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on Development |
| By: | Dany Bahar (Center for Global Develoment); Jesús Marcano (Corporación Andina de Fomento (CAF)); Carlos Moya (MEG Inteligencia de Datos); Roberto Patiño (Institute 2100) |
| Abstract: | Over 8 million Venezuelans have left their country since 2014, mostly settling in Latin America. Using original survey data from nearly 3, 000 Venezuelan migrants across nine Latin American countries, this paper examines how legal immigration status shapes labor market integration and settlement intentions. Legal status is strongly associated with better labor market outcomes: migrants with documentation are 30.5 percentage points more likely to receive wages through a bank account, 21.6 pp more likely to hold a written employment contract, and similarly more likely to contribute to social security, pay taxes, and hold formal jobs—associations that are robust across specifications, bootstrap inference, and leave-one-out analysis. Legal status alone, however, is not associated with wanting to stay in the host country: legal and undocumented migrants report virtually identical settlement intentions. There is suggestive evidence that a link between legal status and settlement may materialize when legal status is paired with formal employment, particularly written contracts. The findings point to the potential value of complementing regularization programs with measures that facilitate formal employment, financial inclusion, and labor market integration. |
| Date: | 2026–05–21 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cgd:ppaper:394 |
| By: | Jay Kulkarni (xKDR Forum); Ajay Shah (xKDR Forum); Susan Thomas (xKDR Forum) |
| Abstract: | Governments in developing countries spend heavily on subsidies, yet much of the money never reaches households: the macro-micro gap. We measure this gap in Karnataka, India, across a natural experiment. Karnataka has been delivering conditional Direct Benefit Transfers (DBT) for about a decade now. In July 2023 the state introduced new "guarantee schemes", and directed much of its DBT allocation to a near-unconditional scheme. Because administrative records are endogenous to the state that produces them, we measure household receipts independently, from the CMIE Consumer Pyramids Household Survey. We compare robust population estimates from this survey against the state's reported expenditure on DBTs in both periods. The gap averaged about 78% over the seven pre-2023 years and fell to about 17% after the shift. The paper contributes independently measured evidence on subsidy delivery in India and a replicable method for auditing welfare programs in the presence of longitudinal data. |
| JEL: | H53 I38 O12 D73 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anf:wpaper:50 |
| By: | Holden, Stein T. (Centre for Land Tenure Studies, Norwegian University of Life Sciences); Makate, Clifton (Centre for Land Tenure Studies, Norwegian University of Life Sciences) |
| Abstract: | Land rental markets are widely viewed as an important mechanism for improving the allocation of land in smallholder agriculture, and nationally representative household panel surveys have become an increasingly important source of evidence on their performance. However, credible inference from such surveys depends on the reliability of reported land ownership and rental information. This paper develops a diagnostic framework that exploits repeated household observations to evaluate reporting quality, identify where conventional panel analyzes become vulnerable to reporting errors, and improve subsequent empirical assessment of land rental markets. Using balanced panel data from Ethiopia, Malawi, and Uganda, we document substantial instability in reported ownership holdings, persistent inconsistencies between reported tenant and landlord activity, and systematic underestimation of contemporaneously reported land ownership.We incorporate these diagnostics into benchmark and dynamic analyzes of land rental markets to examine their implications for allocative efficiency and entry barriers. The diagnostics substantially affect estimated farm-size distributions, landlessness assessments, and landlord-side rental statistics, while tenant-side analyzes prove considerably more robust. Although reporting instability is widespread, the principal relationships between land endowments, complementary productive assets, entry barriers, and tenant behavior remain remarkably stable after the identified reporting problems are explicitly taken into account. Our findings demonstrate that nationally representative household panel surveys can provide credible evidence on land rental markets when accompanied by systematic diagnostic analyzes that identify reporting limitations, guide empirical specification, and clarify where reliable inference is and is not possible. |
| Keywords: | Land rental market; allocative efficiency; data reliability; policy relevance |
