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on Development |
| By: | Aslihan Arslan (FAO-ESA); Federico Belotti (CEIS,University of Rome "Tor Vergata"); Leslie Lipper (FAO-ESA) |
| Abstract: | Food security in Tanzania is projected to deteriorate as a result of climate change. In spite of the efforts to promote agricultural practices to improve productivity and food security, adoption rates of such practices remain low. Developing a thorough understanding of the determinants of adoption and updating our understanding of the impacts of these technologies under the site-specific effects of climate change are crucial to improve food security. This paper addresses these issues by using a novel data set that combines information from two large-scale household surveys with geo-referenced historical rainfall and temperature data in order to understand the determinants of the adoption of a set of agricultural practices and their impacts on maize productivity under weather shocks in Tanzania. The specific practices analyzed are: maize-legume intercropping, soil and water conservation practices (SWC), the use of organic fertilizers, inorganic fertilizers and high yielding maize varieties. We find strong complementarities between these practices both in terms of adoption and yield impacts. Long-run variability in rainfall decreases the adoption of fertilizers (both organic and inorganic) and increases that of improved seeds. Access to information and extension increase the incentives to adopt modern inputs as well as SWC. Farmers in areas where the cropping season’s rainfall has been highly variable and temperature has been unexpectedly high have significantly lower maize yields. SWC emerges as one of the most important practices in increasing yields with significant benefits by itself, in combination with other practices, under average weather conditions as well as under rainfall and temperature shocks. The shocks we analyze are expected to increase under climate change, underlining the importance of policies to buffer food security from the estimated effects of climate change. This paper contributes to evidence base to support policies to advance food security under climate change by underlining the importance of integrating site-specific analyses of climatic variables and their interactions with promoted practices in policy design and targeting. |
| Keywords: | Technology adoption, productivity analysis, climate change, panel data, Tanzania. |
| JEL: | C23 C33 Q12 Q15 Q16 Q54 |
| Date: | 2016–06–24 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rtv:ceisrp:388&r=dev |
| By: | Obare,Francis; Okwero,Peter; Villegas,Leslie; Mills,Samuel Lantei; Bellows,Ben |
| Abstract: | Vouchers stimulate demand for health care services by giving beneficiaries purchasing power. In turn, health facilities? claims are reimbursed for providing beneficiaries with improved quality of health care. Efficient strategies to generate demand from new, often poor, users and supply in the form of increased access and expanded scope of services would help move Uganda away from inequity and toward universal health care. A reproductive health voucher program was implemented in 20 western and southwest Ugandan districts from April 2008 to March 2012. Using three years of data, this impact evaluation study employed a quasi-experimental design to examine differences in utilization of health services among women in voucher and nonvoucher villages. Two key findings were a 16-percentage-point net increase in private facility deliveries and a decrease in home deliveries among women who had used the voucher, indicating the project likely made contributions to increase private facility births in villages with voucher clients. No statistically significant difference was seen between respondents from voucher and nonvoucher villages in the use of postnatal care services, or in attending four or more antenatal care visits. A net 33-percentage-point decrease in out-of-pocket expenditure at private facilities in villages with voucher clients was found, and a higher percentage of voucher users came from households in the two poorest quintiles. The greater uptake of facility births by respondents in voucher villages compared with controls indicates that the approach has the potential to accelerate service uptake. A scaled program could help to move the country toward universal coverage of maternal health care. |
| Keywords: | Gender and Health,Health Systems Development&Reform,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Population Policies,Housing&Human Habitats |
| Date: | 2016–06–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:7709&r=dev |
