Strengthening Fragile States: Evidence from Mobile Salary Payments in Afghanistan Joshua E. Blumenstock, Michael Callen, Anastasiia Faikina, Stefano Fiorin, and Tarek Ghani Abstract Building state capacity is uniquely challenging in fragile states. We report results from a randomized evaluation of a major Afghan government initiative to increase capacity by modernizing its payroll. The reform, […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 617, January 2023
Child Poverty Among Refugees Theresa P. Beltramo, Rossella Calvi, Giacomo De Giorgi and Ibrahima Sarr Abstract There are now more violent conflicts globally than at any time in the past three decades, resulting in the largest forced displacement crisis ever recorded. Understanding at a granular level the well-being of refugees is essential to inform […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 616, January 2023
Bayesian Impact Evaluation with Informative Priors: An Application to a Colombian Management and Export Improvement Program Leonardo Iacovone, David McKenzie and Rachael Meager Abstract Policymakers often test expensive new programs on relatively small samples. Formally incorporating informative Bayesian priors into impact evaluation offers the promise to learn more from these experiments. We evaluate a […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 615, December 2022
The Economics of Women’s Rights Michèle Tertilt, Anne Hannusch, Matthias Doepke and Laura Montenbruck Abstract Two centuries ago, in most countries around the world, women were unable to vote, had no say over their own children or property, and could not obtain a divorce. Women have gradually gained rights in many areas of life, […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 614, November 2022
Scaling Agricultural Policy Interventions Lauren Falcao Bergquist, Benjamin Faber, Thibault Fally, Matthias Hoelzlein, Edward Miguel and Andres Rodriguez-Clare Abstract Policies aimed at raising agricultural productivity have been a centerpiece in the fight against global poverty. Their impacts are often measured using field or quasi-experiments that provide strong causal identification, but may be too small-scale […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 613, September 2022
Imperfect Competition and Sanitation: Evidence from Randomized Auctions in Senegal Jean-Francois Houde, Molly Lipscomb, Terence Johnson and Laura Schechter Abstract We document the impact of imperfect competition in the sanitation market in Dakar Senegal, both in the traditional market and in an experimental, just-in-time auction system that we designed in collaboration with the government. […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 612, August 2022
Stress, Ethnicity, and Prosocial Behavior Johannes Haushofer, Sara Lowes, Nathan Nunn, Abednego Musau, Moritz Poll, David Ndetei and Nancy Qian Abstract While observational evidence suggests that people behave more prosocially towards members of their own ethnic group, many laboratory studies fail to find this effect. One possible explanation is that coethnic preference only emerges […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 611, August 2022
Social Media and the Behavior of Politicians: Evidence from Facebook in Brazil Pedro Bessone., Filipe Campante, Claudio Ferraz and Pedro CL Souza Abstract We study the relationship between the spread of social media platforms and the communication and responsiveness of politicians towards voters, in the context of the expansion of Facebook in Brazil. We […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 610, August 2022
Social Protection and Social Distancing During the Pandemic: Mobile Money Transfers in Ghana Dean Karlan, Matt Lowe, Robert Osei, Isaac Osei-Akoto, Benjamin N. Roth and Christopher Udry Abstract We study the impact of mobile money transfers to a representative sample of low-income Ghanaians during the COVID-19 pandemic. The announcement of the upcoming transfers affects […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 609, July 2022
Does the Invisible Hand Efficiently Guide Entry and Exit? Abhijit Banerjee, Greg Fischer, Dean Karlan, Matt Lowe, and Benjamin N. Roth Abstract What accounts for the ubiquity of small vendors operating side-by-side in the urban centers of developing countries? Why don’t competitive forces drive some vendors out of the market? We ran an experiment […]