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on Development |
| By: | Cesar Velazquez (Department of Economics, Universidad Iberoamericana Ciudad de Mexico); Isidro Soloaga (Department of Economics, Universidad Iberoamericana Ciudad de Mexico); Monserrat Zuñiga Loreto (Department of Economics, Universidad Iberoamericana Ciudad de Mexico) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the relationship between neighborhood crime and firm employment in Mexico City. Using a balanced panel of 2, 354 Basic Geostatistical Areas (AGEBs) for 2017--2022, we estimate Spatial Durbin Models with AGEB fixed effects, lagged and winsorized crime variables, and differential trends by dominant firm-size stratum, decomposing total effects into direct and indirect components. At the aggregate level, robberies are negatively associated with employment in the AGEBs where they occur, alongside positive spillovers toward neighboring areas. This aggregate pattern conceals substantial heterogeneity: large firms (101 or more employees) are the only stratum with a negative and significant direct effect, whereas small firms (0--10 employees) show a positive direct effect, consistent with structural immobility and the local reallocation of displaced demand. Medium-sized firms show negative but imprecisely estimated effects. A dynamic specification preserves these signs but is weakly identified once persistence is absorbed. Crime appears to reallocate employment across the firm-size distribution and across space rather than uniformly contracting local labor demand. |
| JEL: | C33 J23 K42 R12 |
| Date: | 2026–09–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:smx:wpaper:2026012 |
| By: | Wätzold, Marlene Yu Lilin; Wollni, Meike |
| Abstract: | Voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) are expected to improve smallholder livelihoods, yet past research finds that their effects vary substantially across contexts. VSS typically operate through group certification, which is often initiated and managed by midstream buyers acting as certificate holders. These buyers are responsible for organizing certification-related activities and ensuring farmer compliance, but they differ in their size, capacities and resources. Such differences may help explain why farmers benefit from VSS to varying degrees. While the literature increasingly recognizes the importance of buyer heterogeneity, quantitative evidence on whether and how it shapes farmer outcomes remains limited. Drawing on a unique three-wave panel dataset (t=2022; 2023; 2024) from Rwanda’s coffee sector covering 845 coffee-producing households, combined with information from 48 midstream buyers to whom these farmers supply coffee, to our knowledge, our study provides the first empirical quantitative evidence on these relationships. The results from the inverse probability weighted generalized linear model show that the relationship between VSS and economic outcomes - yield, prices and profits - varies depending on several midstream buyer characteristics. In particular, certification is associated with higher yield, profit gains and partially prices, when the buyer’s manager has characteristics related to their local credibility and social standing, and when certified buyers operate at a larger scale. Our findings highlight that midstream buyer characteristics are associated with heterogeneity in VSS outcomes for farmers, suggesting that analyses and policy discussions on VSS effectiveness should pay greater attention to these supply chain actors. |
| Keywords: | Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Sustainability |
| Date: | 2026–08–25 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:gausfs:410238 |
| By: | Chiara Livorno; Luca Tiberti |
| Abstract: | Weather shocks are frequently associated with heightened violence in agro-pastoral regions, yet the social processes linking weather-induced livelihood pressure to conflict remain insufficiently understood. This study examines whether spatial configurations of community lineages are associated with variation in community-level conflict responses to localized drought shocks. Across West Africa (1997–2022), we combine spatial panel data on drought exposure, conflict events, and the ancestral geography of lineage ties. We find that, conditional on ancestrally connected locations remaining climatically unaffected, drought exposure is associated with a 20-percentage-point lower predicted conflict incidence in clusters embedded in extended lineage networks relative to otherwise comparable clusters with more localized lineage structures. These patterns are consistent with a mechanism whereby social and institutional linkages formed across space condition access to nonlocal support and mobility-based adaptive capacity when climatic conditions deteriorate locally but not covariately. Complementary household panel data from Mali (2018–2021) show that households linked to spatially extended lineage networks experience smaller contractions in annual food expenditures and family remittance inflows following drought shocks. Overall, the findings highlight how historically constituted institutions connecting households across space are associated with differential responses to localized weather shocks in contexts where formal protection remains limited. |