| JEL: | C23 Q12 Q15 |
| Date: | 2026–08–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:nlsclt:2026_008 |
| By: | Rutledge, Zach; Mayorga, Joaquin |
| Abstract: | China’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001 reshaped global trade, reducing U.S. demand for Mexican manufactured goods and weakening Mexico’s manufacturing employment. This study estimates how this trade-induced decline affected migration and employment decisions among rural Mexicans. Using individual-level panel data from the Mexican National Rural Household Survey (ENHRUM) and a long-difference framework, we instrument manufacturing employment with regional exposure to Chinese import competition. Results show that a 10-percentage-point decline in manufacturing employment increased the probability of U.S. migration by 24 percentage points and U.S. nonagricultural employment by 17 points, with no significant effects on agricultural employment. |
| Keywords: | Consumer/Household Economics, Labor and Human Capital |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea26:404603 |
| By: | Himaz, Rozana; Salmanidou, Dimitra; Ghaffarian, Saman |
| Abstract: | Natural hazard events can increase out-of-pocket health costs and push vulnerable households into poverty. Mitigation measures require understanding changes in health spending patterns using pre- and post-event data, but such data are often unavailable in disaster-affected settings. This represents a fundamental measurement challenge: the absence of pre-event baseline data makes it impossible to construct the counterfactual quantities needed for welfare analysis. To address this measurement problem, we develop a hybrid machine learning approach to estimate unobserved household health spending using longitudinal survey data from Indonesia. We first develop a model around the 2006 Yogyakarta earthquake, for which complete data are available. The model learns spending patterns across income, hazard intensity, and other characteristics, achieving >70% accuracy in a noisy and complex domain. After testing the model for transportability, we apply it to post-2004 Indian Ocean tsunami survey data in Indonesia, to predict plausible baseline health spending. These predictions are used to evaluate the impact of the tsunami on health spending to reveal that without targeted aid, catastrophic health spending would have increased from 4.5% to 29.4% and that moderately damaged households experienced more cost increases than heavily damaged ones. By combining artificial intelligence with 2 household survey data, our framework is a proof-of-concept, for addressing data gaps in official economic statistics, demonstrating how machine learning can enable counterfactual welfare measurement where conventional data collection is absent or incomplete. |
| Keywords: | Natural hazards; catastrophic health spending; disaster risk reduction; tsunami; earthquake; Indonesia; machine learning |
| JEL: | C45 C51 C52 C53 I19 O13 Q54 |
| Date: | 2026–03–23 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eoe:escoed:escoe-dp-2026-05 |
| By: | Cermeño, Alexandra L. (Lund University); Quintigliano, Alessandra (Sapienza University of Rome); Weisdorf, Jacob (Sapienza University of Rome, CAGE, & CEPR) |
| Abstract: | Africa's historical borderlands are persistently associated with low levels of economic development. This paper examines how these regions respond to development interventions, analysing whether the long-run development advantage associated with colonial Christian missions persists near historical homeland borders. Combining georeferenced data on 3, 365 pioneering mission stations with high-resolution satellite night-time luminosity data, we show that the positive association between proximity to missionary activity and contemporary economic development weakens sharply in these borderland areas. This result is robust across a wide range of specifications and is corroborated by evidence on household wealth and human capital from the Demographic and Health Surveys Program. Our findings suggest that the success of development initiatives in the historical borderlands reflects not only the interventions themselves, but also the institutional environments in which they were implemented. |
| Keywords: | Africa, missionaries, development, borderlands, night-time luminosity, spatial analysis. JEL Classification: O1, F35, N10, N17 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cge:wacage:822 |
| By: | Karen Mathiasen (Center for Global Development); Clemence Landers (Center for Global Development); Nico Martinez (Center for Global Development) |
