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on Development |
| By: | Giuseppe De Arcangelis (Sapienza University of Rome); Dean Yang (University of Michigan) |
| Abstract: | We conducted a randomized experiment of the impact of remittance labeling among Filipino migrant workers in the UAE. The ability to label remittances with the migrantÕs intended uses leads migrants with low levels of baseline (pre-treatment) remittances to increase their remittance levels. There is no effect of labeling for migrants with initially higher remittance levels. We also examined impacts of remittance labeling on household expenditures in treated migrantsÕ remittance-recipient households in the Philippines. The labeling treatment does not lead to higher expenditures on uses that migrants report as priority items (in the full sample or in subsamples split by baseline remittances). There is only weak or mixed evidence that labeling leads to actual changes in household expenditures towards the purposes preferred by migrants. |
| Keywords: | RCT, Philippines, remittances |
| JEL: | F24 O15 D19 C9 |
| Date: | 2022–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mie:wpaper:684&r= |
| By: | John Gibson (University of Waikato); Yi Jiang (Asian Development Bank); Bambang Susantono (Asian Development Bank) |
| Abstract: | There is increasing interest in assessing whether growth of big cities has effects that differ from effects of growth of secondary towns, especially for impacts on poverty. It can be difficult to study these issues with typical sub-national economic data for administrative units because urban growth often occurs outside of the administrative boundaries of cities. An emerging literature therefore uses remote sensing to measure patterns of urban growth without being restricted by limitations of data for administrative areas. We add to this literature by combining remote sensing data on night-time lights for 41 big cities and 497 districts in Indonesia with annual poverty estimates from socio-economic surveys, using spatial econometric models to examine effects of urban growth on poverty during 2011-19. We measure growth on both the extensive (lit area) and intensive (brightness within lit area) margins, and distinguish between growth of big cities and of secondary towns. The extensive margin growth of secondary towns is associated with lower rates of poverty but there is no similar effect for growth of big cities. The productivity advantages of big cities and concerns about agricultural land loss to expanding towns and cities may imply that urban growth patterns favouring big cities are warranted, while on the other hand these new results suggest, from a poverty reduction point of view, that policies to favour secondary towns may be warranted. Policymakers in countries like Indonesia therefore face difficult trade-offs when developing their urbanization strategies. |
| Keywords: | big cities; night-time lights; poverty; secondary towns;Indonesia |
| JEL: | O15 R12 |
| Date: | 2022–02–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wai:econwp:22/05&r= |
| By: | Nguyen, Cuong; Tran, Tuyen; Vu, Huong |
| Abstract: | In this study, we find that the negative effect of unexploded ordnance (UXO) on the geographical density of foreign direct investment and large firms is a new channel through which the war legacy impedes local development in Vietnam. A 1% increase in the proportion of UXO-contaminated area leads to a 0.78% relative decrease in the density of FDI firms within districts. Point estimates for the elasticity of the density of joint-venture FDI firms and state-owned enterprise (SOEs) due to UXO are smaller, equal to -0.56 and -0.54. Consequently, a 1% increase in the proportion of UXO-contaminated areas leads to a 0.46% relative decrease in the intensity of nighttime light. |
| Keywords: | War; FDI; unexploded ordnance; local development; Vietnam. |
| JEL: | O12 R12 |
| Date: | 2021–08–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:111891&r= |
| By: | Celia P. Vera (Universidad de Piura); Bruno Jiménez (Universidad Nacional de La Plata) |
| Abstract: | Peru is the second largest host nation of Venezuelan migrants. This paper combines newly available data on Venezuelans residing in Peru and the Peruvian Household Survey to assess the impact of migration on natives? labor market outcomes. We first rely upon education-experience groups to define labor markets and find that immigration does not affect the wages of competing native workers. We then slice the labor market into occupations based on the observation that in Peru, immigrants and natives with similar education and experience are likely to work in different occupations. Our instrumental variable estimates confirm the null effect on wages. We finally examine whether natives respond with changes in employment and find that 10 Venezuelan workers create informal employment for 38 Peruvians and displace 13 Peruvians from formal jobs, suggesting a change in the Peruvian employment composition toward informality. |
| Keywords: | Immigration, education-experience cells, occupation cells, informality |
| JEL: | J24 J31 J46 |
| Date: | 2022–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ima:wpaper:2022-018&r= |
| By: | Harding, Robin; Prem, Mounu; Ruiz, Nelson A.; Vargas, David L. |
