Islam and the State: Religious Education in the Age of Mass Schooling Samuel Bazzi, Masyhur Hilmy, Benjamin Marx Abstract Public schooling systems are an essential feature of modern states. These systems often developed at the expense of religious schools, which undertook the bulk of education historically and still cater to large student populations worldwide. This […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 576, December 2020
Country of Women? Repercussions of the Triple Alliance War in Paraguay Jennifer Alix-Garcia, Laura Schechter, Felipe Valencia Caicedo, S. Jessica Zhu Abstract Skewed sex ratios often result from episodes of conflict, disease, and migration. Their persistent impacts over a century later, and especially in less-developed regions, remain less understood. The War of the Triple Alliance […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 575, March 2020
Understanding Cultural Persistence and Change Paola Giuliano, Nathan Nunn Abstract We examine a determinant of cultural persistence that has emerged from a class of models in evolutionary anthropology: the similarity of the environment across generations. Within these models, when the environment is more similar across generations, the traits that have evolved up to the previous […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 574, March 2020
Optimal Subsidies for Prevention of Infectious Disease Matthew Goodkin-Gold, Michael Kremer, Christopher M. Snyder, Heidi Williams Abstract Most economists would agree that the positive externalities caused by prevention of infectious disease create a prima facie case for subsidies. However, little is known about the appropriate magnitude of these subsidies, or about whether the level of […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 573, March 2020
Is Fish Brain Food or Brain Poison? Sea Surface Temperature, Methyl-mercury and Child Cognitive Development Mark R. Rosenzweig, Rafael J. Santos Abstract We exploit variation in the composition of local fish catches around the time of birth using large- scale administrative and census data on adult cognitive test scores, schooling attainment, and occupation among coastal […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 572, March 2020
How Political Insiders Lose Out When International Aid Underperforms: Evidence from a Participatory Development Experiment in Ghana Kate Baldwin, Dean Karlan, Christopher Udry, Ernest Appiah Abstract Participatory development is designed to mitigate problems of political bias in pre-existing local government but also interacts with it in complex ways. Using a five-year randomized controlled study in […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 571, January 2020
Microentrepreneurship in Developing Countries Seema Jayachandran Abstract This article reviews the recent literature in economics on small-scale entrepreneur- ship (“microentrepreneurship”) in low-income countries. Major themes in the literature include the determinants and consequences of joining the formal sector, the impacts of access to credit and other financial services, the impacts of business training, barriers to […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 570, January 2020
Decentralized Targeting of Agricultural Credit Programs: Private versus Political Intermediaries Pushkar Maitra, Sandip Mitra, Dilip Mookherjee, Sujata Visaria Abstract We compare two different methods of appointing a local commission agent as an intermediary for a credit program. In the Trader-Agent Intermediated Lending Scheme (TRAIL), the agent was a randomly selected established private trader, while in […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 569, June 2018
On the Long Term Effects of the 1918 U.S. Influenza Pandemic Ryan Brown, Duncan Thomas Abstract Using the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic, Almond (2006) concludes that in utero exposure to maternal health insults has a large, negative impact on socio-economic status that reaches well into adulthood. A key assumption underlying this research is that birth […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 568, December 2019
Credit Rationing and Pass-Through in Supply Chains: Theory and Evidence from Bangladesh M. Shahe Emran, Dilip Mookherjee, Forhad Shilpi, M. Helal Uddin Abstract We extend standard models of price pass-through in an imperfectly competitive supply chain to incorporate rationing of trade credit. Credit rationing reverses predictions concerning effects of raw material import prices on pass-through […]