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作者：Debnath, Sisir; Nilayamgode, Mrithyunjayan; Sekhri, Sheetal
作者单位：Indian Institute of Technology System (IIT System); Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) - Delhi; University of Virginia
摘要：Distribution networks entrusted to run welfare programs can have enduring leakages due to the expensive monitoring of agents at several echelons. This paper features a technological innovation harnessing low-cost computing that can help to curb leakages and reduce inefficiencies in such complex welfare distribution networks. A phone-based 'Interactive Voice Response System' that requires the last-mile distribution agents to report the number of beneficiaries at a very high frequency concurrent...
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作者：Assaad, Ragui; Ginn, Thomas; Saleh, Mohamed
作者单位：University of Minnesota System; University of Minnesota Twin Cities; University of London; London School Economics & Political Science
摘要：While labor market impacts of refugees in low-and middle-income countries are commonly studied, public services like education could also be affected by mass arrivals. This paper examines the impact of Syrian refugees on the educational outcomes of Jordanians. Combining detailed household surveys with school-level records on the density of Syrians, we study both the quantity and quality of education using a difference -in-differences design across refugee prevalence and schooling cohort. We fi...
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作者：Ingwersen, Nicholas; Frankenberg, Elizabeth; Thomas, Duncan
作者单位：University of North Carolina; University of North Carolina Chapel Hill; University of North Carolina School of Medicine; Duke University
摘要：The impact of exposure to a major unanticipated natural disaster on the evolution of survivors' attitudes toward risk is examined, exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in exposure to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami in combination with rich population-representative longitudinal survey data spanning the five years after the tsunami. Respondents chose among pairs of hypothetical income streams. Those directly exposed to the tsunami made choices consistent with greater willingness to take on ri...
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作者：Dustan, Andrew; Hernandez-Agramonte, Juan Manuel; Maldonado, Stanislao
作者单位：Vanderbilt University; Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA); Universidad del Rosario
摘要：We study how text messages incorporating behavioral insights can be used as a tool to affect civil servant performance when state capacity is weak. By experimentally varying the content of a messaging campaign targeted to civil servants implementing a school maintenance program in Peru, we test the effectiveness of reminders and treatments making salient either monitoring, social norms, the possibility of public disclosure of noncompliance, or audit risk. All messaging treatments improve compl...
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作者：Rehman, Obeid Ur
作者单位：Toronto Metropolitan University
摘要：Do spouses misreport information to each other to influence household decision-making? I analyze this question using a novel field experiment among Filipino migrants in the UAE and their spouses staying behind in the Philippines. Both migrants and their spouses staying behind have biased beliefs about each other's finances. By experimentally varying spousal observability of reported information, I show that spouses staying behind underreport their income by 31 percent when it is observable to ...
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作者：Berniell, Ines; Gasparini, Leonardo; Marchionni, Mariana; Viollaz, Mariana
作者单位：Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas (CONICET); IZA Institute Labor Economics
摘要：This paper assesses gender differences in the effects of adverse conditions at labor-market entry in a developing region. Using harmonized microdata from national household surveys for 15 Latin American countries, we build a synthetic panel of cohorts that potentially transition from school to work and observe their labor market outcomes 10 years later. We find that men who faced higher unemployment rates at ages 18-20 suffer a negative effect on employment at ages 27-30. In contrast, women fr...
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作者：Geng, Xin; Janssens, Wendy; Kramer, Berber
作者单位：SAS Institute Inc; Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; Tinbergen Institute
摘要：Limited access to reliable financial instruments makes it difficult for rural households to manage daily cash flows. Selling goods through cooperatives can improve savings, but cooperative income is not easily accessible when facing an emergency. Cash-constrained households may therefore side-sell in local markets that pay on the spot, while insurance could reduce the need to side-sell. We test these hypotheses using panel data for farmers from two Kenyan dairy cooperatives. Both cooperatives ...
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作者：Xie, Tingting; Yuan, Ye
作者单位：Central University of Finance & Economics; Peking University
摘要：This paper assesses the spatial effects of environmental regulations on economic activities. By exploiting the progressive rollout of a national pollution control program in China, which constructed a monitoring network that covered the urban center of every city, we find that polluting firms located in the unmonitored upwind region of the city experienced a substantially larger reduction in output than non-upwind firms after the program. Because the wind can transport upwind pollution emissio...
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作者：Wu, Mingqin; Yu, Linhui; Zhang, Junsen
作者单位：South China Normal University; Zhejiang University
摘要：This paper exploits the rapid expansion of China's road infrastructure in the 2000s to empirically investigate the pro-competitive effect of transport infrastructure via the allocative efficiency channel. Dispersion of firm markups is used to gauge allocative efficiency of resources. We address the endogenous provincial road length by instrumenting road using a least-cost path route, and deal with the endogenous timing of road construction by using a network theory algorithm to predict road co...
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作者：Augsburg, Britta; Caeyers, Bet; Giunti, Sara; Malde, Bansi; Smets, Susanna
作者单位：Norwegian School of Economics (NHH); University of Milano-Bicocca; University of Kent; The World Bank
摘要：Imperfect capital markets and commitment problems impede lumpy human capital investments. Labeled loans have been postulated as a potential solution to both constraints, but little is known about the role of the label in influencing investment choices in practice. We draw on a cluster randomized controlled trial in rural India to test predictions from a theoretical model, providing novel evidence that labeled microcredit is effective in influencing household borrowing and investment decisions ...
