Journal of Development Economics最新文献

I document that small plants spend a higher fraction of their output on bribery than big plants, and that non-bribe-paying plants face higher distortions compared to bribe-paying plants in Türkiye. I develop a one-sector growth model in which size-dependent distortions, bribery opportunities, and different plant sizes coexist. In the model, plants are able to avoid distortions through bribery. The model parameters are calibrated with distortions and bribery opportunities in order to account for the plant size distribution as well as bribery expenditures by different plant sizes in the Turkish data. Counterfactual exercises show that size-dependent distortions become less distortionary in the presence of bribery opportunities. An increase in the size dependency of distortions has smaller aggregate effects since plants are able to circumvent distortions by paying larger bribes. Quantitatively, when bribery opportunities are present in the economy, mean plant size and output are 7.8 and 2.0 percent higher, respectively.

Using a nationally representative dataset from China, we exploit an event study approach to trace out the consequences of land expropriation on household economic behaviors and health outcomes. The expropriated rural households receive an average compensation per capita of over 6 thousand yuan (60 percent of pre-event income) immediately after expropriation and thus have a higher income level. Among the people in these households, the likelihood of working in the agricultural sector decreases while that of working in the non-agricultural sector increases. Meanwhile, medical consumption per capita increases substantially by 0.4 thousand yuan and the saving rate rises by 14 percentage points. People in these households experience a significant improvement in subjective health status, in terms of self-reported health and depression, while their health-related behaviors do not change significantly. Overall, land expropriation influences the economic and health conditions of the affected rural households by providing additional liquidity.

The number of Global Mobile Inventors (GMIs), inventors moving across borders during their career, has increased more than tenfold over the past two decades, and the corridors of mobility have shifted towards a growing presence of emerging markets. We document that GMIs that have patented in a given technology before moving are 70% more likely to be among the pioneering inventors in that technology once they arrive at destination, which we interpret as evidence of knowledge diffusion across borders. Returnees, which are typically inventors from emerging markets that go back after having spent some time in the US and other advanced economies, are twice as likely to file pioneering patents once returned than migrants when arriving abroad. Finally, we find that the more central the GMIs in the network of inventors during the early stages of the technology life-cycle at destination, the faster the technology-specific knowledge is absorbed by local inventors.

We investigate the effects of forced migration on sending economies using the post-WW2 expulsion of German minorities from Hungary as a natural experiment. We combine historical and contemporary data sources to show that the forced migrations led to lasting reductions in economic activity. Plausible mechanisms driving this result appear to be sectoral change (shift towards agriculture) and skills differences between Germans and the settlers that replaced them. Our analysis reveals that forced migration can cause lasting regional inequalities in sending economies.

This study investigates the impact of government officials’ childhood famine experiences on year-end spending surges (YESS), a phenomenon where organizations rush to spend unspent funds at fiscal year-end. We propose that early-life famine trauma fosters fiscal conservatism, leading to underutilized budgets, but the “use it or lose it” rule forces spending by the fiscal deadline. Analyzing data from Chinese cities (2008–2018), we find that officials who experienced famine in childhood significantly increased YESS, reducing fiscal efficiency and hindering local economic development. The effect is most pronounced among those who experienced famine in early childhood and is amplified in financially autonomous cities governed by officials with extensive local networks. Additionally, the observed correlation between mild depression and famine trauma suggests psychological mechanisms underlying the persistent effects of early trauma on fiscal behavior.

This paper studies the impact of trade liberalization on the heterogeneity of labor market power among manufacturing firms, which is a potential source of misallocation. The model shows that heterogeneity of labor market power distorts the allocation of the factors of production, and the variance in the natural log of the markdown serves as a sufficient statistic to infer its negative impact on overall production efficiency. Using China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) as a natural experiment, the empirical results suggest that lower input tariffs decrease the variance in the natural log of the markdown, which reflects the improvement in misallocation. In contrast, reductions in output tariffs have no significant effects.

Many firms hire workers via social networks. Whether workers who are socially connected to their employers exert more effort on the job is an unsettled debate. We address this question through a novel experiment with small-business owners in Tanzania. Participants are paired with a worker who conducts a real-effort task, and receive a payoff that depends on the worker’s effort. Some business owners are randomly paired with workers they know, while others are paired with strangers. We find that being connected to one’s employer does not affect workers’ effort on average, but increases the effort of workers without children. Our results are consistent with workers having an altruistic drive in exerting effort when they work for someone they know, which fades away when their valuation of private income becomes stronger.

This paper assesses the reliability of poverty maps derived from off-the-shelf remote-sensing data. Employing data for Malawi, it first obtains small area estimates of poverty by combining household expenditure survey data with population census data. It then ignores the population census and obtains a second poverty map by combining the survey with predictors of poverty derived from remote sensing data. The two approaches reveal the same patterns in the geography of poverty. However, there are instances where the two approaches obtain markedly different estimates of poverty. Poverty maps obtained using remote sensing data may do well when the decision maker is interested in comparisons of poverty between assemblies of areas yet may be less reliable when the focus is on estimates for specific small areas.

Access to microcredit has been shown to generate only modest average benefits for recipient households. We study whether other financial market frictions – in particular, lack of access to a safe place to save – might limit credit’s benefits. Working with Kenyan farmers, we cross-randomize access to a simple savings product with a harvest-time loan. Among loan offer recipients, the additional offer of a savings lockbox increased farm investment by 11% and household consumption by 7%. Results suggest that financial market frictions can interact in important ways and that multifaceted financial access programs might unlock dynamic household gains.

Scholars have highlighted how local elites can use their de facto power to capture democracy. This makes electoral competition particularly vulnerable in armed conflicts driven by politics. Would a reduction in politically motivated violence perpetrated by local elites promote electoral competition? To investigate this, I employ a synthetic difference-in-differences strategy within the setting of Colombia’s demobilization of paramilitaries, who were heavily connected with local elites across the country. Following demobilization, I observe an increase in competition. I show that this improvement in competition is consistent with a decrease in repressive violence, leading to an increased likelihood of electoral candidacy for parties that would have potentially been victims of violence in the absence of demobilization. However, I also find that parties associated with elites increased their electoral presence, showing an effort to compensate for the loss produced by demobilization. Finally, I present evidence that public goods investment in territories previously controlled by paramilitaries undergoes a transformation, now benefiting a broader sector of the population, which I argue is partly explained by the increased competition.