| By: | Alem, Yonas (Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University); Maurel, Mathilde (CNRS-Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne, and FERDI); Millock, Katrin (CNRS-Paris School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | There is solid scientific evidence predicting that a large part of the developing world will suffer a greater incidence of extreme weather events, which may increase the incidence of displacement migration. We draw on the new economics of migration to model migration decisions of smallholder and rain-dependent farm households in rural Ethiopia and investigate both the ex-ante and ex-post impacts of climate variables. Using detailed household survey panel data matched with rainfall data, we show that weather variability - measured by the coeffcient of variation of rainfall - has a strong positive impact on the probability of sending a migrant. This implies that households engage in migration to cope with risk ex-ante. We also find evidence suggesting that rainfall shocks have ex-post impact on households' likelihood of migration, but the effect is not statistically significant at the conventional levels. Instrumental variables probit regression results also show that controlling for endogeneity of income using a credible instrument is important to identify its impact on the decision to send a migrant. Our findings have important implications for policies aiming to improve the capacity of vulnerable households to adapt to climate change. |
| Keywords: | climate change; drought; Ethiopia; household survey; migration; rainfall. |
| JEL: | O15 Q54 R23 |
| Date: | 2016–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0665&r=dev |
| By: | Sheahan, Megan; Liu, Yanyan; Narayanan, Sudha; Barrett, Christopher B. |
| Abstract: | How do household labor supply decisions change with the entry of a massive employment guarantee program? This paper explores the household level labor allocation effects – disaggregated by gender, age group, task, and season – associated with India’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) as specifically implemented in the state of Andhra Pradesh. Using three rounds of panel household survey data including 3,725 households combined with project administrative records, our results suggest that participation in the MGNREGS prompted an increase in overall household labor supply by about 13 days only in the summer slack labor season, mostly attributed to adult women. This expansion, though, is not large enough to evade “crowding out” of some labor previously offered to non-MGNREGS labor tasks, particularly private casual labor opportunities, and more so in the main agricultural seasons than the summer slack season. Despite overall labor displacement, women are found to increase their time spent on farm in the rabi agricultural season while men in a small number of surveyed households spend more time on migration labor activities in all three seasons studied. Time spent on paid and unpaid activities, including household chores, do not increase for youth and children in MGNREGS-participating households, suggesting no within-household substitution of labor towards younger members. |
| Keywords: | labor, employment guarantee, gender, MGNREGS, India, Agricultural and Food Policy, Labor and Human Capital, D13, E24, J22, J38, J45, |
| Date: | 2015–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea16:237345&r=dev |
| By: | Djossou, Gbètoton Nadège Adèle; Monwanou, Djohodo Ines; Novignon, Jacob |
| Abstract: | In February 2007, the Government of Benin set up a Microcredit Program to support the Poor (MPP). The main objective of this programme was to alleviate household poverty and particularly women through easy access to microcredit to start their own microenterprises. The objective of this paper was to assess the impact of the MPP on poverty and women empowerment in Benin. Our empirical strategy relies on comparing socioeconomic outcomes (poverty and gender inequality index) of individual with access to MPP and those without. Using data from the Beninese Household Survey (EMICoV: Enquête Modulaire Intégrée sur les Conditions de vie des Ménages) conducted by the National Institute of Statistics in 2011, we estimate the average treatment effect of the MPP using Propensity Score Matching (PSM). To measure poverty and gender inequality, we construct a composite indicator using various dimensions of wellbeing (e.g. Education, health, assets etc.). In general, the results showed a positive and significant impact of MPP on poverty. Women empowerment in health care access and assets ownership were positively impacted by MPP access. The results encourage further expansion of the MPP and to ensure effective as well as efficient implementation of the programme. |
| Keywords: | Microcredit, poverty, Women empowerment, Propensity Matching Score, Benin |
| JEL: | D6 D60 I3 I38 |
| Date: | 2016–06–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:72219&r=dev |
| By: | Ali Reza Oryoie; Jeffrey Alwang; Nicolaus Tideman |
| Abstract: | More than 20 percent of the world’s children work. Agriculture is the largest employer of working children, and most child laborers work on farms their families own. This paper shows that the relationship between use of children as laborers and land holding is nuanced. Child labor generally decreases as per capita land holding increases, but there is a persistent upward bump in the relationship between child labor and landholding near the middle of the range of land per capita. This pattern is repeated in three surveys conducted in Zimbabwe, in 2001, 2007-8 and 2010-11. The bump can be explained theoretically by the relationship between the marginal productivity of a child worker on the farm and the marginal value placed on his/her education, at different levels of wealth. |
