access to state services. Contrary to the prior literature, we show that the observed mortality advantage accrues not to Muslim households themselves but rather to their neighbors, who are also likely to be Muslim. Investigating mechanisms, w...
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作者：Schwandt, Hannes
作者单位：Northwestern University; Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR)
摘要：Do wealth shocks affect the health of elderly in developed countries? 1 exploit the booms and busts in the US stock market as a natural experiment that generated considerable gains and losses in the wealth of stock-holding retirees. Using data from the 1998-2011 Health and Retirement Study, 1 construct wealth shocks as the interaction of stock holdings with stock market changes. These wealth shocks predict wealth changes and strongly affect health. outcomes. A 10 percent wealth loss leads to a...
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作者：Baranov, Victoria; Kohler, Hans-Peter
作者单位：University of Melbourne; University of Pennsylvania
摘要：Antiretroviral therapy (ART), a treatment for AIDS, is rapidly increasing life expectancy throughout sub-Saharan African countries affected by the AIDS epidemic. This change in life expectancy has potentially profound influences on life-cycle decisions. A longer life expectancy increases the value of human capital investment, while the effect on savings is theoretically ambiguous and life-cycle saving could increase or decrease. This paper uses spatial and temporal variation in ART availabilit...
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作者：Yakovlev, Evgeny
作者单位：New Economic School
摘要：Alcohol abuse is widely blamed for the very high rate of male mortality in Russia. I estimate a structural model of the demand for alcohol that incorporates two features of alcohol consumption, peer effects and habits. I use a kink in the policy regime of the excise tax on alcohol and regional variation in alcohol regulations to estimate a price elasticity of demand for alcohol. I find that peer influence and habits are critical determinants of the response of alcohol demand to price changes. ...
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作者：Curto-Grau, Marta; Sole-Olle, Albert; Sorribas-Navarro, Filar
作者单位：University of Barcelona
摘要：We study whether incumbents facing uncontested elections channel public spending toward co-partisan officials more than is the case of incumbents that are worried about reelection. We draw on data on capital transfers allocated by Spanish regions to local governments during 1995-2007. Using a regression discontinuity design, we document strong and robust effects. We find that a mayor belonging to the party of the regional president obtains twice the amount in grants received by an opposition's...
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作者：Erten, Bilge; Keskin, Pinar
作者单位：Wellesley College
摘要：We exploit a change in the compulsory schooling law in Turkey to estimate the causal effects of education on the prevalence of domestic violence. By adopting a regression discontinuity design, we find that the reform increased women's schooling by one year to one-and-a-half years and improved their labor market outcomes, with particularly strong effects for women raised in rural areas. The increase in education among rural women led to an increase in self-reported psychological violence and fi...
