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Articles 1 - 30 of 58
Full-Text Articles in Growth and Development
When Does Emigration Reduce Domestic Economic Activities? Evidence On The Loss Of Management Capacity From A Visa Lottery, Marup Hossain, Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak
When Does Emigration Reduce Domestic Economic Activities? Evidence On The Loss Of Management Capacity From A Visa Lottery, Marup Hossain, Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak
Discussion Papers
Economic development is often conceived as structural transformation and migration out of rural agriculture (Lewis, 1954; Fei & Ranis, 1964). Understanding development therefore requires us to identify how rural economies transform in response to emigration. We study how international migration reshapes domestic economic activity in origin households using a randomized visa lottery that gave Bangladeshi men job opportunities in Malaysia. Winning the lottery raises total household income through remittances, but income earned in Bangladesh declines due to contractions in nonfarm business activity. In contrast, crop income remains stable despite large reductions in agricultural input expenditures, because farming gets delegated through …
Incentives, Evidence, And Reminders For Bureaucrats: Overcoming Barriers To Policy Scale Up, Patrick Agte, Daniel R. Morales, Christopher Neilson, Sebastian Otero, Guatam Rao
Incentives, Evidence, And Reminders For Bureaucrats: Overcoming Barriers To Policy Scale Up, Patrick Agte, Daniel R. Morales, Christopher Neilson, Sebastian Otero, Guatam Rao
Discussion Papers
Scaling up effective policies often requires the attention of frontline bureaucrats with many competing responsibilities. Even when policymakers adopt effective programs, implementation may not follow. In a nationwide experiment in the Dominican Republic, we test interventions to increase school principals' implementation of an educational program proven effective in a previous RCT. Only 37% of control schools verifiably implemented the intervention when ordered to by the Ministry of Education, compared with 83% in the original trial. Implementation was no higher among schools that previously implemented the program in the RCT, suggesting that fixed costs of adoption do not explain non-adoption. We …
From Trade War To Green Transition: Optimal Electric Vehicle Tariffs With Revenue-Funded Subsidies, Panle Jia Barwick, Jack Collison, Pinelopi K. Goldberg, Shanjun Li, Yucheng Wang
From Trade War To Green Transition: Optimal Electric Vehicle Tariffs With Revenue-Funded Subsidies, Panle Jia Barwick, Jack Collison, Pinelopi K. Goldberg, Shanjun Li, Yucheng Wang
Discussion Papers
We study the optimal design of trade and industrial policy when governments pursue environmental objectives alongside traditional national welfare. Motivated by the global transition to electric vehicles (EVs) and growing concerns about competitiveness, resilience, and the environment, we develop a framework in which policymakers choose tariffs and domestic production subsidies to maximize national welfare, defined as the sum of consumer surplus, domestic profits, environmental benefits, and tariff revenue net of subsidies. We combine a theoretical model of differentiated-product oligopoly with a structural demand model estimated using vehicle-level data from 13 countries during 2004-2023 that together account for the vast majority …
Search Costs, Intermediation, And Trade: Experimental Evidence From Ugandan Agricultural Markets, Lauren Falcao Bergquist, Craig Mcintosh, Meredith Startz
Search Costs, Intermediation, And Trade: Experimental Evidence From Ugandan Agricultural Markets, Lauren Falcao Bergquist, Craig Mcintosh, Meredith Startz
Discussion Papers
We study the large-scale experimental rollout of a platform that reduced search and matching frictions in Ugandan agricultural markets by connecting buyers and sellers. Market integration improved substantially: trade increased and price gaps fell. Interpreting the experiment through a trade model, we estimate treatment effects accounting for equilibrium changes that impact control markets. The intervention reduced fixed trade costs by 20% and increased trade flows between treated markets by 7% and across all markets by 1%. Scale economies shaped engagement:few farmers used the platform, but equilibrium price convergence from improved arbitrage by larger traders passed through to farm revenue.