| Abstract: | While existing work has demonstrated that campaign donations can buy access to benets such as favorable legislation and preferential contracting, we highlight another use of campaign contributions: buying reductions in regulatory enforcement. Specically, we argue that in return for campaign contributions, Colombian mayors who rely on donor-funding (compared to those who do not) choose not to enforce sanctions against illegal deforestation activities. Using a regression discontinuity design, we show that deforestation is signicantly higher in municipalities that elect donor-funded as opposed to self-funded politicians. Further analysis shows that only part of this eect can be explained by dierences in contracting practices by donor-funded mayors. Instead, evidence of heterogeneity in the eects according to the presence of alternative formal and informal enforcement institutions, and analysis of re clearance, support the interpretation that campaign contributions buy reductions in the enforcement of environmental regulations. |
| Keywords: | Campaign donations; Deforestation; Regulatory enforcement |
| Date: | 2022–03–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:iastwp:126766&r= |
| By: | Harsh Malhotra |
| Abstract: | This paper studies a key aspect of improved living standards: freedom from violence. Using data from a nationally representative sample of nearly 37,000 households (IHDS 2011 and 2005),I document the specific vulnerability of historically marginalised Scheduled Castes (SC), Dalits, to attacks/threats. In 2011, a scheduled caste household is around 40% more likely, on average, to report attacks/threats than any “upper caste” group, even in within-village comparisons, and with various controls including for reported attacks/threats in the previous survey round. The evidence suggests that historical social divisions and present-day economic insecurity are closely related to this pattern. A scheduled caste household is more likely to report attacks/threats relative to others, in especially those villages where discriminatory caste traditions are practised, or where living arrangements are caste-segregated within the village. Places where less-wealthy high-caste households experience slower (faster) economic growth during 2005-2011 see significantly more (less) violence differentially against scheduled castes. The patterns I report are consistent with the hypothesis that economic insecurity among social elites may fuel violence against minority groups. |
| Date: | 2022–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cde:cdewps:322&r= |
| By: | Federico Maggio (Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy); Carlo Caporali (Gran Sasso Science Institute, Italy) |
| Abstract: | During the 2010s, Venezuela underwent the worst and deepest crisis of any nonwar- ridden country in modern history. The failure of the socialist utopia, the economic crisis, the increasing lack of primary resources, and the dictatorial turn have caused the third, most dramatic, and complex Venezuelan out-migration wave in the past decade. Drawing on exclusive and georeferenced survey data collected in Venezuela and providing information on 21,382 individuals, this paper investigates the role of the police force militarization in the Venezuelan migration crisis of 2018. We find that the higher is the level of authoritative violence - proxied by the share of homicides committed by the security forces - the higher is the likelihood for an individual to migrate. The effect is significant only among males with a lower level of education. Estimates which rely on the travel time from the capital to each state’s most populated city as an instrumental variable, are robust to the inclusion of several households, environmental and sociodemographic characteristics, including the overall level of violence represented by the number of violent deaths per 100,000 inhabitants. |
| Keywords: | Venezuela, Diaspora, State Violence, Police militarization. |
| JEL: | F22 O15 R23 |
| Date: | 2022–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bzn:wpaper:bemps92&r= |
| By: | Lena Lee Andresen |
| Abstract: | The global financial crisis of 2007-2008 might constitute another structural change in IMF lending after the Latin American debt crisis and the end of the Cold War. Using a panel dataset of 120 countries with IMF programmes from 1993 to 2016, I find that with the crisis, the importance of financial corporations in IMF lending decisions has risen as major IMF shareholders seek to protect the exposure of their banks, which increased strongly in the years before the crisis. To impress global financial markets, they influence programme design towards more money and more conditions, specifically prior actions. This serves to keep the programme country's market access and avoid default. While financial corporate interests are also associated with a larger programme size for all countries, a positive link with more conditions is only found for countries for which market access matters. For countries with limited market access, IMF staff's technocratic interest in limited conditionality dominates. |
| Keywords: | Conditionality, global finance, IMF, political economy |
| JEL: | F33 F34 F53 G15 |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:snb:snbwpa:2022-04&r= |