Police officers' discretionary handling of gender-based violence (GBV) complaints is a critical and largely neglected barrier to justice in developing countries. We collaborate with the Madhya Pradesh Police in India, the second largest state, to conduct a lab-in-the-field randomized experiment in which 323 male and female officers participate, and study the effect of randomly confronting officers with evidence of their biased handling of a fictitious GBV case on officer behavior and attitudes towards GBV. We find no statistically significant average effect, but sharply divergent and robust responses by officer gender. Confronted female officers prioritize the victim's statement by 23 percentage points more than controls, a 27 percent increase relative to the control mean. Male officers exhibit a backlash: they deprioritize the victim's statement, elevate the offender's statement, and on a computerized stereotyping task assign significantly more negative stereotypes to GBV victims one week after confrontation. We find no effects on deeper attitudinal outcomes such as beliefs in the truthfulness of rape complaints. A likely explanation for the heterogeneous response is the stark difference in baseline bias: 72 percent of female officers display only mild bias, while 51 percent of male officers are strongly biased. Because policing is male-dominated, the average female officer perceives a work environment more biased than her own, and women are thus willing to de-bias their case handling while men are not. Interventions targeting officer bias must account for these gender-differentiated responses to avoid unintended consequences.

Researchers and policymakers face substantial challenges in selecting methods for conducting remote surveys, particularly when collecting sensitive information, reaching hard-to-access populations, during emergencies, or working in vulnerable contexts. This study provides experimental evidence on the relative effectiveness of two remote survey methods: enumerator-led phone surveys and self-administered online surveys. In a randomized trial in El Salvador, we find that respondents assigned to phone surveys were, on average, 42 percentage points more likely to complete the survey, with particularly higher completion rates among women and older adults. Phone surveys reduced careless responses and decreased the likelihood of respondents reporting high parental stress. Regarding cost-effectiveness, although the direct cost of implementing phone surveys is higher than that of online surveys, the observed differences in response rates indicate that the cost per completed interview can be lower for phone when outreach is costly.

We conduct a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the effect of an innovative police patrol program on sexual harassment in public spaces in Hyderabad, India. In collaboration with the Hyderabad City Police, we randomize exposure to police patrols and the visibility of officers by deploying both uniformed and undercover officers across 350 hot spots. To assess the effect, we implement a novel, high-frequency observation exercise to measure sexual harassment at these hot spots, where enumerators recorded all observed instances of sexual harassment and women's responses in real time. We find that although police patrols had no effect on overall street harassment, uniformed police patrols reduced severe forms of harassment (forceful touching, intimidation) by 27% and reduced the likelihood of women leaving the hot spot due to sexual harassment. We uncovered the underlying mechanisms and found that both police visibility and officers' attitudes toward sexual harassment are key to understanding its incidence.

Parenting practices play a crucial role in child development. We evaluate the impact of a free digital stress management and positive parenting intervention designed to improve caregiver's mental health and positive caregiver-child interactions in El Salvador. Drawing on the prior success of in-person interventions, we study the effects of digital intervention delivery and examine differential treatment effects by caregiver's sex. Using an individual-level experiment, we find that the intervention increased stress and anxiety and lowered caregiver- child interactions among male caregivers. In contrast, among female caregivers, we did not detect changes in mental health and observed a decrease in the use of physical violence against children. We also find that family structure and the severity of economic deprivation greatly moderated the intervention's impact, especially among male caregivers. Our findings indicate that one-size-fits-all digital parenting interventions may not serve all caregivers effectively, emphasizing the need for thorough evaluations prior to extensive implementation.

We examine the effect of Internet diffusion on the uptake of an important public health intervention: the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. We study England between 2000 and 2011 when Internet diffusion spread rapidly and there was a high profile medical article (falsely) linking the MMR vaccine to autism. OLS estimates suggest Internet diffusion led to an increase in vaccination rates. This result is reversed after allowing for endogeneity of Internet access. The effect of Internet diffusion is sizable. A one standard deviation increase in Internet penetration led to around a 20% decrease in vaccination rates. Localities characterized by higher proportions of high skilled individuals and lower deprivation levels had a larger response to Internet diffusion. These findings are consistent with higher skilled and less-deprived parents responding faster to false information that the vaccine could lead to autism.

