Journal of Development Economics最新文献

We consider risk sharing in rural China during its rapid economic transformation from the late 1980s through the late 2000s. We document an erosion of consumption insurance against both household-level idiosyncratic and village-level aggregate income shocks, and show that this decline is related to observable economic changes: the shift out of agriculture, the decline of publicly owned Township-and-Village Enterprises, and increased migrant work. Further evidence suggests that as these changes took place at the village level, higher levels of government failed to offset these effects through the tax-and-transfer system, leaving households more exposed to both idiosyncratic and village-aggregate risk.

We explore the implications of allowing a poverty-averse donor to monitor aid use within the familiar context of the needs vs. aid effectiveness tradeoff. The paper focuses on the optimal aid allocation between two countries when the donor simultaneously decides about aid shares and country-specific monitoring effort aimed at increasing the amount reaching the poor. Endogenizing aid effectiveness is shown to raise the poor’s income in the worse-governed country, yet not necessarily in the better-governed one, whereas the effect on country aid shares is essentially ambiguous. Those results still hold when the basic model is extended in various directions. Conventional aid allocation rules should be re-examined in their light.

This paper reports on a randomized experiment in El Salvador that aimed to improve online labor market outcomes by teaching the entrepreneurial skills required to engage with online marketplaces. Despite low completion rates, we find that assignment to the training significantly increases online freelancing outcomes, such as the probability of having an online freelancing profile, the number of proposals sent, receiving at least one job offer, and securing at least one online freelancing contract. We also observe improved socioemotional skills. However, we find no significant effects of the program on the number of job offers, contracts, or any broader labor market outcomes. Further analysis suggests that poor initial job ratings may have hindered sustained success in online freelancing. Overall, despite some initial success, the program failed to have a lasting impact on the livelihoods of the participants.

In a field experiment with 400 groups of informal entrepreneurs in El Salvador, we compare the impact of group incentives (linked to compliance of all members) to equivalent individual ones to encourage cardiovascular check-ups. We test two incentive designs: small rewards and lotteries. Group incentives are as effective as individual ones at increasing demand for prevention, but, unlike individual incentives, they fail to target those with potentially higher health risks. The equal effectiveness of group incentives is linked to more communication, coordination between members and, to some extent, peer pressure. These social dynamics contribute to reduce uncertainty about other group members’ decisions and enhance the perceived net benefit of prevention. Although the preventive check-ups do not induce short-term lifestyle changes, they substantially increase the detection of new risk factors, making all incentives highly cost-effective interventions in this population.

The economic causes and effects of migration from developing countries depend on patterns of self-selection that are difficult to observe. We estimate the degree of migrant self-selection—on both observed and unobserved determinants of income—for 99 developing countries using nationally representative survey data on 653,613 people. In low-income countries, people actively preparing to emigrate have 14 percent higher incomes explained by observed traits such as schooling, and 12 percent higher incomes explained by unobserved traits. The simulated income elasticity of emigration is positive in the aggregate (+0.23) despite being negative in subpopulations, an instance of Simpson’s paradox.