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on Development |
| By: | Eric Avis (UC Berkeley); Claudio Ferraz (Department of Economics, PUC-Rio); Frederico Finan (UC Berkeley) |
| Abstract: | Political corruption is considered a major impediment to economic development, and yet it remains pervasive throughout the world. This paper examines the extent to which government audits of public resources can reduce corruption by enhancing political and judiciary accountability. We do so in the context of Brazil’s anti-corruption program, which randomly audits municipalities for their use of federal funds. We find that being audited in the past reduces future corruption by 8 percent, while also increasing the likelihood of experiencing a subsequent legal action by 20 percent. We interpret these reduced-form findings through a political agency model, which we structurally estimate. Based on our estimated model, the reduction in corruption comes mostly from the audits increasing the perceived threat of the non-electoral costs of engaging in corruption. Creation-Date: 2016-07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rio:texdis:652&r=dev |
| By: | Martinez, Jr., Arturo (Asian Development Bank) |
| Abstract: | This study reviews two methods of measuring poverty dynamics. The components approach uses the longitudinally averaged income to determine whether a household is chronically poor or not. On the other hand, the spells approach counts the number of poverty episodes experienced by a household. Using panel data from the Philippines, we examine the differences between these analytical methods of measuring chronic and transient poverty. Furthermore, the study also examines the sensitivity of estimates of poverty dynamics to measurement parameters. While I find that both the components and spells approaches suggest that most poverty experiences of Filipino households were persistent, my robustness analysis reveals that the relative importance of persistent and transient poverty are sensitive to the type of poverty measure used and the poverty line pecified. In particular, the relative importance of transient poverty increases dramatically as the poverty line decreases or as the poverty measure becomes more sensitive to the welfare of the poorest of the poor. |
| Keywords: | persistent poverty; Philippines; transient |
| JEL: | D31 I32 O15 |
| Date: | 2016–03–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:adbewp:0477&r=dev |
| By: | Richard Akresh; Damien de Walque; Harounan Kazianga |
| Abstract: | We conducted a randomized control trial in rural Burkina Faso to estimate the impact of alternative cash transfer delivery mechanisms on education, health, and household welfare outcomes. The two-year pilot program randomly distributed cash transfers that were either conditional or unconditional and were given to either mothers or fathers. Conditionality was linked to older children enrolling in school and attending regularly and younger children receiving preventive health check-ups. Compared to the control group, cash transfers improve children's education and health and household socioeconomic conditions. For school enrollment and most child health outcomes, conditional cash transfers outperform unconditional cash transfers. Giving cash to mothers does not lead to significantly better child health or education outcomes, and there is evidence that money given to fathers improves young children's health, particularly during years of poor rainfall. Cash transfers to fathers also yields relatively more household investment in livestock, cash crops, and improved housing. |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:okl:wpaper:1611&r=dev |
| By: | d'Agostino, Giorgio; Scarlato, Margherita |
| Abstract: | The Child Support Grant (CSG) represents one of the major cash transfer implemented in South Africa to address children's vulnerability and household poverty. This paper provides an evaluation of the impact of the CSG on gender inequality by evaluating the effect of the programme on the employment status of adult members of beneficiary households. We use data from the 2008, 2010-2011 and 2012 National Income Dynamics Study and apply a fuzzy regression discontinuity design that exploits the expansion in eligibility due to a discontinous change in the age eligibility criterion. The analysis considers two source of heterogeneity in the impact of the CSG on labour market, i.e. gender and household members receiving the Old Age Pension social grant. In addition, the evaluation identifies differing effects by number of treated children in beneficiary households. Overall, this evaluation shows that the CSG had a negative effect on the probability of being employed of the beneficiary household members and increased gender inequality by strongly discouraging women's employment. |
| Keywords: | Cash transfers, Regression discontinuity design, sub-Saharan Africa |
| JEL: | C33 I38 O55 |
| Date: | 2016–06–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:72523&r=dev |
| By: | Mishra, Khushbu; Gallenstein, Richard; Miranda, Mario J; Sam, Abdoul G; Toledo, Patricia T |