The Changing Landscape Of International Development: An Introduction, Pascaline Dupas, Pinelopi K. Goldberg, Rohini Pande
The Changing Landscape Of International Development: An Introduction, Pascaline Dupas, Pinelopi K. Goldberg, Rohini Pande
Discussion Papers
Since the late 1980s, extreme poverty has declined sharply, life expectancy and schooling have increased, and electoral democracy has expanded. However poverty reduction has slowed in recent years, particularly following the COVID-19 pandemic, amid intensifying conflict, fragility, climate risks, democratic backsliding, and the erosion of global trends—including trade integration and geopolitical stability—that once supported growth. These dynamics raise three interrelated questions: what barriers impede further progress; where will future growth in lower-income countries come from; and how can growth be broadly shared. Taking stock of 15 chapters forthcoming in Volume 6 of the Handbook of Development Economics, we discuss how …
Wedges: A Microeconomic Perspective On Misallocation, Lauren Falcao Bergquist, Danial Lashkari, Eric Verhoogen
Wedges: A Microeconomic Perspective On Misallocation, Lauren Falcao Bergquist, Danial Lashkari, Eric Verhoogen
Discussion Papers
This chapter takes stock of what has been learned from the recent micro-development literature about wedges—mechanisms generating dispersion in marginal revenue products of factors across firms, which are commonly interpreted as indicators of misallocation. We present a general theoretical framework that allows us to consider several different types of wedges simultaneously. We argue that it is important to distinguish between between technological wedges, which are present even in the efficient allocation that would be chosen by the social planner, and distortionary wedges, which are present in market equilibrium but not the social planner's allocation. Not all wedges, as we have …
Economic Development And The Environment, Kelsey Jack, Nicholas Ryan
Economic Development And The Environment, Kelsey Jack, Nicholas Ryan
Discussion Papers
Economic development relies on and transforms the environment. The transformation is evident in the poor environmental quality in many developing countries. For example, air quality in Southeast Asia is three times worse than in the United States, in sub-Saharan Africa four times worse and in South Asia more than six times worse. We model how environmental quality affects health, productivity and well-being and how individuals privately adapt to environmental hazards. We also model how collective action and formal regulation contribute to environmental quality. We draw three main findings from a review of empirical research on these mechanisms. First, individual adaptation …
Skipping The Factory: Service-Led Growth And Structural Transformation In The Developing World, Michael Peters, Youdon Zhang, Fabrizio Zilibotti
Skipping The Factory: Service-Led Growth And Structural Transformation In The Developing World, Michael Peters, Youdon Zhang, Fabrizio Zilibotti
Discussion Papers
In today’s developing world, many economies appear to bypass industrialization and transition directly from agriculture to services. The largest rise in service employment has occurred in non-tradable consumer services, such as retail and hospitality, especially in urban areas, where many cities resemble consumer hubs built around local demand. These patterns of growth raise fundamental questions: Can service-led growth sustain improvements in living standards over time? Is service-led growth inherently biased toward affluent urban consumers? What role should policy play? To address these questions, we propose a parsimonious general equilibrium framework that incorporates non-homothetic preferences and locally non-tradable consumer services in …
Human Capital And Development, Philippe Aghion, Ingvild Almås, Costas Meghir
Human Capital And Development, Philippe Aghion, Ingvild Almås, Costas Meghir
Discussion Papers
Human capital is central to efforts to promote growth, convergence, and the elimination of poverty. Drawing on the seminal macroeconomic frameworks by Nelson-Phelps, Lucas and subsequent developments, alongside macro and microeconomic evidence, we examine the role of human capital in driving innovation and growth. We highlight how different types of human capital, characterized by education level, matter in different stages of development. Despite documented increases in years of schooling, the world’s poorest regions still see stagnating outcomes in learning and education quality, potentially creating poverty traps where investments in neither physical nor human capital materialize. We discuss obstacles to human …
Gender Gaps And Economic Growth: Why Haven't Women Won Globally (Yet)?, Patrick Agte, Orazio Attanasio, Pinelopi K. Goldberg, Charles Gottlieb, Aishwarya Lakshmi Ratan, Rohini Pande, Michael Peters, Charity Troyer Moore, Fabrizio Zilibotti
