Mobility and congestion in urban India Prottoy A. Akbar, Gilles Duranton, Victor Couture, Adam Storeygard Abstract We develop a methodology to estimate robust city-level vehicular mobility indices, and apply it to 154 Indian cities using 22 million counterfactual trips measured by a web mapping service. There is wide variation in mobility across cities. An exact decomposition […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 546, May 2018
Identifying the Costs of a Public Health Success: Arsenic Well Water Contamination and Productivity in Bangladesh Mark M. Pitt, Mark R. Rosenzweig, Nazmul Hassan Download paper in PDF format
BREAD Working Paper No. 545, October 2018
Understanding Human Trafficking Using Victim-Level Data Martina Björkman Nyqvist, Maria Kuecken, Eliana La Ferrara, Elsa Artadi Abstract Quantitative research on human trafficking is scant due to lack of data. This study makes use of a unique survey we collected on former victims of trafficking and vulnerable women and girls in the Philippines. We start by […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 544, September 2018
Worst-Case Bounds on R&D and Pricing Distortions: Theory and Disturbing Conclusions if Consumer Values Follow the World Income Distribution Michael Kremer, Christopher M. Snyder Abstract We prove that, for general demand and cost conditions and market structures, the fraction of first- best surplus that a monopolist is unable to extract in a market provides a […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 543, August 2018
Narratives, Imperatives, and Moral Reasoning Roland Bénabou, Armin Falk, Jean Tirole Abstract By downplaying externalities, magnifying the cost of moral behavior, or suggesting not being pivotal, exculpatory narratives can allow individuals to maintain a positive image when in fact acting in a morally questionable way. Conversely, responsibilizing narratives can help sustain better social norms. We […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 542, July 2018
Bribes vs. Taxes: Market Structure and Incentives Francesco Amodio, Jieun Choi, Giacomo De Giorgi, Aminur Rahman Abstract Firms in developing countries often avoid paying taxes by making informal payments to tax officials. These bribes may raise the cost of operating a business, and the price charged to consumers. To decrease these costs, we designed a […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 541, March 2018
Worth Fighting For: Daughters Improve their Mothers’ Autonomy in South Asia Rachel Heath, Xu Tan Abstract In South Asia, parents prize sons for both economic and cultural reasons, and having a son is often thought to improve his mother’s status within the household. However, using data from Bangladesh and India, we show that such high […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 541, Feburary 2018
Worth Fighting For: Daughters Improve their Mothers’ Autonomy in South Asia Rachel Heath, Xu Tan Abstract In South Asia, parents prize sons for both economic and cultural reasons, and hav- ing a son is often thought to improve his mother’s status within the household. How- ever, using data from Bangladesh and India, we show that […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 540, February 2018
Bride Price and Female Education Nava Ashraf, Natalie Bau, Nathan Nunn, Alessandra Voena Abstract Although it is well known that traditional cultural practices can play an important role in develop- ment, we still have little understanding of what this means for development policy. To improve our understanding of this issue, we examine how the effects […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 539, February 2018
The Effects of Fair Trade Certification: Evidence From Coffee Producers in Costa Rica Raluca Dragusanu, Nathan Nunn Abstract We examine the effects of Fair Trade (FT) certification of coffee on producers and households in Costa Rica. Examining the production dynamics of the universe of Costa Rican coffee mills from 1999–2014, we find that FT certification […]