| Abstract: | In a resource-scarce environment coupled with high and growing demand for aid, the multilateral development banks (MDBs) need to direct grants and concessional finance to the countries that need it the most. Nowhere is this principle more important than IDA, the largest global financing facility for low-income countries. Operationalizing this principle requires that the World Bank prioritize allocating grants and concessional loans to the poorest countries whose access to alternative funding sources is extremely limited. But trends have been moving in the opposite direction. Currently, a majority of IDA countries surpass the income threshold, and many enjoy regular access to capital markets, the two criteria for IDA eligibility. These countries—many of which have exceeded IDA's income threshold for years or even decades—are consuming a disproportionate share of concessional resources, crowding out IDA-only countries with the greatest need. At the same time, IBRD funding for lower-middle-income countries has been on the decline since 2018 and IDA transfers have not kept pace with record profits. Both IDA and IBRD need to course correct. In this paper, we argue that IDA's current financing structure disadvantages the world's poorest countries because an overly flexible graduation process enables better-off countries to remain IDA-eligible for too long. We also make the case that IBRD’s creditworthiness assessments are too conservative and that it has the headroom and prudential space to bring more IDA countries onto its balance sheet. We advance three reforms to address these shortcomings. First, IDA's graduation policy should become more rules-based, with clearer milestones, facilitating transitions rather than leaving them to borrower initiative. Second, IBRD should revise its creditworthiness assessments to better reflect new credit rating agency methodologies and sovereign default and recovery rates. And third, IBRD should introduce a new semi-concessional lending instrument for lower-middle-income countries, funded through its net income, to smooth the graduation transition and expand the overall concessional envelope. Together, these reforms would rebalance burden-sharing between IDA and IBRD and help the most vulnerable countries receive the financing they need as global aid budgets contract, without putting their AAA ratings at risk. |
| Date: | 2026–07–21 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cgd:ppaper:397 |
| By: | Mottaleb, Khondoker; Meerza, Syed Imran Ali |
| Abstract: | This study quantifies the long-run impacts of the Jamuna Multipurpose Bridge on agricultural transformation and rural welfare in Bangladesh. Exploiting the bridge opening in June 1998 as a quasi-natural experiment, we use six waves of nationally representative Household Income and Expenditure Survey data and a difference-indifferences framework. The results indicate that households in treatment areas experienced higher expenditures, increased agricultural investment, greater agricultural commercialization, and stronger production growth following the bridge opening. Effects are stronger in districts closer to the bridge, suggesting that reduced transport costs and improved market access generated durable rural transformation. The findings highlight the role of large-scale transport infrastructure in reducing spatial isolation, improving agricultural outcomes, and supporting progress toward poverty reduction and food-security goals. |
| Keywords: | Community/Rural/Urban Development |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea26:404755 |
| By: | Amrit Amirapu; Malavika Thirumalai Ananthakrishnan; Alex Klein |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the role of agglomeration economies in shaping patterns of industrial coagglomeration in post-liberalisation India. Using granular, establishment-level data from a 2005 census of all non-farm establishments, we estimate the relative importance of two Marshallian channels of agglomeration economies -- input-output linkages and labour market pooling -- in determining which industries locate together. To address concerns regarding endogeneity and measurement error we employ instrumental variables based on U.S. industrial data. We find large effects for both Marshallian channels -- substantially larger than those the previous literature has found for advanced economies. By contrast, natural advantages appear less influential, though this may reflect measurement challenges. We also find that the two channels operate at distinct geographic scales: inputoutput linkages are similarly influential at both the district level and at the level of individual towns and villages, while labour market pooling effects appear more localized, as they are strongest at the town/village level. This pattern holds both in the full sample and within manufacturing alone. Our study is among the first detailed empirical assessments of coagglomeration patterns in a developing country, thus offering insights into the economic forces that shape spatial inequalities in such contexts. |
| Keywords: | coagglomeration; agglomeration economies; Marshallian externalities; input-output linkages; labour market pooling; India |
| JEL: | R12 R32 R23 O14 O18 |
| Date: | 2026–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ukc:ukcedp:2604 |