Showing 1 - 10 of 22
Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs have become increasingly popular as a development strategy. These programs aim to reduce poverty or achieve other social goals by making the transfers conditional upon the receivers' actions. Conditions are designed to encourage some desirable behavior...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012501078
Hunger during pre-harvest lean seasons is widespread in the agrarian areas of Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. We randomly assign an $8.50 incentive to households in rural Bangladesh to out-migrate during the lean season. The incentive induces 22% of households to send a seasonal migrant, their...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010197492
Low adoption of productive agricultural technologies is a puzzle. Agricultural extension services rely on external agents to communicate with farmers, although social networks are known to be the most credible source of information about new technologies. We conduct a large-scale field...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10009790259
In order to induce farmers to adopt a productive new agricultural technology, we apply simple and complex contagion diffusion models on rich social network data from 200 villages in Malawi to identify seed farmers to target and train on the new technology. A randomized controlled trial compares...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011882640
Attempts to curb illegal activity by enforcing regulations gets complicated when agents react to the new regulatory regime in unanticipated ways to circumvent enforcement. We present a research strategy that uncovers such reactions, and permits program evaluation net of such adaptive behaviors....
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011894314
Attempts to curb undesired behavior through regulation gets complicated when agents can adapt to circumvent enforcement. We test a model of enforcement with learning and adaptation, by auditing vendors selling illegal fish in Chile in a randomized controlled trial, and tracking them daily using...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012697635
The COVID-19 pandemic has upended health and living standards around the world. This article provides an interim overview of these effects, with a particular focus on low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Economists have explained how the pandemic is likely to have differential consequences...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012698146
Do new migration opportunities for rural households change the nature and extent of informal risk sharing? We experimentally document that randomly offering poor rural households subsidies to migrate leads to a 40% improvement in risk sharing in their villages. We explain this finding using a...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012030472
Unpredictable rainfall is an important risk for agricultural activity, and farmers in developing countries often receive incomplete insurance from informal risk-sharing networks. We study the demand for, and effects of, offering formal index-based rainfall insurance through a randomized...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10009534175
Migration and pollution are two defining features of China's impressive growth perfor- mance over the last 30 years. In this paper we study the migration response to pollution in Chinese cities, and its consequences for productivity and welfare. We document a robust pattern in which skilled...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012433419