| Keywords: | Child Labor; Land Holding; Marginal Productivity; Household Wealth |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:vpi:wpaper:e07-51&r=dev |
| By: | Ronan Congar (Department of Economics, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON); Louis Hotte (Department of Economics, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON) |
| Abstract: | We analyze the general equilibrium effects of a fundamental property regime transition in the rural sector - agricultural or resource - when both labor and (reproducible) capital are free to move. In contrast to manufacturing, rural production has two characteristic features: it uses a fixed natural asset (land or other natural resources) and operates under one of two property regime types: common property versus exclusive property. Common property is fundamentally characterized with sharing, thus corresponding to such institutions as the family farm (Lewis 1954), free access to resources, and collective use, but adapted for the presence of capital use. We show that labor may actually gain from being effectively forced out of the rural sector. More generally, relative factor intensities determine the factor return effects of the transition, as well as either capital or labor deepening in both sectors. And while the unit cost of effective input efforts decrease, both factors flow out of the rural sector. Under a common property regime, the agricultural productivity gaps for labor and capital are uniquely determined by the output elasticity of land. |
| Keywords: | Institutions, Property Rights, Agriculture, Natural Resources, Factor Migration, Factor Returns, Redistribution, Factor Misallocation, Structural Changes, Agrarian Reform, Resource Privatisation |
| JEL: | D02 D23 D33 L16 N50 O13 O15 O17 Q15 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ott:wpaper:1606e&r=dev |
| By: | Azam, Mehtabul (Oklahoma State University) |
| Abstract: | Indian government launched the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY), a national health insurance scheme, in 2008 that provides cashless health services to poor households in India. We evaluate the impact of RSBY on RSBY beneficiary households' (average treatment impact on the treated) utilization of health services, per capita out-of-pocket (OOP) expenditure, and per patient OOP expenditures on major morbidities. To address the issue of non-randomness in enrollment into the scheme, we exploit the longitudinal aspect of a large nationally representative household survey data to implement a difference-in-difference with matching. We find some evidence of positive impact of RSBY on utilization of health services by RSBY beneficiary households in rural India but not in urban India. However, there is no evidence that the RSBY reduced per person OOP expenditure for RSBY households in both rural and urban areas. Conditional on having received medical treatment for major morbidity, we find that RSBY increased probability of hospitalization and being treated by a government doctor in rural areas but no significant impact in urban areas. We also find lower expenditure on medicine for a RSBY cardholder patient in rural areas. |
| Keywords: | SHI, RSBY, IHDS, out-of-pocket expenditure, health services utilization |
| JEL: | I1 I18 I38 |
| Date: | 2016–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10018&r=dev |
| By: | Jean-Marie Baland (CRED, University of Namur, BREAD and CEPR); François Libois (CRED, University of Namur); Dilip Mookherjee (Boston University and BREAD) |
| Abstract: | A household panel data set is used to investigate the effects of economic growth on firewood collection in Nepal between 1995 and 2010. Results from preceding crosssectional analyses are found to be robust: (a) rising consumptions for all but the top decile were associated with increased firewood collections, contrary to the PovertyEnvironment hypothesis; (b) sources of growth matter: increased livestock was associated with increased collections, and falling household size, increased education, non-farm business assets and road connectivity with reduced collections. Nepal households collected 25% less firewood over this period, mostly explained by falling livestock, and rising education, connectivity and out-migration |
| Keywords: | deforestation, growth, Environmental Kuznets Curve, Nepal |
| JEL: | D12 O1 Q2 |
| Date: | 2015–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nam:befdwp:0105&r=dev |
| By: | de Laat, Joost; Jayachandran, Seema; Lambin, Eric F.; Stanton, Charlotte |
