Working Papers
CDEP-CGEG Working Papers are sponsored jointly by the Center for Development Economics and Policy (CDEP) and the Center on Global Economic Governance (CGEG), and are circulated to promote discussion and comment. They represent the views of their authors and not the official views of CDEP or CGEG.
Nava Ashraf, Natalie Bau, Corinne Low, and Kathleen McGinn
Abstract
Using a randomized control trial, we examine whether offering adolescent girls nonmaterial resources – specifically, negotiation skills – can improve educational outcomes in a low-income country. In so doing, we provide the first evidence on the effects of an intervention that increased non-cognitive, interpersonal skills during adolescence. Long-run administrative data shows that negotiation training significantly improved educational outcomes over the next three years. The training had greater…
Jan Hagemejer, Jan Svejnar, and Joanna Tyrowicz
Abstract
In this paper we provide the first analysis of whether rushed privatizations, usually carried out under fiscal duress, increase or decrease firms’ efficiency, scale of operation (size) and employment. Using a large panel of firm-level data from Poland over 1995-2015, we show that rushed privatization has negative efficiency, scale and employment effects relative to non-rush privatization. The negative effect of rushed privatization on the scale of operations and employment is even stronger than its negative effect on efficiency…
Yuriy Gorodnichenko, Debora Revoltella, Jan Svejnar, and Christoph T. Weiss
Abstract
Using a new survey, we show that the dispersion of marginal products across firms in the European Union is about twice as large as that in the United States. Reducing it to the US level would increase EU GDP by more than 30 percent. Alternatively, removing barriers between industries and countries would raise EU GDP by at least 25 percent. Firm characteristics, such as demographics, quality of inputs, utilization of resources, and dynamic adjustment of inputs, are predictors of the marginal products…
Liliana Rojas-Suarez and Lucia Pacheco
Abstract
This paper constructs and index of regulatory quality for improving financial inclusion for the purpose of assessing and comparing the quality of rules and regulations in a sample of eight Latin American countries. The index comprises 11 regulatory practices classified into three categories: those that determine the overall quality of the financial environment where providers of financial services that meet the needs of the poor operate (the enablers); those that deal with specific types of market frictions and regulate…
Lorenzo Casaburi and Jack Willis
Abstract
The gains from insurance arise from the transfer of income across states. Yet, by requiring that the premium be paid upfront, standard insurance products also transfer income across time. We show that this intertemporal transfer can help explain low insurance demand, especially among the poor, and in a randomized control trial in Kenya we test a crop insurance product which removes it. The product is interlinked with a contract farming scheme: as with other inputs, the buyer of the crop offers the insurance and deducts the…
Abstract
Local industrial development has the potential to improve health and well-being, while also damaging health through exposure to harmful pollution. It is an empirical question which of these effects dominate. Exploiting the quasi-experimental expansion of African large-scale gold mining, I find that local infant mortality rates decrease by more than 50% alongside rapid economic growth. The instantaneous reduction is comparable to overall gains in infant survival rates in the study countries from 1970 to today. The results are robust to migration…
Paulo Bastos, Joana Silva, Eric Verhoogen
Abstract
This paper examines the extent to which the destination of exports matters for the input prices paid by firms, using detailed customs and firm-product-level data from Portugal. We use exchange rate movements as a source of variation in export destinations and find that exporting to richer countries leads firms to charge more for outputs and pay higher prices for inputs, other things equal. The results are supportive of the hypothesis that an exogenous increase in average destination income leads firms to raise the average quality of…
Timothy Foreman
Abstract
Dust storms are a fact of life for populations residing in semi-arid environments. These storms can result in a variety of immediate and long-term impacts. Reports have included evidence of people suffocating due to airborne dust, transport networks being disrupted and leading to traffic accidents, as well as increases in asthma attacks. Despite these records, we do not know their total effect on health. In this paper, I study the effects of dust storms on child mortality using reanalysis data on Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) and household health data from the Demographic…
Abstract
Recent research suggests that the threat of harsh sanctions does not deter juvenile crime. This conclusion is based on the finding that criminal behavior decreases only marginally as individuals cross the age of criminal majority, the age at which they are transferred from the juvenile to the more punitive adult criminal justice system. Using a model of criminal capital accumulation, I show theoretically that these small reactions close to the age threshold mask larger responses away from, or in anticipation of, the age threshold. I exploit…
Elliott Ash and Miguel Urquiola
Abstract
This paper presents research-based rankings of public policy schools in the United States. In 2016 we collected the names of about 5,000 faculty members at 44 such schools. We use bibliographic databases to gather measures of the quality and quantity of these individuals' publication output. These measures include the number of articles and books written, the quality of the journals the articles have appeared in, and the number of citations all have garnered. We aggregate these data to the school level to produce a set of rankings. The results differ…
Christopher Hansman, Jonas Hjort, Gianmarco Lion, and Matthieu Teachout
Abstract:
We study the relationship between exporters’ organizational structure and output quality. If only input quantity is observable, theory predicts that vertical integration may be necessary to incentivize suppliers to increase input quality. Using data on suppliers’ behavior, supplier ownership, supply transactions, and manufacturers’ output by quality grade and exports from the Peruvian fishmeal industry, we show the following. After integrating with the plant being supplied and…
Eduardo Fraga, Gustavo Gonzaga, Rodrigo R. Soares
Abstract
This paper analyzes the effect of selection on ability on the evolution of the gender wage gap during the first years of professional life. We use longitudinal data with 16 years of the early career history of formal sector workers in Brazil. The panel allows us to build a measure of unobserved ability that we use to analyze the dynamics of labor market selection across genders as individuals age. We focus on the cohort born in 1974, for which we have a close to complete history of formal labor market participation. For this cohort,…