| Abstract: | The majority of the world’s poor live in rural areas and rely on agriculture for their income. Therefore, increasing agricultural efficiency via technology adoption is critical to reducing poverty in developing agrarian economies such as those in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Despite its apparent advantages, SSA has one of the lowest adoption rates. Accordingly, the objective of this paper is to investigate if the availability of meso-and micro-level insurance encourages access to credit by relaxing demand side and supply side constraints. We further disaggregate the effects by gender of the farmer to see if any differential impacts exist over female versus male farmers. Using a randomized control trial and difference-in-difference estimation, we find that availability of meso-level insurance, when the banks are the policy holders, increases the likelihood of agricultural loan approvals for smallholder farmers. Gender level analysis shows that the likelihood increases for both female and male farmers. |
| Keywords: | agricultural technology adoption, credit access, insurance, panel data, Ghana, Food Security and Poverty, International Development, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, Risk and Uncertainty, |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea16:239853&r=dev |
| By: | Christie Swanepoel and Johan Fourie; Johan Fourie |
| Abstract: | For economic transactions, including debt transactions, to occur in a market system, property rights are essential. The literature has focussed on finding empirical proof of the effect of property right regimes, noting differences between de jure and de facto property rights. Yet most of these studies focus on macroeconomic outcomes, like economic growth and public expenditure. We propose, instead, to use individual debt transactions and property ownership available in probate inventories from early colonial South Africa to investigate the effects of property right regimes on economic outcomes at the individual level. At the Cape, de jure property rights between freehold and loan farms differed. Historians, however, suggest that de facto property rights between these two property types were the same. We exploit the random variation of birth order, specifically being the oldest son, to estimate whether the type of farm, and therefore the type of property rights, matter for economic activity, in our case, debt transactions. Our results suggest that historians were correct: loan farms were as secure in their de facto property rights, despite differences in de jure property rights. Our results confirm that the local context in which property right regimes are embedded are at least as important as the property right regime itself. |
| Keywords: | Property rights, informal credit markets, institutions, Africa |
| JEL: | G21 D23 P14 N27 N37 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rza:wpaper:623&r=dev |
| By: | Kaletski, Elizabeth (Ithaca College) |
| Abstract: | This paper explores the impact of child labor on child welfare, with a specific focus on the relationship between working and education. I look at the empirical relationship between working and educational expenditure budget shares for children age 5-14 in Mexico. I accomplish this using a household fixed effects model and data from two waves of the Mexican Family Life Survey (MxFLS). The results indicate that working increases school expenditure shares for working children. In particular, on average, girls engaged in paid work have total annual education expenditure shares that are 48.6% higher than girls who do not work. This relationship varies significantly with characteristics of both the individual and the household, including the child's gender and type of work performed, as well as the household's income, location, and relative female bargaining power. The results indicate that working does not appear to translate into a decrease in welfare and the additional expenditure is directed towards goods that improve the quality of education. |
| Keywords: | child labor, education, child welfare, child incentives, household decision making |
| JEL: | D13 I21 J22 O15 |
| Date: | 2016–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10054&r=dev |
| By: | Azhar Khan (Department of Economics, University of Strathclyde); Twyeafur Rahman (Department of Economics, University of Strathclyde); Robert E Wright (Department of Economics, University of Strathclyde) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the impact of micro-credit on employment. Household-level data was collected, following a quasi-experimental design, in Bangladesh and Pakistan. Three borrower groups are compared: Current borrowers; Pipeline borrowers and Non-borrowers. Pipeline borrowers are included to control for self-selection effects. It is argued that microcredit causes a substitution of employment away from employment-for-pay to self-employment. Therefore, the effect on total employment is ambiguous. OLS and fixed effects regression are used to examine separately self-employment and employment-for-pay between three groups of borrowers. For Pakistan, there is no evidence that micro-credit effects employment. However, for Bangladesh, there is robust evidence consistent with this hypothesis. |
| Keywords: | Micro-credit, self-employment |
| JEL: | G21 J22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:str:wpaper:1610&r=dev |
| By: | Kurt Annen (Department of Economics and Finance, University of Guelph); Scott Strickland (Ministry of Community and Social Services, Government of Ontario) |