Gender Gaps And Economic Growth: Why Haven't Women Won Globally (Yet)?, Patrick Agte, Orazio Attanasio, Pinelopi K. Goldberg, Charles Gottlieb, Aishwarya Lakshmi Ratan, Rohini Pande, Michael Peters, Charity Troyer Moore, Fabrizio Zilibotti
Discussion Papers
Globally women’s labor force participation lags that of men and women, on average, have lower labor market earnings than men. Does economic growth reduce gender disparities in labor market outcomes between women and men? Conversely, do gender inequalities in the labor market impede growth? To inform these questions, we conduct two analyses. First, we estimate regressions using harmonized data on gender gaps in a range of labor market outcomes from 153 countries spanning two decades (1998-2018). Second, we conduct a systematic review of the recent economics literature on gender gaps in labor markets, examining 16 journals over 21 years. Our …
Climate Shocks And State Formation: The 1970 Bhola Cyclone And The Birth Of Bangladesh, Sultan Mehmood, Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak
Climate Shocks And State Formation: The 1970 Bhola Cyclone And The Birth Of Bangladesh, Sultan Mehmood, Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak
Discussion Papers
State formation through secession often requires two critical steps: building mass support for independence, and engaging in violent conflict against a state resisting territorial loss. Combining satellite data with archival sources, we statistically document how exposure to the 1970 Bhola cyclone in East Pakistan which killed 350,000 people led to a rise in separatist sentiments expressed in voting booths, and later induced citizens to take up arms against the government and engage in guerrilla warfare. We identify the cyclone as a focal point that helped galvanize dispersed separatist sentiments into an organized political movement and war, in part by revealing …
The Changing Nature Of International Trade And Its Implications For Development, Pinelopi Goldberg, Michele Ruta
The Changing Nature Of International Trade And Its Implications For Development, Pinelopi Goldberg, Michele Ruta
Discussion Papers
This paper revisits the relationship between international trade, trade policy, and development in light of the structural, policy, and geopolitical shifts that have transformed globalization over the past decade. While trade has historically supported development through both static and dynamic channels, we argue that the latter—those inducing structural transformation and institutional change—have been far more consequential for long-run development. Through access to global markets, participation in global value chains, and knowledge and technology transfers, and by providing an anchor for reform, trade and trade agreements have contributed to productivity gains, technological progress, quality and skill upgrading, and institutional change in …
The Global Gender Distortions Index (Ggdi), Pinelopi Goldberg, Charles Gottlieb, Somik Lall, Meet Mehta, Michael Peters, Aishwarya Lakshmi Ratan
The Global Gender Distortions Index (Ggdi), Pinelopi Goldberg, Charles Gottlieb, Somik Lall, Meet Mehta, Michael Peters, Aishwarya Lakshmi Ratan
Discussion Papers
The extent to which women participate in the labor market varies greatly across the globe. If such differences reflect distortions that women face in accessing good jobs, they can reduce economic activity through a misallocation of talent. In this paper, we build on Hsieh et al. (2019) to provide a methodology to quantify these productivity consequences. The index we propose, the ”Global Gender Distortions Index (GGDI)”, measures the losses in aggregate productivity that gender-based misallocation imposes. Our index allows us to separately identify labor demand distortions (e.g., discrimination in hiring for formal jobs) from labor supply distortions (e.g., frictions that …
Estimating How Much Children Work: Questionnaires Versus Time Use Diaries, Juana Lamote De Grignon Pérez, Wenbin Wang, Tanay Kasyap, Matthew Henglong Luo, Jialu Tang
Estimating How Much Children Work: Questionnaires Versus Time Use Diaries, Juana Lamote De Grignon Pérez, Wenbin Wang, Tanay Kasyap, Matthew Henglong Luo, Jialu Tang
Discussion Papers
Current estimates of child labour often rely on questions such as, “How many hours did you work last week?” While biases in adult self-reports are well-documented in high-income countries, there is limited evidence on the accuracy of children’s responses in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Using data from nine LMICs, including China and India, this paper shows that time diaries report more than twice as many work hours as standard questionnaires. This discrepancy suggests that current estimates may significantly understate child labour. Moreover, certain forms of work—such as collecting water or firewood—appear to contribute to these measurement gaps.
