Social Proximity and Bureaucrat Performance: Evidence from India Guo Xu, Marianne Bertrand, Robin Burgess Abstract Using exogenous variation in social proximity generated by an allocation rule, we find that bureaucrats assigned to their home states are perceived to be more corrupt and less able to withstand illegitimate political pressure. Despite this, we observe that home […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 556, March 2019
Competition and Relational Contracts in the Rwanda Coffee Chain Rocco Macchiavello, Ameet Morjaria Abstract How does competition affect market outcomes when formal contracts are not enforce- able, and parties resort to relational contracts? Difficulties with measuring relational contracts and dealing with the endogeneity of competition have frustrated attempts to answer this question. We make progress […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 555, July 2018
Borrowing Requirements, Credit Access, and Adverse Selection: Evidence from Kenya William Jack, Michael Kremer, Joost de Laat, Tavneet Suri Abstract Do the stringent formal sector borrowing requirements common in many developing countries restrict credit access, technology adoption, and welfare? When a Kenyan dairy’s savings and credit cooperative randomly offered some farmers the opportunity to replace […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 554, January 2019
Does Information Break the Political Resource Curse? Experimental Evidence from Mozambique Alex Armand, Alexander Coutts, Pedro C. Vicente, Inês Vilela Abstract Natural resources can lead to the deterioration of public policies through corruption, as well as to civil conflict. Our paper tests this political resource curse through a large-scale field experiment following the dissemination of […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 553, January 2019
Demand Estimation with Strategic Complementarities: Sanitation in Bangladesh Raymond Guiteras, James Levinsohn, Mushfiq Mobarak Abstract For many products, the utility of adoption depends on the share of other house- holds that adopt. We estimate a structural model of demand that allows for these inter-dependencies. We apply our model to the adoption of household latrines – […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 552, April 2020
Saving for Multiple Financial Needs: Evidence from Lockboxes and Mobile Money in Malawi Shilpa Aggarwal, Valentina Brailovskaya, Jonathan Robinson Abstract We test whether the provision of multiple labeled savings accounts affects savings and downstream outcomes in an experiment with 761 microentrepreneurs in urban Malawi. Treatment respondents received one or multiple savings accounts, in the form […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 551, December 2018
Using RCTs to Estimate Long-Run Impacts in Development Economics Adrien Bouguen, Yue Huang, Michael Kremer, Edward Miguel Abstract We assess evidence from randomized control trials (RCTs) on long-run economic productiv- ity and living standards in poor countries. We first document that several studies estimate large positive long-run impacts, but that relatively few existing RCTs have […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 550, November 2018
Reshaping Adolescents’ Gender Attitudes: Evidence from a School-Based Experiment in India Diva Dhar, Tarun Jain, Seema Jayachandran Abstract Societal norms about gender roles contribute to the economic disadvantages facing women in many developing countries. This paper evaluates an intervention aimed at eroding support for restrictive gender norms, specifically a multi-year school-based intervention in Haryana, India, […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 549, November 2018
Interaction, Stereotypes and Performance. Evidence from South Africa Lucia Corno, Eliana La Ferrara, Justine Burns Abstract We exploit a policy designed to randomly allocate roommates in a large South African university to investigate whether inter-racial interaction affects stereotypes, attitudes and performance. Using Implicit Association Tests, we Önd that living with a roommate of a different […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 548, February 2020
Market Access, Trade Costs, and Technology Adoption: Evidence from Northern Tanzania Shilpa Aggarwal, Brian Giera, Dahyeon Jeong, Jonathan Robinson, Alan Spearot Abstract We collect data on prices, travel costs and farmer decisions to quantify market access and its impact on agricultural productivity in 1,183 villages in two regions of Tanzania. Villages at the bottom of […]