| Abstract: | This paper evaluates a Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) program in western Uganda that offered forest-owning households cash payments if they conserved their forest. The program was implemented as a randomized trial in 121 villages, 60 of which received the program for two years. The PES program reduced deforestation and forest degradation: Tree cover, measured using high-resolution satellite imagery, declined by 2% to 5% in treatment villages compared to 7% to 10% in control villages during the study period. We find no evidence of shifting of tree-cutting to nearby land. We then use the estimated effect size and the social cost of carbon to value the delayed CO2 emissions, and compare this benefit to the program's cost. |
| Keywords: | climate change; conditional cash transfers; deforestation; REDD+ |
| JEL: | O13 Q54 |
| Date: | 2016–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:11349&r=dev |
| By: | Amaral, Ernesto F. L.; Rios-Neto, Eduardo Luiz Goncalves; Potter, Joseph E. |
| Abstract: | This paper deals with the impact of internal migration flows on the earnings of male workers. The availability of jobs and income levels in sending and receiving areas also influence internal population flows. Thus, migration is an endogenous variable that cannot be simply introduced as an exogenous variable when estimating labor outcomes. A methodological approach is developed to introduce migration into our models, dealing with the issue of reverse causality between migration and earnings. We implement this strategy using the 1970–2000 Brazilian Demographic Censuses. Our findings reflect our initial hypothesis, indicating that migration flows have a negative impact on male earnings, when considering cohort size as a factor. A ten percent increase in migration rates would have reduced the wages of competing workers by up to three percent in 2000. These methodological strategies can be applied to other countries that have similar available migration data. |
| Keywords: | internal migration, earnings, labour market, reverse causality, migration schedules |
| Date: | 2015–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ran:wpaper:1090&r=dev |
| By: | Bruno Lanz; Simon Dietz; Tim Swanson |
| Abstract: | We study how uncertainty in the evolution of agricultural productivity interacts with economic and population growth, and the associated the demand for food. We use two-sector Schumpeterian model of growth, in which a manufacturing sector produces the traditional consumption good and an agricultural sector produces food to sustain contemporary population. Sectors differ in that agriculture also demands land as an input, itself treated as a scarce form of capital. In our model both population and sectoral technological progress are endogenously determined, and a number of key technological parameters of the model are structurally estimated using 1960-2010 data on world GDP, population, cropland and technological progress. Introducing random shocks to the evolution of total factor productivity in agriculture, we show that uncertainty optimally requires more land to be converted into agricultural use as a hedge against production shortages, and that it signficiantly affects both consumption and population trajectories. |
| JEL: | O11 O13 O31 J11 C61 Q16 Q24 |
| Date: | 2016–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fsc:fspubl:53&r=dev |
| By: | Jakobsen, Kristian Thor; Kaarsen, Nicolai; Vasiljeva, Kristine |
| Abstract: | In 2002 the Danish government reduced the size of cash transfers to new refugees. We exploit the reform to study the effect of lower transfers on educational outomces of refugee children. Surprisingly, the reduction in parental benefits has no negative effect on educational outcomes of the children, such as test scores, probability of completion of the 9th grade or probability of enrollment in upper-secondary education. Likewise, children of parents affected by the reform are not forced to earn more in youth. Refugee parents increase their labour supply and earn more to compensate for the loss in income, but on average the increase in earnings does not compensate for the decline in benefits. |
| Keywords: | refugees, refugee children, benefits, educational outcomes, employment |
| JEL: | H31 I29 J15 J29 J64 |
| Date: | 2016–06–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:72008&r=dev |
| By: | Dey, Subhasish (University of Manchester); Sen, Kunal (University of Manchester) |
| Abstract: | Do ruling parties positively discriminate in favour of their own constituencies in allocating public resources? If they do, do they gain electorally in engaging in such a practice? This paper tests whether partisan alignment exists in the allocation of funds for India's largest social protection programme, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) in the state of West Bengal in India, and whether incumbent local governments (village councils) gain electorally in the practice of partisan alignment. Using a quasi-experimental research design, we find that the village council level ruling-party spends significantly more in its own party constituencies as compared to opponent constituencies. We also find strong evidence of electoral rewards in the practice of partisan alignment. However, we find that the results differ between the two main ruling political parties at the village council level in the state. |