| Keywords: | Extended kinship, informal risk-sharing, conflict, weather shocks, Western Africa. |
| JEL: | Q54 Z13 D74 N47 O13 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:frz:wpaper:wp2026_07.rdf |
| By: | Juan Carlos Angulo (Department of Economics, Universidad Iberoamericana Ciudad de Mexico) |
| Abstract: | This article examines how positive economic shocks to legal agricultural production affect non-lethal crime in conflict-affected settings. I focus on Mexico’s avocado sector, which has experienced substantial growth in production and export value over the past two decades. Using municipal-level data from 2011 to 2024, I combine administrative crime records with survey-based victimization data to examine the effects of avocado production on extortion, threats, and kidnappings. To address potential reverse causality, I instrument municipal avocado production using international avocado production interacted with municipality-level geographic characteristics that determine suitability for avocado cultivation. I find that increases in avocado production are associated with higher levels of extortion across both data sources. The evidence for threats and kidnappings is less consistent across data sources. These results are robust to alternative samples and specifications and remain for extortion when restricting the analysis to municipalities with documented organized crime presence prior to the study period. The findings are consistent with a rent-seeking mechanism in which organized crime groups exploit high-value legal markets to generate recurring revenue. Avocado production is particularly suited to this form of extraction because orchards are geographically fixed, require substantial investment, and generate income repeatedly over many years. The results also suggest that the expansion of legal economic activity can create new opportunities for criminal rent extraction where state capacity is limited. More broadly, the study shows that the consequences of economic booms in conflict-affected regions extend beyond lethal violence and can include systematic forms of non-lethal crime that directly facilitate the appropriation of legal economic rents. |
| JEL: | D7 O13 Q3 |
| Date: | 2026–09–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:smx:wpaper:2026011 |
| By: | Boss, Ruchira; Hoddinott, John; Colen, Liesbeth |
| Abstract: | Clean cooking policies are often promoted as a way to improve women’s welfare by reducing time spent cooking. Yet it remains unclear whether a shift to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), and its sustained use, translates into meaningful reductions in women’s cooking time, or whether it instead reshapes how households prepare food. Using household survey data from Indigenous communities in Nagaland, India, this paper examines clean fuel transitions in a remote and under-studied region where firewood use and boiling-based cooking practices remain culturally embedded. We analyse these relationships through the lens of women’s occupational roles, recognising that differences in work schedules, flexibility, and income stability may influence LPG adoption and LPG use intensity. We find that women in salaried and self-employed occupations use LPG significantly more intensively than farmers and homemakers. Instrumental variable estimates show no robust evidence that exclusive LPG use reduces total cooking time. Instead, LPG use is associated with higher edible oil consumption, suggesting that clean fuel transitions may reshape food preparation practices rather than reduce cooking duration. These findings challenge the assumption that clean cooking benefits women primarily through time savings and highlight the importance of women’s livelihoods and local food contexts in shaping household energy transitions and their implications for diets, nutrition and well-being. |
| Keywords: | Agricultural and Food Policy, Consumer/Household Economics, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Labor and Human Capital |
| Date: | 2026–08–19 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:gausfs:410237 |
| By: | Giordana Sabella; Tulia Gattone; Donato Romano; Luca Tiberti |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how climatic shocks affect conflict risk across heterogeneous livelihood systems in four rain-fed, agriculture-dependent West African economies – Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, and Côte d’Ivoire – over 2010–2023. Combining geocoded household panel data with high-resolution climate anomalies and conflict events, we estimate the effect of growing-season droughts and excess rainfall on post-harvest conflict incidence. Results show strong spatial and livelihood heterogeneity driven by the interaction between household and local livelihood structures: droughts increase conflict risk in mixed-livelihood areas in Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire, in pastoral-dominated areas in Nigeria irrespective of household type, and in farm-dominated systems in Niger, while wet anomalies display more context-dependent effects, reducing conflict under moderate conditions but increasing tensions under extreme rainfall in mixed and flood-prone areas. We document transmission channels consistent with the opportunity cost mechanism – through lower agricultural productivity, reduced farm revenues, and labor reallocation away from off-farm activities – showing that climate-induced income shocks erode livelihood viability. By linking micro-level climatic stress to localized conflict outcomes, the paper highlights the moderating role of agrarian structure in shaping vulnerability to climate change and underscores the need for adaptation and social-protection policies tailored to specific livelihood systems. |