Scalable Targeting Of Social Protection: When Do Algorithms Out-Perform Surveys And Community Knowledge?, Emily Aiken, Anik Ashraf, Joshua E. Blumenstock, Raymond P. Guiteras, Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak
Scalable Targeting Of Social Protection: When Do Algorithms Out-Perform Surveys And Community Knowledge?, Emily Aiken, Anik Ashraf, Joshua E. Blumenstock, Raymond P. Guiteras, Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak
Discussion Papers
Innovations in big data and algorithms are enabling new approaches to target interventions at scale. We compare the accuracy of three different systems for identifying the poor to receive benefit transfers — proxy means-testing, nominations from community members, and an algorithmic approach using machine learning to predict poverty using mobile phone usage behavior — and study how their cost-effectiveness varies with the scale and scope of the program. We collect mobile phone records from all major telecom operators in Bangladesh and conduct community-based wealth rankings and detailed consumption surveys of 5,000 households, to select the 22,000 poorest households for $300 …
Daughters Left Behind: How Trade Liberalization Harms Girls In China When Government Restricts Migration, Xuwen Gao, Wenquan Liang, Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak, Ran Song
Daughters Left Behind: How Trade Liberalization Harms Girls In China When Government Restricts Migration, Xuwen Gao, Wenquan Liang, Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak, Ran Song
Discussion Papers
China’s accession to the WTO created new economic opportunities in certain cities. A shiftshare identification strategy shows that residents of adjacent rural areas migrated in and advanced economically. Longitudinal panel data on children reveals that their sons benefit, but counter-intuitively, daughters suffer worse mental and physical health, complete fewer years of schooling, and remain poor later in life. We explore why, and learn that hukou policy that restricts migrant children’s access to urban public schools is a factor. Triple difference research designs reveal that migrant parents become discontinuously more likely to leave daughters (but not sons) behind in rural areas …
Intergenerational Mobility In Ottoman Istanbul: Evidence From Court Records, Metin M. Coşgel, José-Antonio Espín-Sánchez, Emre Özer
Intergenerational Mobility In Ottoman Istanbul: Evidence From Court Records, Metin M. Coşgel, José-Antonio Espín-Sánchez, Emre Özer
Discussion Papers
We use data from the Istanbul court registers spanning from the 16th -19th centuries to establish, for the first time, long-term trends in intergenerational mobility in a major premodern city. The dataset contains information on over 270,000 individuals who appeared in court in various roles, including litigants, witnesses, and representatives. Crucially, it records the honorific titles (if any) of individuals and their fathers, which we use as measures for socioeconomic status. Our goal is to trace long-term changes in Istanbul’s social structure, analyze the relationship between fathers’ and sons’ titles to assess shifts in intergenerational mobility, and determine whether these …
Gene X Environment Interactions: Polygenic Scores And The Impact Of A Early Childhood Intervention In Colombia, Orazio Attanasio, Gabriella Conti, Pamela Jervis, Costas Meghir, Aysu Okbay
Gene X Environment Interactions: Polygenic Scores And The Impact Of A Early Childhood Intervention In Colombia, Orazio Attanasio, Gabriella Conti, Pamela Jervis, Costas Meghir, Aysu Okbay
