Councilors who thought performance reports would be published before an election invested more in infrastructure, with positive impacts on re-election Read “Public Information is an Incentive for Politicians: Experimental Evidence from Delhi Elections” by Abhijit Banerjee, Nils Enevoldsen, Rohini Pande, and Michael Walton here (https://economics.yale.edu/sites/default/files/delhivoter_shared-4_ada-ns.pdf) .

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47: Public disclosure as a political incentive: Evidence from municipal elections in India

The introduction of financial institutions in communities may generate long-lasting externalities, including losses in informal social linkages Read “Changes in social network structure in response to exposure to formal credit markets” by Abhijit Banerjee, Emily Breza, Arun G. Chandrasekhar, Esther Duflo, Matthew O. Jackson, and Cynthia Kinnan here (https://www.nber.org/papers/w28365) .

47: The unintended impacts of formal credit programmes on social networks: Evidence from India

How automatic payments can help individuals save more and better protect themselves against consumer risks Read “Learning to navigate a new financial technology: Evidence from payroll accounts” by Emily Breza, Martin Kanz, and Leora F. Klapper here.

47: Learning-by-doing: Navigating financial technologies among Bangladeshi factory workers

Access to fast cash through digital credit may put consumers at risk for over-indebtedness and likelihood of default Read “Too fast, too furious? Digital credit delivery speed and repayment rates” by Alfredo Burlando, Michael A. Kuhn, and Silvia Prina here (http://www.silviaprina.com/pdfs/BKP_2021_01_15.pdf) .

47: Is faster always better? Evidence from Mexico’s digital credit market

Bundling interventions that offer parents health information along with cash transfers might yield more sustainable changes in early-life health outcomes for children

46: Designing more effective interventions to prevent childhood stunting: Evidence from Nigeria

Bundling interventions that offer parents health information along with cash transfers might yield more sustainable changes in early-life health outcomes for childrenRead “The impacts of a multifaceted pre-natal intervention on human capital accumulation in early life” by Pedro Carneiro, Lucy Kraftman, Giacomo Mason, Lucie Moore, Imran Rasul and Molly Scott here. 

47: Designing more effective interventions to prevent childhood stunting: Evidence from Nigeria

Policymakers might seek to address the frictions that prevent potentially beneficial migration to urban areas from taking place Read “Urban-Rural Gaps in the Developing World: Does Internal Migration Offer Opportunities?” by David Lagakos here (https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.34.3.174) . 

46: Urban-rural gaps in the developing world: Does internal migration offer opportunities?

Despite evidence of increasing household wages, anti-poverty schemes in India can have an adverse effect by lowering human capital investment Read “Workfare and Human Capital Investment: Evidence from India” by Manisha Shah and Bryce Millet Steinberg here (http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/early/2019/10/07/jhr.56.2.1117-9201R2.abstract) .

46: Unintended consequences: How workfare programmes may fuel school dropouts in India

People are less likely to ask questions in their communities if it exposes the limits of their knowledge. Read “Signaling, shame, and silence in social learning” by Arun G. Chandrasekhar, Benjamin Golub, and He Yang here (https://stanford.edu/~arungc/CGY.pdf) .

46: How does shame and embarrassment impact social learning? Evidence from India

More frequent assessment of student performance fails to deliver on improved outcomes when the administrative burden on teachers is high

46: Failure of frequent assessment: Evidence from India’s continuous and comprehensive evaluation programme

Nearly a billion people around the world are not connected to the electricity grid, and even more have unreliable access. In this VoxDevTalk, Robin Burgess discusses his paper with Michael Greenstone, Nicholas Ryan, and Anant Sudarshan in which the authors argue that a social norm that all people deserve access to electricity regardless of payment may actually be undermining the universal access called for in Sustainable Development Goal 7.  When people feel no compulsion to pay for the electricity they use, whether or not they are able to, government-owned distribution companies need to ration supply to limit their losses, either by enforcing blackouts or restricting access. This tends to affect those living in the poorer areas of countries more, and research on the relationship between electricity consumption and GDP suggests that it also has a macro impact on economic growth. One possible way to move from this low-payment, low-access equilibrium to a high-payment, high-access one is for governments to provide targeted subsidies towards getting connected to the grid, and for people to then pay for the electricity they use.