| Keywords: | Climate change; Conflict; Livelihood systems; West Africa. |
| JEL: | Q54 Q15 C33 D74 O13 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:frz:wpaper:wp2026_08.rdf |
| By: | Gourlay, Sydney; Ambel, Alemayehu A.; Wollburg, Philip Randolph; Djima, Ismael Yacoubou; Palacios-Lopez, Amparo; Kilic, Talip; Mcgee, Kevin |
| Abstract: | Phone surveys emerged as a critical data collection tool in low- and middle-income countries during the COVID-19 pandemic and have since become a permanent feature of the data landscape in many settings. This paper draws on the experience of the Living Standards Measurement Study High-Frequency Phone Surveys — one of the longest-running and largest longitudinal phone survey initiatives in low- and middle-income countries. The paper examines three methodological challenges central to the sustainable implementation of the surveys: individual-level data collection and respondent selection, attrition, and integration of phone and in-person surveys in mixed-mode data systems. The Living Standards Measurement Study High-Frequency Phone Surveys initiative has provided continuous monitoring since April 2020 across six African countries, supporting more than 120 phone survey rounds and more than 200, 000 interviews alongside a parallel system of in-person surveys. The paper shows that survey design choices can mitigate biases in individual-level data collection, although at the cost of interview length and logistical complexity. Attrition has been non-negligible but has not translated into significant sample bias. The paper discusses analytical and survey design strategies for addressing coverage bias and potential mode effects. It identifies priorities for future research, including ex-post adjustment methods for mode effects, high-frequency welfare measurement through proxy-based imputation, and the cost-quality-feasibility trade-offs of mixed-mode survey design. The Living Standards Measurement Study High-Frequency Phone Surveys experience demonstrates that the infrastructure, methods, and evidence base now exist to build genuinely integrated survey systems delivering reliable, timely, high-frequency data at substantially lower unit cost than in-person surveys alone. |
| Date: | 2026–08–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:11435 |
| By: | Buchner, Martin; Rose, Julian; Johannesson, Magnus; Malan, Mandy; Ankel-Peters, Jörg |
| Abstract: | The publication of contradictory replications often sparks persistent disputes between replicators and original authors. We investigate whether experts converge toward consensus in the prominent debate between Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson (AJR, 2001) and Albouy (2012). We recruited 352 experts, including many senior and highly cited economists, primarily from the pool of scholars citing one of the debate articles. We find no consensus on whether the AJR results hold after Albouy's replication, indicating no prevailing interpretation of the debate more than a decade later. Our study demonstrates a potential approach to assessing scientific consensus formation in replication debates and contested literatures. |
| Keywords: | replication, scientific consensus, scientific credibility, expert survey, institutions and growth |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ifsowp:342507 |
| By: | Karl Robert L Jandoc (School of Economics, University of the Philippines Diliman) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the long-term economic consequences of childhood nutrition in the Philippines, focusing on the mediating roles of cognitive development and schooling. Using longitudinal data from the Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey (CLHNS), we apply a sequential mediation analysis using the inverse odds ratio weighting (IORW) approach to decompose the total effect of severe stunting on adult labor market outcomes into direct effects and indirect effects through IQ and educational attainment. The results show that severe stunting significantly reduces both the likelihood of formal employment and daily earnings in early adulthood. Severely stunted children were about 28% less likely to be employed in the formal sector and earned 20% less per day compared to their non-stunted peers at age 22. Mediation analysis reveals that the indirect effect through IQ alone is modest, but the sequential pathway through IQ and college graduation accounts for about one-third of the total effect on formal employment and about 15% of the effect on daily earnings. |