Discussion Papers
We evaluate impacts heterogeneity of an Early Childhood Intervention, with respect to the Educational Attainment Polygenic Score (EA4 PGS) constructed from DNA data based on GWAS weights from a European population. We find that the EA4 PGS is predictive of several measures of child development, mother’s IQ and, to some extent, educational attainment. We also show that the impacts of the intervention are significantly greater in children with low PGS, to the point that the intervention eliminates the initial genetic disadvantage. Lastly, we find that children with high PGS attract more parental stimulation; however, the latter increases more strongly in …
Value Creation And Value Capture In Indian Garment Sector Bargaining, Russell Morton
Value Creation And Value Capture In Indian Garment Sector Bargaining, Russell Morton
Discussion Papers
This paper examines creation and distribution of surplus from global value chains (GVCs) in low- and middle-income country (LMIC) domestic supply chains. While GVC participation can enhance growth and productivity, low prices paid to small input suppliers raise concerns that gains from GVC participation accrue to the large exporters (the buyers). Supply-chain transactions often occur in bargained agreements with non-price terms that increase small supplier surplus, such as quantity stability and other insurance-like terms. Therefore, low input prices reflect both buyers’ share of surplus generated by non-price terms and buyer capture. I enrich a Nash bargaining model to study how …
From Delay To Payday: Easing Bureaucrat Access To Implementation Information Strengthens Social Protection Delivery, Eric Dodge, Yusuf Neggers, Rohini Pande, Charity Troyer Moore
From Delay To Payday: Easing Bureaucrat Access To Implementation Information Strengthens Social Protection Delivery, Eric Dodge, Yusuf Neggers, Rohini Pande, Charity Troyer Moore
Discussion Papers
Poor implementation frequently impedes social protection delivery in low-state-capacity settings. In such environments, reducing managers’ information acquisition costs may improve their grasp of frontline issues and program performance. However, in the presence of managerial rent-seeking, increasing the principal’s information may be key, and doing so just for managers can backfire. To assess this trade-off and implications for program performance, we collaborated with two Indian states to randomly vary bureaucrat access to PayDash, a digital platform for real-time tracking of worker payment processing for the national rural workfare program. In treated districts, PayDash expedited bureaucrat processing of workfare payments by 17%, …
Firm Selection And Growth In Carbon Offset Markets: Evidence From The Clean Development Mechanism, Qiaoyi Chen, Nicholas Ryan, Daniel Yi Xu
Firm Selection And Growth In Carbon Offset Markets: Evidence From The Clean Development Mechanism, Qiaoyi Chen, Nicholas Ryan, Daniel Yi Xu
Discussion Papers
We study carbon offsets sold by firms in China under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). We find that offset-selling firms, meant to cut carbon emissions, instead increase them by 49% after starting an offset project. In a model of firm investment decisions and offset review, we estimate that CDM firms increase emissions due to both the selection of higher-growth firms into projects (35 pp) and because offset projects themselves boost firm growth and therefore emissions (14 pp). The CDM reduces global surplus by causing damages from increased emissions four times greater than private gains from trade in the offset market.
