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作者：Beegle, Kathleen; Dillon, Andrew; Karlan, Dean; Udry, Christopher
作者单位：The World Bank; Northwestern University; Northwestern University
摘要：Continued emphasis in development economics on measurement and survey design provides opportunities to expand the research frontier. Yet methods work, particularly survey experiments and mode effect studies, remains scantly published in economics. This special issue contributes to the evolution of development economics by presenting evidence on three broad sets of methodological problems that researchers face: managing measurement error, expanding the scope of measurement, and understanding me...
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作者：Verma, Priyam
作者单位：Aix-Marseille Universite
摘要：Lower tariffs typically raise productivity, production, and trade, increasing the benefits from building infrastructure. Infrastructure spending by governments should therefore increase after countries open up to trade. I test this hypothesis empirically using a trade reform in India and find that a 1 percentage point reduction in tariffs increased states' infrastructure spending by 0.5% between 1991 and 2001. To understand the mechanisms behind my empirical findings, I develop and calibrate a...
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作者：Bene, Tizie; Bramoulle, Yann; Deroian, Frederic
作者单位：Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); Aix-Marseille Universite
摘要：We study how altruism networks affect the demand for formal insurance. Agents with CARA utilities are connected through a network of altruistic relationships. Incomes are subject to a common shock and to a large individual shock, generating heterogeneous damages. Agents can buy formal insurance to cover the common shock, up to a coverage cap. We find that ex-post altruistic transfers induce interdependence in ex-ante formal insurance decisions. We characterize the Nash equilibria of the insura...
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作者：Barsbai, Toman; Licuanan, Victoria; Steinmayr, Andreas; Tiongson, Erwin; Yang, Dean
作者单位：University of Bristol; Asian Institute of Management; University of Innsbruck; Leibniz Association; Ifo Institut; IZA Institute Labor Economics; Georgetown University; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：We study a randomly-assigned program providing information on U.S. settlement for new Filipino immigrants. The intervention, a 2.5-hour pre-departure training and an accompanying paper handbook, has no effect on employment, settlement, and subjective wellbeing, but leads immigrants to acquire substantially fewer social network connections. We rationalize these findings with a simple model, showing that information and social network links are substitutes under reasonable assumptions. Consisten...
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作者：Cui, Xiaomeng; Zhong, Zheng
作者单位：Jinan University
摘要：Climate change is expected to reduce crop yields, but knowledge on how it affects agricultural land use is still limited. This paper empirically investigates the induced cropland adjustments in responding to long-run climate change in China. Based on county-level data over several decades, we employ a moving-average specification that exploits within-county variation in local climate normals. We show that cropland expands with rising temperature (precipitation) in cold (dry) areas, while the e...
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作者：Tampellini, Joao
作者单位：Vanderbilt University
摘要：In the first study using self-identified information on sexual orientation from a large, nationally representative survey from Brazil, I study the relationship between sexual orientation and a range of labor market outcomes. I find large wage premiums for lesbian women relative to heterosexual women and no wage premiums or penalties for gay men and bisexual individuals relative to their heterosexual counterparts. These results vary geographically, with sexual minority women earning significant...
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作者：Tonke, Sebastian
作者单位：Max Planck Society
摘要：I conduct a large-scale field experiment (N = 14876) with a public water utility in Namibia to encourage water conservation during a drought. Providing a short list of specific conservation strategies via text message decreases residential water consumption by around 5.3 percent. Other treatment arms that ask individuals to use and develop their own strategies are ineffective, suggesting that individuals may lack knowledge on how to reduce their water consumption effectively. This interpretati...
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作者：Pietrobon, Davide
作者单位：Lund University
摘要：Insurance can encourage the use of risk-increasing inputs, but it can also decrease people's incentives to exert effort when the latter is difficult to monitor. This effort reduction can be associated with a decrease in the use of effort-complementary inputs. I study a model of risk-sharing that allows for both effects of insurance on input use and use the latest ICRISAT panel to structurally estimate it. Median fertilizer use is almost three times higher under no sharing than under full insur...
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作者：Huang, Zibin; Jiang, Xu; Sun, Ang
作者单位：Renmin University of China
摘要：Mother-child separation harms children's development. This concern is particularly relevant in rapidly urban-izing societies with massive migration. However, factors that increase the probability of children becoming separated from their migrating parents are not well understood. In this study, we find that during early child-hood, specifically at the age of 2 years, girls are less likely to become separated from their parents than boys are. This is due to son preference, which leads parents t...
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作者：Chegere, Martin J.; Falco, Paolo; Menzel, Andreas
作者单位：University of Dar es Salaam; University of Copenhagen; Czech Academy of Sciences; Economics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences; Charles University Prague
摘要：Many firms hire workers via social networks. Whether workers who are socially connected to their employers exert more effort on the job is an unsettled debate. We address this question through a novel experiment with small-business owners in Tanzania. Participants are paired with a worker who conducts a real-effort task, and receive a payoff that depends on the worker's effort. Some business owners are randomly paired with workers they know, while others are paired with strangers. We find that...