| Keywords: | National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, partisan alignment feedback effect, fuzzy regression discontinuity design |
| JEL: | H53 I38 |
| Date: | 2016–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9994&r=dev |
| By: | Carlos Henrique Corseuil (IPEA); Miguel Foguel (IPEA); Gustavo Gonzaga (Department of Economics, PUC-Rio) |
| Abstract: | The objective of this paper is to evaluate the Brazilian Apprenticeship program (Lei do Aprendiz). This program is a youth-targeted ALMP that has been adopted at a large scale since 2000 in Brazil. The program concedes payroll subsidies to firms that hire and train young workers under special temporary contracts aiming to help them successfully complete the transition from school to work. We make use of a very rich longitudinal matched employee-employer dataset covering the universe of formally employed workers in Brazil, including apprentices. Our identification strategy exploits a discontinuity by age in the eligibility to enter the program in the early 2000’s, when 17 was the age limit to take part in the program. We examine the impacts on employability, wage growth and attachment to the formal labor market using other temporary workers as a control group. We find that the program increases the probability of employment in permanent jobs in 2-3- and 4-5-year horizons. We also find a positive impact on real wages that increases over time. These results hold when we isolate the effects of the training dimension of the program by using an alternative control group composed of subsidized temporary workers. We show evidence that the positive effects of the program are much larger for less-educated workers and for workers who had their first jobs in large firms. These results are robust to other choices of methods to address selection into the program based on unobservables. Creation-Date: 2016-04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rio:texdis:651&r=dev |
| By: | Lara Cockx; Nathalie Francken |
| Abstract: | In the aftermath of the world food price crisis, the issue of food and nutrition security has received a high level of political attention and the international donor community has repeatedly underlined its commitment to combat hunger in the world. In order to enhance the effectiveness of the international community's efforts in addressing the widespread problem of malnutrition, we need to improve our knowledge on what activities donors are currently engaging in and which interventions have been shown to be successful. This paper offers both an overview of the aid for food and nutrition security landscape and how it has changed and an extensive review of the available evidence on the impact of a wide array of interventions aimed at addressing all four dimensions of food and nutrition security; availability, access, utilization and stability. We find that despite the renewed interest and elevated levels of funding for food and nutrition security assistance in developing countries, the empirical evidence base for the effectiveness of these interventions in improving beneficiaries' food and nutrition security - although in several cases promising - is weak. In particular, the question whether different interventions improve the quality of food consumption and consequently nutrient intake and status, remains largely unanswered. Moreover, few studies assess longer-term effects and there exists relatively little rigorous evidence that compares different interventions. It is therefore strongly recommended to undertake additional research to improve the evidence base as this would allow researchers and policy makers to establish the type of approaches that improve food and nutrition security in the most efficient and cost-effective manner. Finally, in order to facilitate this process, there is a need for a clear and uniform definition of food and nutrition security assistance on the one hand as well as agreed upon, comprehensive indicators on the other hand. |
| JEL: | F35 F53 I38 O12 O13 O15 |
| Date: | 2016–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fsc:fspubl:47&r=dev |
| By: | Brown, Drusilla (Tufts University); Dehejia, Rajeev (New York University); Robertson, Raymond (Texas A&M University) |
| Abstract: | Working conditions in developing countries, such as those associated with the 2013 Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh, remain stubbornly low despite strict laws regulating hours, pay practices and occupational safety and health. Recent theoretic and empirical work suggests that norms and learning may play a significant role in determining conditions. We exploit the natural experiment of Cambodia's 15-year experience with the Better Factories Cambodia program to identify variation that reveals the relative contributions of laws, costs, norms, and learning in improving working conditions in Cambodia. The results suggest that policies that follow from the learning hypothesis may be the most effective at improving working conditions in the long run. |
| Keywords: | working conditions, norms, personnel economics |