| Keywords: | Childhood nutrition; stunting; cognitive development; education; labor market outcomes; sequential mediation analysis; inverse odds ratio weighting |
| JEL: | I15 I25 J24 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:phs:dpaper:202601 |
| By: | Kazuki Motohashi |
| Abstract: | Developing countries have increased sanitation investment to improve child health. However, scaling up latrine construction can cause water pollution externalities owing to insufficient infrastructure for the treatment of fecal sludge, offsetting the direct health benefits. I estimate the negative externalities of an Indian sanitation policy that subsidized the construction of over 100 million latrines. Exploiting geographical variations in soil characteristics that affect the feasibility of latrine construction, I find that this policy increases fecal contamination of rivers by 72%. Although the policy reduces diarrheal child mortality overall, this positive health effect is eliminated when upstream areas lack adequate wastewater infrastructure. |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2607.29371 |
| By: | Ashima Goyal (Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research); Anas Khan (Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research) |
| Abstract: | Tomato, onion, and potato (TOP) prices are a recurrent source of food inflation in India. In this paper, we ask whether market depth attenuates the pass-through from rainfall shocks to TOP inflation. We build a monthly district panel from queue-based Agmarknet downloads for 2018-2025, combine it with IMD rainfall and district eNAM mandi counts, and estimate district and month-year fixed-effects models. The main TOP composite uses 253 districts with at least 60 months of price coverage for all three crops. Contemporaneous excess rainfall raises TOP inflation by about 0.011 log points, with a further 0.010 log-point effect after one month. Denser mandi networks weaken this pass-through in continuous-rainfall specifications, marginal-effects calculations, onion regressions, and specifications based on TOP-trading mandis. State reform scores also attenuate excess-rainfall pass-through, while startup-stock interactions do not survive in the broader sample, consistent with startup ecosystems not yet having reached the scale needed to buffer local price shocks. The broader evidence therefore points to market depth and reform quality, rather than startup accumulation alone, as the more credible buffers against TOP price shocks. |
| Keywords: | food inflation, rainfall shocks, eNAM, mandi density, agricultural markets, India |
| JEL: | Q13 Q18 Q54 E31 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ind:igiwpp:2026-014 |
| By: | Giovanni Generale; Donato Romano; Antonio Scognamillo |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how local price transmission dynamics shape the welfare effects of food price shocks. We study Sri Lanka’s 2022 economic crisis, a compound shock that disrupted rice production, supply chains, and food prices, using a panel of paddy-producing households matched with weekly market-level rice prices. The analysis links two literatures that are usually treated separately: studies of food-price shocks and household welfare, and studies of market integration and price transmission. We estimate a household fixed-effects instrumental-variable model in which retail rice prices are instrumented by the interaction between shock-induced changes in district-level wholesale–retail price-transmission speed, measured by the error-correction term, and predetermined distance from economic centres. The results show that shock-transmitted increases in retail rice prices significantly reduce household food security: a one-rupee increase in retail rice prices lowers the Food Consumption Score by 1.16 points on average. Heterogeneity analyses support the proposed mechanism. The negative effect is concentrated among highly commercialized paddy-producing households, while effects for non-selling and low-selling households are consistently smaller and statistically insignificant. Food-security losses are also concentrated in districts where wholesale–retail pass-through shifted from symmetric to asymmetric adjustment. These findings suggest that market participation may increase vulnerability when retail price increases are not matched by proportional or timely gains at the farmgate level. The paper shows that food-price surges may trigger food insecurity not only through price levels, but also through the way exogenous shocks are transmitted along local value chains. |
| Keywords: | food price spikes, asymmetric price transmission, food security, rice producers, Sri Lanka. |
| JEL: | E31 D43 Q18 Q12 O53 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:frz:wpaper:wp2026_20.rdf |
| By: | Glenn P. Jenkins (Department of Economics, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, and Cambridge Resources International Inc.); Godwin Olasehinde-Williams (Department of Management Information Systems, Istanbul Ticaret University, Turkey and Nizami Gajanvi Research Center of Sustainable Development & Green Economy, Azerbaijan State University of Economics, Baku, Azerbaijan); Justin Quinton (Department of Economics, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada) |
