Using disaggregated dyadic panel data on international migration flows
from Indonesian districts, this paper provides causal evidence for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and international migration being substitutes. Our empirical analysis exploits regulatory changes in the Negative Investment List, a product-specific FDI policy, that have been implemented by the Indonesian government from...
This paper introduces a new dataset that estimates the volume of human travel
across country borders worldwide between 1995 and 2022. It builds and expands
on pioneering work that presented estimates for 2011 to 2016 (Recchi et al., 2019).
The dataset enables the study of the volume, directions, and changes in global
human mobility. Our estimates reveal that total transnational mobility...
This study examines the distributional impacts of the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (EU CBAM) on Turkish households. Using a global quantitative trade model linked to micro-level household data, we assess real income changes across various policy scenarios and sectoral labor mobility assumptions. While our findings indicate modest real income losses at the aggregate...
This paper aims to fill the methodological gap in development economics that until now there exists no quantitative tool that allows to prioritize reforms in a systematic nor optimal way. Following the recent debate on the issues Randomized Control Trials (RCTs) have with establishing external validity and general equilibrium effects, this paper proposes a micro-founded Growth Diagnostics...
The past decade saw an increase in publicly available evaluation ratings of official development assistance (ODA) projects. This study critically examines the prevailing assumption that these outcome ratings accurately reflect the aid project’s effectiveness. Drawing on the increasing criticism – referring to evaluator responsiveness to stakeholder pressure and trends towards easier achievable...
It is estimated that one in two children in cocoa-growing communities is involved in child labor, threatening their education, health and overall well-being. While previous interventions to reduce child labor have focused on improving school attendance or enforcing labor regulations, no study has directly addressed the underlying economic constraints that may drive child labor in...
Rural communities worldwide face rapidly evolving and complex challenges, such as climate change. The current generation is challenged to balance its own needs with those of future generations and must decide how much to invest in adapting to climate change to secure the future. This highlights the key intergenerational dilemma at the heart of efforts to adapt to climate change. Addressing...
Narratives shape economic and political decision-making processes, yet understanding their causal impact remains a challenge. This paper investigates the influence of narratives on economic choices, in the context of environmentally sustainable mining in the Peruvian Amazon. We focus on how weaving information on clean technology into narratives affects artisanal miners’ decisions. The study...
We present and field-test a novel mechanism to elicit the willingness to pay for multiple instead of a single unit of a good. At each price of the canonical multiple price list (MPL) approach, we elicit varying multi-unit demand instead of limiting the choice to two options. We showcase our mechanism by applying it in the Lake Victoria fisheries of Tanzania to elicit valuations for fishing net...
Social norms and perceptions within farming networks can influence the adoption of new agricultural practices. In Indonesian rice farming communities, norms around the desired level of rice plant greenness are widespread, with some farmers valuing deep green plants. Since greenness levels depend on the content of chlorophyll in the plants, which in turn depends on nitrogen fertilizer inputs,...
This study investigates the potential favoritism in Chinese development aid allocation towards the home countries of African Union (AU) Chairpersons during their tenure. The AU’s rotational presidency model provides a unique opportunity to test whether Chinese aid is disproportionately directed to the Chairperson’s home country during their one-year term. Estimating fixed effects Poisson...
We study the labour market impact of the “Veblen effect” by estimating the relation between inequality and average work hours in society and how the effect varies between the poor and the nonpoor. Using data on actual hours worked by members of a household from India’s Periodic Labour Force Survey, we report three main findings. First, members belonging to absolutely and relatively poor...
This paper introduces two channels through which exports from commodity-dependent countries towards regional partners might be less affected by Dutch Disease effects than extra-regional exports. The first channel relates to a higher share of technologically more sophisticated products in intra-regional South-South trade, which are less sensitive to cost and price changes. The second channel is...
Societies in South Asia are ageing quickly and only few elderly receive contributory pensions, highlighting the importance of social pension systems. However, evidence on the impact of social pension receipt on the beneficiaries' well-being and their trust in local governments is scarce. This paper uses data on eligibility criteria of several thousand beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of...
This paper examines how initial income endowments influence the distribution of public goods through ethnic favouritism in Bolivia. We argue that economic advantages, such as income, sustain favouritism among co-ethnics. To guide our analysis towards this idea, we develop a theoretical framework of favour exchange, which predicts that higher-income groups are better positioned to sustain...
Monitoring and punishment are common tools for increasing the cost of non-
compliance. In developing country contexts, however, these tools are often ineffective
or inefficient. We investigate an alternative approach: Subsidies that reduce the cost
of compliance. We conduct a randomized controlled trial with 799 boat owners at
Lake Victoria, Kenya and Tanzania, clustered at the level of...
According to UNICEF, it will take 300 years to wipe out child marriage at the current speed of progress. Child marriage remains a huge problem despite global interventions and laws being in force in most countries, leading to profound adverse consequences. More and more countries are implementing age-of-marriage laws with a minimum marriage age of at least 18. Yet, previous literature has...
This study examines the role of oral traditions in shaping corruption. Using firm-level data on a large sample of 82,922 firms covering 285 cultural societies in 125 countries, we analyze how the representation of antisocial behavior in folklore influences corruption. Our findings reveal that societies with folklore portraying antisocial behaviors as successful tend to exhibit higher levels of...
This study examines whether conflictual events are linked to a short-term increase in intimate partner violence (IPV), the most prevalent form of violence against women in both conflict and non-conflict contexts. To this end, I use data from Domestic Violence module of 52 Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) surveys conducted in 22 countries and spatially link them to conflictual events...
This paper utilises data from over 45,000 respondents in the Afrobarometer surveys, combined with the Global Terrorism Database, to investigate whether terrorist incidents trigger a localised “rally around the flag” effect. In the aftermath of such incidents, individuals
residing near terror attacks exhibit increased political trust, including higher trust in the president and the ruling...
