Abstract One in five refugees live in camps or camp-like settings, and three-quarters of encamped refugees are in sub-Saharan Africa. No reliable public data have systematically tracked camp locations, operations, or populations over time. To address this, we introduce the African Refugee Camps Dataset (ARCD), a geospatial panel dataset. We first describe how the dataset was constructed, the sources used to build it, and the structure and content of the resulting data. We then use the data to characterize the refugee camps in the region over the 26 years the ARCD covers. We finish by presenting two applications combining the ARCD with complementary data to illustrate its potential for research. First, we assess spatial features of camp locations compared to stratified random sites. Second, we estimate the effect of camp openings on forest and vegetation cover using a differences-in-differences approach.
Abstract An unprecedented decline in net migration increased the number of young men in Mexico, but also reduced their economic prospects. Using an instrumental variable approach, we identify changes in net migration uncorrelated with local conditions. The higher presence of men increases partnership in the form of cohabitation and not marriage. Fertility also increases, but largely in cohabiting couples and not in married ones. The decision to marry is impacted more by economic prospects, but for childbearing, the presence of a male partner in the household is enough to offset the greater economic uncertainty.
Abstract Smallholder farmers in developing countries are often vulnerable to global commodity price fluctuations, with impacts that differ by gender. Using a three-wave rural household panel survey from 2011 to 2019, this study exploits geographic variation between major jute-producing and non-jute-growing areas to examine the gender-specific effects of jute export prices on individual employment choices in Bangladesh. Jute price fluctuations do not significantly affect the likelihood of adult males engaging in cultivation. Instead, higher prices encourage adult males to transition from agricultural wage work to off-farm self-employment, particularly in low-investment activities within households already engaged in non-agricultural enterprises. This pattern is driven by local demand effects, reflected in increased non-food expenditures in jute-growing regions. Higher jute prices also lead adult females to shift from domestic roles into livestock rearing. Increased household income facilitates greater investment in cattle, which requires substantial labor inputs predominantly provided by women. This transition further strengthens women’s involvement in household decision-making related to livestock management.
Abstract This paper analyses the evolution of market structure in India between 2000 and 2020, using a rich dataset at high levels of disaggregation. In particular, it examines the extent to which family-owned business groups have sustained their strong market position in the Indian economy as the economy has liberalized. It focuses on two key dimensions. The first is market concentration and market shares by industry. The second concerns whether business groups have been consolidating their position by expanding further in specific sectors or diversifying by entering new sectors. It finds that market concentration has been declining, although a bloc of high-concentration sectors remains. Further, diversification has been actively pursued across sectors by most business groups. While this points to greater competition among business groups, the ratio of revenues to variable costs—a measure of the markup—has shifted upwards, particularly after 2013. The paper also finds evidence linking the rising markups of these large businesses with pockets of high market concentration. The weight of these large business groups in the economy, as measured by the ratio of their revenues to GDP, has also increased. The paper proposes policies that can address overall concentration and the enduring prevalence of large business groups. Its analysis suggests that Indian family-owned business groups are entrenching across the economy and exploiting their monopoly power, a worrying dynamic given that this organizational form is widespread in much of Asia and Latin America.
This paper uses the US-China tariffs of 2018-2019 as an exogenous shock to export opportunities in Vietnam to identify how trade policy affects job creation. Using a difference-in-differences framework, it first shows that the US tariffs on China increased the range of products exported by Vietnam to the United States in the two years after the tariffs hit. Using firm-level data, it then shows that this expansion in export opportunities led to job creation. Around 5 percent more jobs were created in firms most affected by the US-China tariffs. These effects are driven mostly by formal employment, and are strongest for women in foreign-owned firms.
Abstract How does population pressure shape agricultural productivity? This paper examines the effects of large-scale population shocks on the agricultural productivity of origin locations by studying a rapid and government-mandated resettlement in Ethiopia that relocated over 600,000 people. Using a difference-in-differences strategy that leverages plausibly exogenous variation in out-resettlement intensity across districts with similar environmental stressors, this study finds that agricultural productivity increases in districts with a greater share of out-resettled population. The productivity gains persist for decades after the resettlement. The land consolidation and increased fallowing facilitated by the out-resettlement helped to lessen degradation and improve productivity.
I study the effects of a reform of the system of labor inspection in Colombia, which was requested by the United States as part of the negotiations for a bilateral trade agreement. An additional labor inspector increases labor-law compliance in the formal sector (i.e., among registered firms), while there is no effect in the informal sector. There is also a decrease in the probability of working informally in the formal sector, while overall employment remains unchanged. Complementary evidence from an enterprise survey shows that firms in the formal sector compensate for part of the increase in labor costs by reducing payroll contributions.