| JEL: | F53 F66 J8 |
| Date: | 2016–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10025&r=dev |
| By: | Okeke, Edward N.; Chari, Amalavoyal V. |
| Abstract: | Current global health policies emphasize institutional deliveries as a pathway to achieving reductions in newborn mortality in developing countries. There is however remarkably little evidence regarding a causal relationship between institutional deliveries and newborn mortality. In this paper we take advantage of a shock to institutional deliveries provided by the randomized rollout of a government performance-based financing (PBF) program in Rwanda, to provide the first estimates of this causal effect. Using a combination of difference-in-differences and regression discontinuity approaches, we find that program-induced increases in the rate of institutional delivery have not been successful in reducing the rate of newborn mortality. The findings suggest that attempts to increase institutional deliveries without addressing supply-side constraints are unlikely to result in the large reductions in mortality that policy makers expect. |
| Keywords: | health production, infant mortality, institutional births |
| JEL: | C93 D01 D03 I12 |
| Date: | 2014–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ran:wpaper:1072&r=dev |
| By: | Bruhn, Miriam (World Bank) |
| Abstract: | The rise in unemployment during an economic crisis poses a significant concern to policy makers. This paper measures the effect of a program in Mexico that granted firms in certain industries wage subsidies if they decided to keep their workers instead of letting them go during the recent economic crisis. The analysis uses monthly administrative data on employment at the industry level, along with propensity score matching to construct groups of eligible and ineligible durable goods manufacturing industries that display statistically identical pre‐program trends in employment. Difference‐in‐difference results show a positive but not statistically significant effect of the wage subsidies on employment during the program's eight‐month duration, ranging from 5.7 to 13.2 percent in magnitude, depending on the specification. The size of the effect increases to 24 percent after the program ended and the results indicate that employment after the program recovered faster in eligible industries than in ineligible industries. |
| Keywords: | wage subsidies, industrial policy, crisis mitigation, firm behavior |
| JEL: | J23 H32 L60 |
| Date: | 2016–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9995&r=dev |
| By: | Anita K Zonebia (Department of Economics, Padjadjaran University); Arief Anshory Yusuf (Department of Economics, Padjadjaran University); Heriyaldi (Department of Economics, Padjadjaran University) |
| Abstract: | Level of economic development has been found to be among the strongest determinants of corruption level in cross-country studies. Those studies use income per capita as a measure of level of development and found that higher level of corruption is associated with lower level of income. We argue that, at any given income level, education is also a very important determinant of the level of corruption and failing to include education may bias or over-estimate the importance of income. We estimated an empirical model of individual’s attitude toward anti-corruption using a large sample of 9,020 individuals that represent Indonesian population and find that the effect of income (proxied by expenditure) is either weakened or eliminated when we control for the level of education. The effect of education is also found to exhibit a non-linear pattern which implies that investing in education will have increasing returns in the form of anti-corruption attitude. This finding supports the view that increasing access to education is an effective measure of reducing corruption norms particularly in developing countries. |
| Keywords: | Corruption, Anti-corruption, development, Indonesia |
| JEL: | D73 |
| Date: | 2015–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unp:sdgspp:201615&r=dev |
| By: | Ahlerup, Pelle (Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University); Baskaran, Thushyanthan (University of Siegen); Bigsten, Arne (Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University) |
| Abstract: | We provide micro-level evidence on an important channel through which mineral resources may adversely affect development in the long-run: lower educational attainment. Combining Afrobarometer survey data with geocoded data on the discovery and shutdown dates of of gold mines, we show that respondents who had a gold mine within their district when they were in adolescence have significantly lower educational attainment. These results are robust to the omission of individual countries, different definitions of adulthood, the use of alternative data from the Development and Health Surveys (DHS), and buffer-based approaches to define neighborhood. Regarding mechanisms, we conclude that the educational costs of mines are likely due to households making myopic educational decisions when employment in gold mining is an alternative. We explore and rule out competing mechanism such as endogenous migration, a lower provision of public goods by the government, and a higher propensity for violent conflicts in gold mining districts. |