| Abstract: | This paper finds a large causal donor election cycle effect in humanitarian aid allocations: On average, humanitarian aid increases by 54% in the year before elections. Our identifcation strategy consists of focusing on donors with fixed election dates, making elections clearly exogenous. Furthermore, we find large interaction effects with natural and human disasters. This evidence is consistent with our theory that incumbent governments responding to humanitarian disasters can increase voter support for their party and insure against the political fall-out of not being seen as representatives of a country with global interests and influence. However, it is important to stress that despite our findings, human and natural disasters explain a substantially larger share of the overall variation in humanitarian aid observed in the data. |
| Keywords: | Humanitarian aid, election cycles, aid allocation |
| JEL: | F35 D72 H5 O19 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gue:guelph:2016-07&r=dev |
| By: | Kahn, Azhar (University of Strathclyde); Rahman, Twyeafur (University of Strathclyde); Wright, Robert E. (University of Strathclyde) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the impact of micro-credit on employment. Household-level data was collected, following a quasi-experimental design, in Bangladesh and Pakistan. Three borrower groups are compared: Current borrowers; Pipeline borrowers and Non-borrowers. Pipeline borrowers are included to control for self-selection effects. It is argued that micro-credit causes a substitution of employment away from employment-for-pay to self-employment. Therefore, the effect on total employment is ambiguous. OLS and fixed effects regression are used to examine separately self-employment and employment-for-pay between three groups of borrowers. For Pakistan, there is no evidence that micro-credit effects employment. However, for Bangladesh, there is robust evidence consistent with this hypothesis. |
| Keywords: | micro-credit, poverty, self-employment |
| JEL: | G21 J22 I39 |
| Date: | 2016–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10046&r=dev |
| By: | Lidia Ceriani (The World Bank); Simona Scabrosetti (Università di Pavia e DONDENA); Francesco Scervini (School of Advanced Studies IUSS Pavia) |
| Abstract: | We study the distributional impact of privatization in the light of the democrati- zation process in developing countries which have recently experienced economic and political transitions. Using an unbalanced panel of 80 countries in the period 1988-2008, we find that privatization is negatively and significantly correlated with inequality when democratic institutions are well consolidated, and positively when they are not. Our evidence suggests an interesting policy implication for developing countries: only after having established mature representative political institutions, privatization appears to be related to a reduction in income inequality. |
| Keywords: | Inequality, Democracy, Privatization, Developing countries |
| JEL: | D30 O15 P5 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipu:wpaper:45&r=dev |
| By: | Basant, Rakesh; Sen, Gitanjali |
| Abstract: | This paper measures the impact of quota-based affirmative action in higher education (HE) in India for Other Backward Classes (OBC), implemented from 2008. Since the immediate impact would be felt by OBCs who were eligible to go to college at the time of the implementation, we compare the differences in participation in HE by the younger (18-23 years) and the older (24-29 years) age groups within eligible OBCs, with similar differences in the general caste population. The same double difference is also compared across states with different histories of affirmative action to ascertain if there are regional variations in the impact of the policy, with the expectation that the impact would be higher in regions with no history of affirmative action. Our results from the Difference in Difference (DD) estimates based on National Sample Survey data for 2011-12 do not show a positive impact of the policy on the participation of OBCs. In fact, the impact seems to be negative in all regions, though statistically insignificant, except the East which lacks the long history of affirmative action. A comparison of the East without a long history of affirmative action with the South having a long history of such policy, using triple difference method, produces positive treatment effects, but the estimate loses statistical significance once we control for observable covariates. Our results suggest that the generalized nation-wide policy of this kind may not be relevant for issues which are more regional in nature. (JEL Codes: H75, I23, I24, I25, I28, J15, O15). |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iim:iimawp:14548&r=dev |
| By: | Sutanuka Roy (London School of Economics, London, UK); Prakarsh Singh (Amherst College, Amherst, MA, US) |
| Abstract: | Using a large-scale novel panel dataset (2005–14) on schools from the Indian state of Assam, we test for the impact of violent conflict on female students’ enrollment rates. We find that a doubling of average killings in a district-year leads to a 13 per cent drop in girls’ enrollment rate with school fixed effects. Additionally, results remain similar when using an alternative definition of conflict from a different dataset. Gender differential responses are more negative for lower grades, rural schools, poorer districts, and for schools run by local and private unaided bodies. |
| Keywords: | conflict, education, gender discrimination, human capital, India |
| JEL: | I2 J1 O1 |
| Date: | 2016–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hic:wpaper:225&r=dev |