Democratic regime change has large positive effects on income per capita, yet the underlying transmission channels of this relationship are largely unexplored. We provide novel evidence studying the effect of democratic regime change on capital inflows in a large sample of economies from 1975 to 2015. Using heterogeneous difference-in differences estimators, we find that regime change causes...
This paper examines the impact of floods on regional import dynamics in South Africa. Natural disasters like floods can disrupt firms’ production activities, hindering their participation in import markets. However, firms may increase imports to offset disruptions in their domestic supply networks. Our study explores this adjustment behavior using administrative firm-level and customs...
How should the cost of a decent life be quantified? Are the available living income methods and indicators valid welfare measures? Additionally, are these suitable for the contexts where they are being leveraged for agrifood policies and interventions? This paper critically examines two prevailing methodologies for estimating living income indicators and their application in rural agricultural...
While joint-liability lending has been central to microfinance since the 1970s, recent evidence indicates that this mechanism has fallen short of its promise to reduce loan defaults and operational costs. Since borrowers of joint-liability loans commonly face symmetric contract terms, group members are subject to coordination and free-riding problems. Peers might enforce each other to repay...
Transportation infrastructure is widely recognized for enhancing economic efficiency and regional connectivity. However, the very projects that reduce trade costs and stimulate industrial growth may also contribute to environmental degradation, raising an important question: can this apparent trade-off be reconciled? This paper investigates how highway expansion, through reductions in trade...
This paper examines the impact of infrastructure projects on conflicts in Africa using georeferenced data on infrastructure projects and conflict events at the spatial resolution of 0.1 degree× 0.1 degree for all of Africa between 2002 and 2019. Employing a spatial difference-in-differences design and instrumental variable strategy, we find that infrastructure projects, particularly roads,...
Climate shocks can significantly reshape employment patterns in low- and middle-income countries. Given persistent structural, social, and economic gender disparities, women are likely to experience these effects more acutely, yet existing evidence remains inconclusive. This study examines how droughts influence female employment in India, where many women face systemic barriers to labor...
Policymakers, researchers, and other stakeholders often care about the prevalence of complex, sensitive outcomes or behaviors, such as human trafficking and forced labor, gender-based violence, child labor, or corruption. But the measurement of such issues is challenging: Comprehensive administrative data is usually unavailable, survey respondents may define these concepts very differently...
Climate change causes more frequent and more severe droughts in many regions of the world with potentially devastating effects on the local agricultural sector. In this paper, we study the transmission of such effects from agriculture to the wider economy. To this end, we construct a new spatially explicit drought index, which takes into account both climatic factors, and the local growing...
We provide quasi-experimental evidence of how an innovative market-based solution using remote-sensing technology can mitigate drought-induced conflict. Droughts are a major driver of conflict in Africa, particularly between nomadic pastoralists and sedentary farmers. The Index-Based Livestock Insurance (IBLI) piloted in Kenya provides automated, preemptive payouts to pastoralists affected by...
Abstract
We analyze the impact of recently constructed, large-scale road infrastructure
on local forest loss and economic development in the Republic of the Congo
(RoC) between 2000 and 2020. Situated in Western Central Africa, the RoC
is home to a humid tropical forest that serves as the world’s only stable car-
bon sink, absorbing 1.5% of global annual carbon emissions. In recent...
The publication of contradictory replications often sparks fierce debates between replicators and original authors. This paper investigates whether impartial experts can reach a consensus on a famous yet unsettled replication debate about the seminal paper by Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson (AJR, 2001) and the replication by Albouy (2012). We recruited 352 experts from the pool of scholars...
Moral hazard in credit markets undermines loan repayment. To study whether information sharing among lenders strengthens repayment incentives for borrowers, we combine a theoretical framework with experimental evidence from information campaigns. The campaigns target 5,400 microcredit borrowers in the Philippines and randomly vary their knowledge of an existing credit registry. Campaigns...
Can developing countries benefit from exporting opportunities in the growing sector of tradable services, given the near free information flow via the internet and wage differentials relative to developed countries? Focusing on the software development industry, we analyse data from 2.55 million software projects across 5,400 locations, and estimate an economic geography model in which...