| Keywords: | Education; mineral resources; gold mining; survey data; Africa |
| JEL: | D74 H70 O10 |
| Date: | 2016–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0666&r=dev |
| By: | Robertson, Raymond (Texas A&M University); Brown, Drusilla (Tufts University); Dehejia, Rajeev (New York University) |
| Abstract: | A large and growing literature has identified several conditions, including exporting, that contribute to plant survival. A prevailing sentiment suggests that anti-sweatshop activity against plants in developing countries adds the risk of making survival more difficult by imposing external constraints that may interfere with optimizing behavior. Using a relatively new plant-level panel dataset from Cambodia, this paper applies survival analysis to estimate the relationship between changes in working conditions and plant closure. The results find little, if any, evidence that improving working conditions increases the probability of closure. In fact, some evidence suggests that improvements in standards relating to compensation are positively correlated with the probability of plant survival. |
| Keywords: | working conditions, apparel, sweatshops, plant survival, closure |
| JEL: | J8 J5 J3 |
| Date: | 2016–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10026&r=dev |
| By: | Muhammad Badiuzzaman; Syed Mansoob Murshed |
| Abstract: | We evaluate the effectiveness of a post-conflict development programme on maternal health-care utilization in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh. Our work varies from conventional impact evaluation studies because of the inclusion of two post-conflict psychosocial risks: the household.s actual experience of violence, and subjective perceptions about violence, as key determinants of programme effectiveness. Following the difference-indifference estimator, and propensity score matching method this study establishes that the postconflict development programme undertaken by Chittagong Hill Tracts Development Facility of the United Nations Development Programme is successful in improving maternal health-care utilization. Despite this, forced settlement by outsiders, household experiences of conflict, and perceptions of insecurity lower maternal health-care utilization. The effectiveness of the programme would have been greater in the absence of conflict, although the programme may have mitigated some experiences of past conflict. The intervention fails to significantly narrow the inter-ethnic gap in terms of health-care utilization, chiefly attributable to the adverse effects of the forced settlement of non-indigenous peoples in the region. |
| Keywords: | conflict, post-conflict reconstruction, healthcare usage, health inequality |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp2016-082&r=dev |
| By: | Porter,Catherine; White,Emily Jennifer |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes the potential to combine catastrophe risk modelling (CAT risk modeling) with economic analysis of vulnerability to poverty using the example of drought hazard impacts on the welfare of rural households in Ethiopia. The aim is to determine the potential for applying a derived set of damage (vulnerability) functions based on realized shocks and household expenditure/consumption outcomes, onto a forward-looking view of drought risk. The paper outlines the CAT risk modeling framework and the role of the vulnerability module, which describes the response of an affected exposure to a given hazard intensity. The need to explicitly account for different household characteristics that determine vulnerability within our model is considered, analogous to how a CAT risk model would differentiate damage functions for buildings by different classes of construction. Results for a regression model are presented, estimating ex-post drought impacts on consumption for heterogeneous household types (e.g. with cattle, safety-net access, illness). Next, the validity/generalizability of the derived functions are assessed, to infer applicability of the derived relationships within a CAT risk modelling framework. In particular, the analysis focuses on external validity: whether the relationships established in the dataset can be used for forecasting outside of the sample used for analysis. The model is stress-tested using statistical methods of resampling. This involves randomly splitting the data into ?training? and"testing"datasets. The tests show consistency of results across the datasets. Finally, future plans are outlined with regard to developing a fuller catastrophe risk model to combine with the consumption results. |
| Keywords: | Climate Change Economics,Regional Economic Development,Hazard Risk Management,Statistical&Mathematical Sciences,Rural Poverty Reduction |
| Date: | 2016–06–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:7717&r=dev |