From Rural Fields To Urban Kitchens: Structural Change And The Decline Of Women's Work In India, Michael Peters, Pamela Torola, Lindsey Uniat, Fabrizio Zilibotti
From Rural Fields To Urban Kitchens: Structural Change And The Decline Of Women's Work In India, Michael Peters, Pamela Torola, Lindsey Uniat, Fabrizio Zilibotti
Discussion Papers
India’s GDP per capita grew threefold between 1987 and 2019, coinciding with rapid urbanization. During this period, female labor force participation (FLFP) declined significantly. Consistent with this observation, we document a pronounced urban-rural participation gap, where FLFP is higher in poorer, rural labor markets. Using time-use data, we show that this is primarily driven by an extensive margin: in rural districts, women often engage in part-time activities, typically related to agriculture and informal family businesses. These activities are less common in urban areas, where some women take formal jobs, but a larger share withdraws from the labor market to focus …
The Welfare Effects Of Including Household Preferences In School Assignment Systems: Evidence From Ecuador, Gregory Elacqua, Isabel Jacas, Thomas Krussig, Carolina Méndez, Christopher Neilson
The Welfare Effects Of Including Household Preferences In School Assignment Systems: Evidence From Ecuador, Gregory Elacqua, Isabel Jacas, Thomas Krussig, Carolina Méndez, Christopher Neilson
Discussion Papers
We partner with Ecuador’s government to implement a centralized school choice system using a Deferred Acceptance algorithm in Manta. Our study evaluates the welfare impact of transitioning from a distance-based assignment system to one that incorporates families’ preferences. Results show that accounting for preferences yields substantial welfare gains. Counterfactual analyses suggest that alternative mechanisms offer limited improvements compared to the benefits of preference inclusion and coordinated assignments. Household survey data on beliefs and satisfaction support these findings, indicating that centralized school choice systems can deliver significant welfare effects in developing countries.
Hold The Phone: The Short- And Long-Run Impacts Of Connecting Indian Women To Digital Technology, Giorgia Barboni, Anwesha Bhattacharya, Erica Field, Rohini Pande, Natalia Rigol, Simone Schaner, Aruj Shukla, Charity Moore
Hold The Phone: The Short- And Long-Run Impacts Of Connecting Indian Women To Digital Technology, Giorgia Barboni, Anwesha Bhattacharya, Erica Field, Rohini Pande, Natalia Rigol, Simone Schaner, Aruj Shukla, Charity Moore
Discussion Papers
Access to smartphones and mobile internet is increasingly necessary to participate in the modern economy. Yet women significantly lag men in digital access, especially in lower-income settings with gender gaps that span other dimensions - and where digital gaps threaten to deepen existing analog inequities. We study the short- and long-term effects of a large-scale state-sponsored program in India that aimed to close digital gender gaps by transferring free smartphones to women while constructing 4G towers to bring rural areas online. The program was well implemented, reversing gender gaps in smartphone ownership in the short run. However, many women lost …
Investing In The Next Generation: The Long-Run Impacts Of A Liquidity Shock, Patrick Agte, Arielle Bernhardt, Erica Field, Rohini Pande, Natalia Rigol
Investing In The Next Generation: The Long-Run Impacts Of A Liquidity Shock, Patrick Agte, Arielle Bernhardt, Erica Field, Rohini Pande, Natalia Rigol
Discussion Papers
Poor entrepreneurs must frequently choose between business investment and children’s education. To examine this trade-off, we exploit experimental variation in short-run microenterprise growth among a sample of Indian households and track children’s education and business outcomes over eleven years. Treated households, who experience higher initial microenterprise growth, invest more in education and are one-third more likely to send children to college. However, only literate households experience child schooling gains and their enterprises stagnate in the long-run. In contrast, illiterate treatment households experience long-run business gains but declines in children’s education. Our findings suggest that microenterprise growth has the potential to …
Report Cards: Parental Preferences, Information And School Choice In Haiti, Michael Borger, Gregory Elacqua, Isabel Jacas, Christopher Neilson, Anne Sofie Westh Olsen
Report Cards: Parental Preferences, Information And School Choice In Haiti, Michael Borger, Gregory Elacqua, Isabel Jacas, Christopher Neilson, Anne Sofie Westh Olsen
Discussion Papers