Groundwater plays a crucial role in supporting livelihoods and economic activities in Africa, particularly in regions affected by climate-induced water scarcity. This study explores the economic implications of groundwater resources during periods of climate shocks and their relationship to conflict dynamics in affected regions. It employs a comprehensive dataset covering the period from 1997 to 2021, encompassing information on conflict events and groundwater depth. The relationship between groundwater depth, climate shocks, and conflict occurrences is analyzed through both cross-sectional and temporal analyses across 10,310 cells (each $0.5<^>\circ { imes } 0.5<^>{\circ }$, or $\approx 55 { imes } 55$ km). We define two measures of local climate shocks: a temporary shock based on yearly variation, and a persistent shock using a moving average of temperature over multiple years. The findings suggest that areas with a higher proportion of shallow water, i.e., more accessible groundwater, have become increasingly prone to violence over time, particularly in the presence of persistent local climate shocks. Moreover, these persistent shocks have a greater impact on low-intensity and localized conflict events in regions with more shallow groundwater. Further, within-cell inequalities in water access emerge as significant conflict drivers. Lastly, secondary analyses examining the respective contributions of pastoralist activities and state capacity to the observed effects provide insights into the mechanisms. Overall, the findings underscore the need for equitable water management strategies to mitigate conflict and promote sustainable development in Africa.
This paper shows that a high degree of intermediate imports increases the costs of sovereign debt defaults, as suggested by Mendoza and Yue (2012). Using an updated data set, it corroborates recent default cost estimates and demonstrates that countries with high shares of intermediate imports to GDP experience significantly larger GDP contractions following default episodes, compared to those with a low intermediate-import share. The paper augments the Inverse Propensity Score Weighted Regression Adjustment (IPSWRA) approach of Kuvshinov and Zimmermann (2019) with Smooth Transition Local Projections (STLP) in the style of Auerbach and Gorodnichenko (2012) to estimate state-dependent impulse responses, with the regimes determined by various trade-related variables. The results appear robust to various sensitivity checks and seem to persist and increase in the long run. This distinguishes the state-dependent results from the linear results, as the latter indicate that default costs are a short-run phenomenon.
This study evaluates the effect of a cash transfer on households forecast to experience extreme flooding in Bangladesh five days before the flood peak based on hydrological modeling. Households receiving this "anticipatory" transfer had improved welfare during and three months after the flooding and reduced asset loss. Early cash increased the choice set of actions available to households, thereby altering the flood impacts at a critical time juncture. Benefits accrue in the months before a conventional humanitarian response, highlighting the gains from acting early.
Integrating national income accounts, wealth aggregates, tax data, rich lists, and surveys on income, consumption, and wealth in a consistent framework, long-run and short-run trends of income and wealth inequality in India are analyzed. Inequality declined post-independence, began rising in the early 1980s, and has skyrocketed since the early 2000s. Income and wealth inequality trends closely track each other over the entire period, with the rise in wealth concentration at the top being more pronounced in the most recent decade. By 2022-23, the top 1 percent income and wealth shares (23.3 percent and 40.1 percent) were at their highest historical levels with India's top 1 percent income share among the highest in the world. While the best available data sources at hand are used, it is emphasized that the poor and declining quality of economic data in India poses significant challenges for inequality measurement.
In-person business training is a key tool of development policy, with over US$1 billion spent annually in low- and middle-income countries. Digital training is gaining interest for its potential to increase impact, cost-effectiveness, and accessibility-particularly for women. This paper uses a randomized controlled trial to compare app-based and in-person training, using identical curricula, for women entrepreneurs. Take-up rates exceed 75 percent, but completion rates are only 22 percent for digital versus 71 percent for in-person. Further interventions fail to sustain engagement in digital training, and an additional experiment shows that removing in-person orientation leads to even lower take-up of digital training. Results indicate limited impacts on business knowledge or firm outcomes.
This paper explores the historical origins and contemporary consequences of matrilineality, an informal institution in which wealth is inherited through the maternal line, in Sub-Saharan Africa. Exploiting variations in agroclimatic conditions among ethnic group territories, the analysis shows that matrilineal societies prevailed in regions suitable for extensive agriculture without animal-husbandry, a resource environment that confers greater benefits to daughters than to sons, as suggested by anthropological theories. Analyzing data from over 500,000 women within countries, the study demonstrates that women of matrilineal origin are more empowered within the family sphere today and more likely to independently own immovable property such as land. However, they tend to work and live close to the land they inherited, limiting their social mobility and educational attainment. The results suggest two channels shaping women's contemporary socioeconomic status: geography through historical land resources and informal institutions through the persistence of matrilineality. These findings highlight the need not only to account for formal institutions, but also to address the deep-rooted cultural norms that continue to shape gender dynamics today.
