Journal of Development Economics最新文献

Optimal input allocation in agriculture leverages production complementarities. For example, improved seeds are generally more responsive to fertilizer than traditional seeds. Thus, inaccurate beliefs about whether seeds are improved may result in sub-optimal fertilizer application. We document precisely this pattern using data from Ethiopia that allows us to compare farmer beliefs about their maize seeds with genotyping data that identify the true genetics of these seeds. We find that 15 percent of farmers believe incorrectly that they are using improved varieties and use far more fertilizer than farmers who correctly believe that they sowed traditional varieties. Conversely, we find that about 15 percent of farmers believe incorrectly that they are growing traditional material and use far less fertilizer than those farmers who correctly believe that they are growing improved material. We extrapolate from our nationally representative sample to estimate the national-level magnitude of fertilizer misallocation due to incorrect seed beliefs.

We study the effect of energy and transport policies on pollution in two developing country cities. We use a quantitative equilibrium model with choice of housing, energy use, residential location, transport mode, and energy technology. Pollution comes from commuting and residential energy use. The model parameters are calibrated to replicate key variables for two developing country cities, Maputo, Mozambique, and Yogyakarta, Indonesia. In the counterfactual simulations, we study how various transport and energy policies affect equilibrium pollution. Policies may induce rebound effects from increasing residential energy use or switching to high emission modes or locations. In general, these rebound effects tend to be largest for subsidies to public transport or modern residential energy technology.

We document interest in labor reallocation among small firm owners in Ghana; 60% and 41%, respectively, self-report willingness to hire or work for the average local firm owner. Firm owners also exhibit high willingness-to-pay for information on a random subset of hiring firms and jobseeking firm owners during a Becker–Degroot–Marschak exercise. Conditionally random variation in access to this information generates immediate labor adjustments within and between firms, though rarely of firm owners themselves, and impacts firm closure 5-months post-intervention. Our findings suggest that labor market information of this kind is both valuable and actionable in our context.

This paper highlights the crucial role of land allocation mechanisms in fostering industrial agglomeration by examining China's 2007 industrial land market reform. By introducing transparency into the land-selling process, the reform facilitated more buyers to compete for land (as evidenced by increased land sale prices), enabling local governments to allocate land to the most suitable users. Utilizing comprehensive data sets that include information on initial local industrial structure, new industrial establishments, and industrial land transactions, the empirical analysis finds that the reform significantly increased the entry of firms from industries aligned with local specialization, particularly in regions that implemented the reform more strictly. Industries characterized by substantial unrealized agglomeration economies or highly localized spillover effects experienced amplified effects. A well-functioning capital market further enhanced the land market reform's impact. Supporting evidence demonstrates the reform's positive effect on economic growth (as evidenced by changes in nighttime luminosity), potentially through increasing local firms' TFP.

This paper demonstrates that sex-selective abortion induces a correlation between birth interval length and the sex of the next-born child. Using a statistical model, we show that shorter birth intervals for next-born girls indicate repeated sex-selective abortions between consecutive births. Analyzing data from India, we find evidence of repeated sex-selective abortions at birth order 2 when the first child is a girl, and strong evidence at birth order 3 when the first two children are girls. To quantify the extent of repeated abortions, we propose a maximum likelihood estimator that provides the number of women who abort and their likelihood of performing repeated abortions. Our estimation results reveal significant heterogeneity across birth orders, sibling compositions, and socio-demographic and geographic groups. Notably, literate and urban women who first had a girl rarely abort a second time, whereas women in northern India who first had two girls show a 13% likelihood of repeated sex-selective abortion. In this group, the estimated number of aborted female fetuses—the standard measure of sex-selective abortion—is 50% higher than the number of women who abort.

This paper examines how communist propaganda affects gender norms and behavior in China. Improving women’s status and promoting gender equality were significant themes of revolutionary propaganda in China from the 1950s to the 1970s. Exploiting plausibly exogenous variation resulting from topography, I find that exposure to radio broadcasts during the Cultural Revolution improved educational gender equality, and such effects were stronger in areas with weaker Confucian norms. Using individual-level census data, I also find positive effects of radio exposure on women’s family-related and career-related outcomes. I explore the possible mechanisms using data from two surveys on gender norms, and my evidence is consistent with rational updating. The significant persuasion effects disappear when more recent data are employed, implying temporary communist influences on entrenched social norms.

We used a randomized controlled trial to compare matching grants earmarked for technical training and consulting services with more flexible cash grants and with a control group. The experiment was implemented in a semi-urban and rural fragile setting where subsidizing innovative activities might be particularly important. Firms were selected on the basis of a business plan competition. After two years, beneficiaries of cash grants showed higher survival rates, improved business practices, a higher degree of formalization, and more activities for innovation relative to recipients of matching grants and the control group, but we saw no effects on profits, sales, and employment. Across all outcomes, beneficiaries of cash grants performed better than beneficiaries of matching grants, for them the treatment effects are smaller and often insignificant, though implementation costs were higher. Recipients of cash grants also increased their capital stock more and were more resilient to the COVID-19 crisis.

We provide evidence on the link between enrollment in public preschool and child vocabulary, a critical precursor to early literacy. We measure early childhood development among both in-school and out-of-school children in Kenya, allowing us to examine the association between preschool enrollment and cognitive outcomes. Children in our sample are more likely to start school at age three rather than age four if they live within a few hundred meters of the nearest primary school. Three-year-olds living closer to the school also have stronger vocabulary skills, though a similar pattern does not exist among older children. Using proximity to school as an instrument for preprimary enrollment, we find that preprimary enrollment raises mother tongue receptive vocabulary by more than one standard deviation at age three, but does not impact vocabulary at later ages.

We investigate the impact of beer on mortality during the Industrial Revolution in 18th century England. Due to the brewing process, beer represented an improvement over available water sources during this period prior to the widespread understanding of the link between water quality and human health. Using a wide range of identification strategies to derive measures of beer scarcity driven by tax increases, weather events, and soil quality, we show that beer scarcity was associated with higher mortality, especially in the summer months when mortality was more likely to be driven by waterborne illnesses related to contaminated drinking water. We also leverage variation in inherent water quality across parishes using two proxies for water quality to show that beer scarcity resulted in greater deaths in areas with worse water quality. Together, the evidence indicates that beer had a major impact on human health during this important period in economic development.