This paper studies school choice and information frictions in Haiti. Through a randomized control trial, we assess the impact of disclosing school-level test score information on learning outcomes, prices, and market shares. We find evidence that in markets where information was disclosed, students attending private schools increased test scores. The results also suggest private schools with higher baseline test scores increased their market share as well as their fees when the disclosure policy is implemented. While prices and test scores were not significantly correlated in the baseline survey, they exhibited a significant and positive correlation in treatment markets after information …
Early Childhood Intervention For The Poor: Long Term Outcomes, Alison Andrew, Orazio Attanasio, Britta Augsburg, Lina Cardosa, Monimalika Day, Michele Giannola, Sally Grantham-Mcgregor, Pamela Jervis, Costas Meghir, Marta Rubio Codina
Early Childhood Intervention For The Poor: Long Term Outcomes, Alison Andrew, Orazio Attanasio, Britta Augsburg, Lina Cardosa, Monimalika Day, Michele Giannola, Sally Grantham-Mcgregor, Pamela Jervis, Costas Meghir, Marta Rubio Codina
Discussion Papers
Early childhood interventions aim to promote skill acquisition and poverty reduction. While their short-term success is well established, research on longer-term effectiveness is scarce, particularly in LDCs. We present results of a randomized scalable intervention in India, that affected developmental outcomes in the short-term, including cognition (0.36 SD p=0.005), receptive language (0.26 SD p=0.03) and expressive language (0.21 SD p=0.03). After 4.5 years, when the children were on average 7.5 years old, IQ was no longer affected, but impacts persisted relative to the control group in numeracy (0.330 SD, p=0.007) and literacy (0.272 SD, p=0.064) driven by the most disadvantaged.
Efficiency And Distributional Effects Of Federal College Subsidies During The Great Depression, Gerald Jaynes, Alexander B. Kane
Efficiency And Distributional Effects Of Federal College Subsidies During The Great Depression, Gerald Jaynes, Alexander B. Kane
Discussion Papers
We conduct the first quantitative assessment of federal college subsidies during the 1930s. Overlapping generation households invest in children’s education to maximize multigenerational utility, and the government subsidizes college to maximize enrollment subject to a budget constraint and recipients satisfying ability and income qualifications. A modelling innovation assigns children educational ability through a random regression to the population mean correlated with father’s presumed ability ranking via his percentile in fathers’ earnings distribution. Simulating the theoretical model, the equilibrium that replicates actual education distributions estimates federal college subsidies increased graduation rates of the cohort of White Americans reaching college age during …
"Causes And Consequences Of State Violence Against Civilians: The Rohingya Of Myanmar", C. Austin Davis, Paula Lopez, Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak, Jaya Y. Wen
"Causes And Consequences Of State Violence Against Civilians: The Rohingya Of Myanmar", C. Austin Davis, Paula Lopez, Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak, Jaya Y. Wen
Discussion Papers
While the United Nations describes Myanmar’s oppression of the Rohingya as “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing” (UN, 2017), the state maintains that the violence was idiosyncratic and not motivated by anti-Rohingya animus. We assemble existing and original large-sample data to evaluate these claims. First, we document systematic economic motives: violence against minority civilians increased in places suitable for rice cultivation when rice prices were high. Correspondingly, in an original representative survey of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh we find substantial losses of agricultural land, inputs, and inventories. Next, using a vector auto-regression approach, we find that state violence was consistent …
Formalizing Dispute Resolution: Effects Of Village Courts In Bangladesh, Martin Mattsson, Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak
Formalizing Dispute Resolution: Effects Of Village Courts In Bangladesh, Martin Mattsson, Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak
Discussion Papers
Disagreements over business deals, land boundaries, or loan non-repayment are very common sources of disputes, and courts are congested in developing countries. We evaluate the effects of the government introducing formal “village courts” (VCs) in rural Bangladesh using a randomized controlled trial with a pre-analysis plan. VCs were designed to improve dispute resolution and relieve the pressure on congested district courts. We find that VCs are more of a substitute for the ubiquitous informal dispute resolution mechanism (DRM) called shalish. VCs become functional and active in treated areas, but shalish remains the primary preferred DRM in both treatment and …