| Abstract: | Nigeria faces a severe challenge of chronic malnutrition, ranking among the countries with the highest burden of stunting. The causes of stunting are complex, spanning individual, household, community, and national levels. This study examines how national policy decisions related to food prices, international trade, and regulations have impacted stunting among Nigerian children aged 1 to 4 between 2012 and 2018. It particularly focuses on the combined effects of the oil price crash, currency devaluation, and foreign exchange restrictions during this period. Findings reveal that while Nigeria's stunting rate of 22.04% in 2012 was below the global average of 26.3%, it surged to 31.6% by 2018, significantly exceeding the global average of 21.9%. Mild stunting rose from 11.44% to 14.33%, moderate stunting from 6.31% to 10.14%, and severe stunting from 4.29% to 7.13%. Northern regions, especially the North West, were the most affected, with nearly 50% of children stunted by 2018. The increase in the incidence of stunting, as compared that of 2012, led to about 1.89 million more stunted children. As a consequence, it is estimated that these children will receive 3.1 million fewer years of education (1.64 years lost per additional stunted child). The present value of the economic cost of this additional stunting ranges between $6.511 billion and $8.681 billion, translating to a lifetime wage loss ranging between $3, 445.50 and $4594 per stunted child. This study highlights that the Nigerian government’s policy response to the 2014 oil price crash and 2015 currency devaluation significantly worsened child stunting. Although recent policy reversals, such as lifting foreign exchange restrictions on essential food items in 2023, are positive steps, they have come too late to reverse the damage. The study underscores the importance of considering the nutritional impacts of policy decisions related to food prices, agricultural trade, and regulations to protect vulnerable children. |
| Keywords: | Stunting, child health, health cost, government policy, Nigeria. |
| JEL: | I12 I15 Q18 F13 O15 |
| Date: | 2026–08–28 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qed:dpaper:4644 |
| By: | B. Moyo (University of South Africa); T. Gwatidzo (University of the Witwatersrand) |
| Abstract: | The announcement that South Africa would host the 2010 FIFA World Cup in 2004 was a triumphant moment for the country and the African continent at large. It marked the first time in FIFA's history that an African country would host the World Cup. In this study, we use the synthetic control method to create a counterfactual South Africa without the World Cup and compare it with the actual South Africa to analyse the impact of this tournament. Our results show that, although hosting the World Cup games in 2010 had no positive impact on GDP, it significantly increased tourism inflows. We, however, found evidence that GDP did increase from the announcement of South Africa hosting the tournament to one year before the event. This suggests that the analysis of these events should focus on both the year of the event and the period immediately after the host announcement. |
| Keywords: | FIFA World Cup, South Africa, GDP, Tourism, Synthetic Control Method |
| JEL: | L83 O11 O55 O47 C31 C33 E23 |
| Date: | 2025–12–30 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:afa:wpaper:wp032025 |
| By: | Berniell, Inés; Gasparini, Leonardo; Marchionni, Mariana; Ramírez-Leira, Lucía |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the dynamics of vulnerable non-poor households in Latin America, focusing on how they compare with the poor and how both groups respond to macroeconomic fluctuations. Using harmonized household survey microdata from 15 countries over more than three decades (1992-2024), complemented with longitudinal data for four of the regions largest economies, we examine how the size of socioeconomic groups evolves with long-run economic growth and cyclical fluctuations and whether labor market responses to macroeconomic conditions differ systematically between poor and vulnerable individuals. We find that the share of vulnerable non-poor individuals has risen modestly, reflecting higher inflows from poverty than outflows to richer groups. While labor market outcomes are strongly procyclical for both poor and vulnerable individuals, a striking pattern emerges across countries: In less developed economies, vulnerable individuals experience significantly stronger cyclical changes in labor market outcomes than the poor, whereas the opposite pattern arises in more developed economies, particularly along employment margins. Exploiting longitudinal data, we further show that transitions into and out of vulnerability are driven primarily by changes in labor income, especially through employment and hourly earnings adjustments. Overall, the results highlight that the relationship between vulnerability and macroeconomic fluctuations depends critically on labor market structure, which shapes the adjustment margins available to different groups of workers. |
| Keywords: | Employment |
| JEL: | I32 J21 J46 E32 O54 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:idb:brikps:14708 |