Content:
Departmental Seminar
| Date | Time | Speaker | Title | Abstract |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 04/09/2012 | 4:10 PM - 5:30 PM |
The Fletcher School and Economics Department |
Zap it to Me: Evidence from a Mobile Money Transfer Experiment | Conditional and unconditional cash transfers have been effective in improving development outcomes in a variety of contexts, yet the costs of these programs to program recipients and implementing agencies are rarely discussed. The introduction of mobile money transfer systems in many developing countries offers new opportunities for a more cost-effective means of implementing cash transfer programs. This paper reports on the first randomized evaluation of a cash transfer program delivered via the mobile phone. In response to a devastating drought in Niger, households in targeted villages received monthly cash transfers as part of a social protection program. One-third of targeted villages received a monthly cash transfer via a mobile money transfer system (called zap), whereas one-third received manual cash transfers and the remaining one-third received manual cash transfers plus a mobile phone. We show that the zap delivery mechanism strongly reduced the variable distribution costs for the implementing agency, as well as program recipients’ costs of obtaining the cash transfer. The zap approach also resulted in additional benefits: households in zap villages used their cash transfer to purchase a more diverse set of goods, had higher diet diversity, depleted fewer assets and grew more types of crops, especially marginal cash crops grown by women. We posit that the potential mechanisms underlying these results are the lower costs and greater privacy of the receiving the cash transfer via the zap mechanism, as well as changes in intra-household decision-making. This suggests that m-transfers could be a cost-effective means of providing cash transfers for remote rural populations. |
| 04/16/2012 | 4:10 PM - 5:30 PM |
University of California, Berkeley |
Can Minimum Wages Cause a Big Push? Evidence from Indonesia | Big Push models suggest that local product demand can create multiple labor market equilibria: one featuring high wages, formalization, and high demand and one with low wages, informality, and low demand. I demonstrate that minimum wages may coordinate development at the high wage equilibrium. Using data from 1990s Indonesia, where minimum wages increased in a varied way, I develop a difference in spatial differences estimator which weakens the common trend assumption of difference in differences. Estimation reveals strong trends in support of a big push: formal employment increases and informal employment decreases in response to the minimum wage. Local product demand also increases, and this formalization occurs only in the non-tradable, industrializable industries suggested by the model (while employment in tradable and non-industrializable industries also conforms to model predictions). |
| 04/18/2012 | 4:10 PM - 5:30 PM | Yasuyuki Sawada University of Tokyo, Economics Department |
Does Infrastructure Facilitate Social Capital Accumulation? Evidence from Natural and Artefactual Field Experiments in a Developing Country | While social capital is recognized essential for economic activities, its accumulation mechanisms are largely unexplored. We investigate the impact of infrastructure on social capital accumulation. We use unique dataset from an irrigation project in Sri Lanka under a natural experimental situation where a significant portion of irrigated land was allocated through a lottery mechanism. Also, we capture the level of social capital using artefactual field experiments. By combining these two datasets, we find that physical distance embedded by construction of irrigation system explain the trust across irrigation communities. Yet, within-community variation in social capital is driven largely by the years of access to the irrigation and not necessarily affected by social distance between farmers, suggesting that social preference emerges from technological environment by physical access to irrigation. |
| 05/03/2012 | 4:10 PM - 5:30 PM |
Duke University, Department of Economics |
Meeting Urban Housing Needs: Do People Really Come to the Nuisance? | |
| 05/11/2012 | 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM |
Purdue University |
Response of corn markets to climate volatility and alternative energy futures | Recent price spikes have raised concern that climate change could increase food insecurity by reducing grain yields in the coming decades. However, commodity price volatility is also influenced by other factors, which may either exacerbate or buffer the effects of climate change. Here we show that US corn price volatility exhibits higher sensitivity to near-term climate change than to energy policy influences or agricultureenergy market integration, and that the presence of a biofuels mandate enhances the sensitivity to climate change by more than 50%. The climate change impact is driven primarily by intensification of severe hot conditions in the primary corn-growing region of the US, which causes US corn price volatility to increase sharply in response to global warming projected over the next three decades. Closer integration of agriculture and energy markets moderates the effects of climate change, unless the biofuels mandate becomes binding, in which case corn price volatility is instead exacerbated. However, in spite of the substantial impact on US corn price volatility, we find relatively small impact on food prices. Our findings highlight the critical importance of interactions between energy policies, energy-agriculture linkages, and climate change. |
| 05/14/2012 | 4:10 PM - 5:30 PM |
University of Oxford |
Are Gifts and Loans between Households Voluntary? | We propose a simple test of unilateral versus bilateral link formation using a maximum likelihood estimator that deals with mis-reporting. This estimator is suitable for pairwise data sources with multiple discordant measures. We illustrate the methodology using dyadic data on inter-household gifts and loans from the village of Nyakatoke in Tanzania. We find reasonably strong evidence in favor of unilateral link formation: if a household wishes to enter in a relationship with someone who is suciently close socially and geographically, it can do so unilaterally. Flows of gifts and loans between two households are nevertheless more likely if both households wish to link. We show that not taking mis-reporting into account leads to serious underestimation of the total amount of gifts and loans between villagers. |
| 05/15/2012 | 4:10 PM - 5:30 PM |
Oregon State University |
Spatial-dynamic management of invasive species in a river network: stochastic species dispersal and native-invasive species competition | The bio-economic decision model explored here finds optimal spatial patterns and dynamic pathways of invasive species management in a river network. The biological side of the model builds off of ecological research on spatial processes of species dispersal and on native-invasive species competition, with both ecological aspects containing stochastic elements. The numerical solution technique is being developed in collaboration with computer engineers through an initiative on Computational Sustainability. Given the spatial connections in the river system, the optimal policies perform better than both popular reach-specific policies and the treatment of the leading edge of the invasion. Policies vary with the characteristics of the native and invasive species' dispersal and habitat site-competition parameters. Due to the ecological processes involved, both the pattern of the invaded reaches and the patterns of native and empty habitat sites contribute significantly to the optimal policy. The spatially explicit and stochastic framework also finds cases in which long-distance spread, or "spotting" beyond the invaded frontier, occurs. |
| 05/21/2012 | 2:10 PM - 3:30 PM |
Harvard University |
Local Economic Spillovers from the Agricultural Sector: Evidence from Tapping the Ogallala Aquifer | |
| 05/29/2012 | 4:10 PM - 5:30 PM | Carmen Diana Deere Center for Latin American Studies, University of Florida |
Asset Ownership and Egalitarian Decision-making in Dual-headed Households in Ecuador |