45: Should electricity be a right? Evidence from India

Incentivising agent performance is a double-edged sword: while it can encourage agents to perform better, it might also nudge them into cheating and manipulating results to their benefit. In this VoxDevTalk, Guojun He discusses his work with Michael Greenstone, Ruixue Jia, and Tong Liu on this classic principal-agent problem in the context of how Chinese local governments self-report meeting air pollution-reduction targets imposed (and incentivised) by the central government. An analysis of these reports reveals evidence of significant under-reporting by local governments before the central government installed automated real-time pollution monitoring devices across the country. Under-reporting was larger in areas with higher levels of actual pollution, ostensibly since these local governments face greater challenges in meeting pollution-reduction targets. How accurately local governments report pollution figures also has impacts on public welfare, with people exposed to pollution information more likely to search for information on face masks and air filters. Biased information thus prevented people from optimally protecting themselves prior to the introduction of automation.

45: Technology as a tool for governance: Evidence from China

Certain kinds of NGO-led development projects attract more funding and media attention than others. Child sponsorship or microcredit schemes, for instance, tend to be 'hotter' than rehabilitation projects. To what extent does this knowledge affect the fundraising agenda of NGOs? What causes NGOs to 'cluster' around specific causes in favour of others? And what can be done to diversify NGO (and donor) attention? In this VoxDevTalk, Thierry Verdier examines the motivations of NGO competition and its impact on the development sector, of which NGOs are a significant part. Competition for funding routinely induces NGOs to systemically undercover 'Cinderella projects', which remain chronically underfunded. Is the solution to this problem better coordination on fundraising activities between NGOs or is it government intervention? In a new research paper, he and his co-authors Gani Aldashev and Marco Marini look at aid data to analyse NGO clustering around certain sectors and geographic regions and propose possible mechanisms that influence such behaviour. 

45: How does funding influence sectoral and geographic spread of NGOs?

Entrepreneurship across the world is highly male dominated. While the amount of subsistence entrepreneurship in developing countries leads to a slightly more equal gender balance, female entrepreneurs in these countries tend to choose sectors where other women are. In this VoxDevTalk, Nava Ashraf and Ed Glaeser discuss their work with Alexia Delfino investigating how gender norms and weak rule of law put female entrepreneurs at a disadvantage. Fear of expropriation by men leads them to work in less profitable industries, such as tailoring or food production, where they can collaborate with other women rather than with men. A survey of the manufacturing sector in Zambia, for example, revealed that almost all of the gap in earnings between male and female entrepreneurs could be explained by female entrepreneurs entering low-paid industries. Relatively equal gender norms that increase women’s bargaining power and decent rule of law for contract enforcement can encourage more women to become entrepreneurs and to branch out to more profitable industries.

45: Gender norms, rule of law, and female entrepreneurship in developing countries

When faced with onerous procedures to apply for a job, potential applicants can be expected to weigh the costs of applying on their time and energy against the probability of their getting the job and the eventual benefits. It is widely believed that if recruiters raise the costs of applying for a job, only the most suited and driven candidates can be expected to apply. In this VoxDevTalk, Stefano Caria shares insights from his paper with Girum Abebe and Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, in which the authors start from the assumption that the cost of applying for a job may be higher for the best applicants. Through their field experiment in Ethiopia, they find that employers find better applicants when they reimburse the applicants for submitting their application and appearing for the selection test. Moreover, they are also able to find high-quality candidates from relatively disadvantaged backgrounds who would have been otherwise deterred by the costs of applying.

45: The selection of talent: Experimental and structural evidence from Ethiopia

Hear about the cutting edge of development economics from research to practice. Each week Tim Phillips interviews experts who provide insightful commentary, analysis, and evidence on a wide range of policy challenges.

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