This paper introduces a new disaggregated and harmonized dataset on public procurement and budget execution by Brazilian subnational entities, which covers half of Brazilian municipalities and spans the years 2003-2021. This dataset provides key information that was previously unavailable from aggregate data, such as the identities of suppliers, details on purchases of goods and services, and granular information on the life cycle of each expenditure action. It then uses these data to provide new stylized facts about local public finance. First, it shows that about one-quarter of government purchases are locally procured and discusses implications for efficiency. Second, it demonstrates that close to 15 percent of payments exceed the 30-day threshold and that payment timeliness is systematically correlated with the income level of the municipality. Finally, it shows that municipalities where mayors have reelection incentives systematically employ more non-competitive tenders and buy more from local suppliers.
Bridging the gender gap in STEM fields has become a priority for policymakers around the world. This paper evaluates the impact of a light-touch intervention in which female engineering students served as role models for high-school students in Peru. We find that a brief 20-minute interaction with these role models increased students' interest in engineering and led to higher rates of application to and enrollment in engineering programs, concentrated among female students with high math aptitude. Suggestive evidence indicates increases in students' self-confidence related to their math abilities following exposure to relatable role models. Set in a developing country context, our findings suggest that low-cost interventions can help narrow the gender gap in STEM participation, though they are unlikely to shift deeply persistent gender norms on their own.
Informal, low-quality employment in micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) remains a significant challenge in low- and middle-income countries. This study presents evidence from an impact evaluation of a light-touch business consulting program with a focus on employment formalization in C & ocirc;te d'Ivoire. Using a randomized controlled trial with 448 self-selected MSMEs and a unique employer-employee dataset, it finds that the intervention led to employment formalization, driven by greater minimum wage compliance (12 percentage points (pp)) and an increase in written contract provision (7 pp). The intervention's financial implications were moderate and the analysis shows suggestive evidence that these improvements were linked to selective formalization driven by employers' cost-benefit calculation for individual workers. Findings indicate that firms may have partially formalized previously informal payment streams.
Intentional misreporting of sensitive behaviors may occur due to sensitivity bias. Interview-led surveys present an additional challenge: respondents may be hesitant to reveal sensitive behaviors directly to the interviewer. This article presents a novel method-the Colorbox-that attempts to resolve this particular issue. Instead of answering the interviewer directly, respondents reply through PIN codes that correspond to their desired answer. Their answers remain confidential to the interviewer, while researchers are able to decrypt the answers. Such a method performs well in contexts in which the main barrier to providing truthful responses is the lack of confidentiality with respect to the interviewer. This study presents two different case studies (the measurement of child labor among cocoa farmers in C & ocirc;te d'Ivoire and unprotected sex among female sex workers in Senegal) to illustrate that this method can be implemented for both binary and categorical outcomes. The results show that the majority of respondents demonstrated an understanding of the methodology and perceived it to offer greater confidentiality than direct elicitation with respect to the interviewer.
This study examines the socio-economic, behavioral, and psychological consequences of a terminated business loan program in South Sudan on intended beneficiaries. While all participants received business training, only some were able to obtain the promised loan before the program was canceled due to renewed conflict. The study combines data from face-to-face interviews and data from lab experiments to examine outcomes one year after the program's cancellation. Results from local average treatment effect (LATE) estimations show that those participants who failed to receive the loan display significant declines in consumption. Moreover, this group exhibits a significant reduction in trust, particularly trust in institutions. These results highlight that more attention should be given to the detrimental effects of implementation failures.
We investigate how artisanal gold mining affects household investment in primary education in Burkina Faso. Relying mostly on difference-in-difference estimations with both primary and secondary data, we find a significant, robust, and strong negative effect of artisanal mining on primary school enrolment for boys but not for girls. We explore potential channels and find that direct involvement in mining work does not explain the results. However, children appear to substitute for their parents working in mines (or other activities that developed after the mining boom). In addition, elicited perceived returns to primary education are negatively affected by the presence of mines. Both mechanisms suggest an indirect increase in the opportunity cost of education. We find no evidence of a negative income effect or of a change in school supply which could affect the direct cost of education. Our findings suggest that artisanal mining causes negative externalities on human capital accumulation that need to be addressed if mining is to contribute to poor household livelihoods.
Does the effectiveness of an education policy depend on the job opportunities in the local labor market? This paper provides a theoretical and empirical investigation of how schooling decisions respond to conditional cash transfer programs, across areas with different exposure to export manufacturing. Results show that Mexico's PROGRESA program, documented to have increased educational attainment, was less effective in areas with more export-oriented manufacturing jobs. A theoretical model, combined with empirical evidence, suggests this is because these jobs generate more convex opportunity costs of schooling. Consistent with this, the heterogeneity documented is strongest among those old enough to be working in factory jobs. In addition, this heterogeneity is primarily driven by jobs that directly influence schooling opportunity costs: low-wage jobs and jobs for school-aged workers.