Gender-based violence (GBV) at schools is a pervasive problem that affects millions of adolescent girls worldwide. In partnership with the Ministry of Education in Mozambique, we developed an intervention to increase the capacity of key school personnel to address GBV and to improve students’ awareness as well as proactive behaviors. To understand the role of GBV on girls’ education, we randomized not only exposure to the intervention but also whether the student component was targeted to girls only, boys only, or both. Our findings indicate a reduction in sexual violence by teachers and school staff against girls, regardless of the targeted gender group, providing evidence of the role of improving the capacity of key school personnel to deter perpetrators. Using administrative records, we also find that in schools where the intervention encouraged proactive behavior by girls, there was an increase in their school enrollment, largely due to an increased propensity for GBV reporting by victims. Our findings suggest that effectively mitigating violence to improve girls’ schooling requires a dual approach: deterring potential perpetrators and fostering a proactive stance among victims, such as increased reporting. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

There is a vigorous debate on whether arrests for domestic violence (DV) will deter future abuse or create a retaliatory backlash. We study how arrests affect the dynamics of DV using administrative data for over 124,000 DV emergency calls (999 calls) for West Midlands, the second most populous county in England. We take advantage of conditional random assignment of officers to a case by call handlers, combined with systematic differences across police officers in their propensity to arrest suspected batterers. We find that an arrest reduces future DV calls in the ensuing year by 51%. This reduction is not driven by reduced reporting due to fear of retaliation, but instead a decline in repeat victimization. We reach this conclusion based on a threshold reporting model and its testable implications regarding (i) the severity of repeat DV calls and (ii) victim versus third-party reporting. Exploring mechanisms, we find that arrest virtually eliminates the large spike in re-victimization which occurs in the 48 hours after a call, consistent with arrest facilitating a cooling off period during a volatile, at-risk time. In the longer run, we estimate a sizeable deterrence effect. Substantiating this, arrest increases the probability an offender is charged with a crime. Our findings argue against recent calls for a decriminalization of domestic violence and suggest the optimal police response is to lower the threshold for arrest.

The impact of crises on firm performance has been studied widely. This paper explores the relationship between firms’ reaction to COVID-19 (in employment) and the adoption of digital technologies, taking into account their productivity, digitalisation level and high-growth episodes before the crisis. We match the EIB Group Survey of Investment and Investment Finance with ORBIS database for 27 EU Member States and the United Kingdom. We find that firms with higher productivity levels are less prone to decrease the number of employees in the short and long term due to the pandemic. High-growth enterprises are less likely to expect a reduction in the number of employees in the long term. Moreover, firms in highly digitalised sectors have a lower probability to reduce the number of employees. Finally, our results suggest that COVID-19 leads firms to increase their use of digital technologies, especially those that were already more digitalised.

This article supports the view that, while judges suppress dissent when dissenting is too costly, the cost of dissenting depends on the political dimension of the issue broached. It contends that judges who disagree may nevertheless try to safeguard integrity and legitimacy in political disputes by presenting a public impression of unity. We muster evidence from the United Kingdom, specifically, votes from the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC) between 1998 and 2011. We demonstrate through statistical analysis that judges are likelier to suppress dissent in devolution cases, which are characterized to be more political in character, than in Commonwealth appeals, which are more mundane in nature. We find that, while consensus on domestic issues reflects the absence of disagreement across judicial ideologies, judges have stronger conflicting positions on issues concerning devolution, but tend to suppress their propensity to dissent. This finding confirms that the JCPC wants to appear cohesive to give an image of greater authority on decisions of predominantly political content.

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

The effect of the COVID shock on European economies has been severe and also unequal, with some firms being affected much more strongly than others. To improve the effectiveness of policy interventions, policymakers need to understand which types of vulnerable firms have been suddenly pushed into dire circumstances. We seek to fill this important gap in our knowledge by providing evidence from the European Investment Bank Investment Survey 2016–2020 on how the COVID shock has affected the investment activity and investment-related framework conditions of vulnerable firms. While data on actual investment activity post-COVID is not yet available to us, we focus on investment expectations. We exploit the fact that the same questions relating to investment expectations have been asked in several previous survey waves, which enables a difference-in-differences approach to investigate how investment expectations might have suddenly changed, for vulnerable groups of firms, immediately after the onset of the COVID crisis. We focus on 4 groups of vulnerable firms: High-Growth Enterprises (HGEs), young and small firms, R D investors and non-subsidiary firms. R D investors are more likely to be pessimistic about investment plans as a consequence of the COVID shock, and (similarly) HGEs are less likely to be optimistic about investment plans. R D investors are less likely to be optimistic about the availability of internal finance, while HGEs and R D investors are more likely to be pessimistic about the availability of external finance. Subsidiary firms, interestingly, are more likely to report a decrease in expected investment, which is not necessarily evidence of financial constraints, because it could instead be part of a conservative group-level strategy and coordinated group-level reduction in investment. Event study graphs generally confirm our regression results.

Using an individual-level experiment with male and female caregivers of young children in El Salvador, we evaluate the impact of a free digital stress management and positive parenting intervention. We nd that, for males, the intervention increased stress and anxiety and lowered caregiver-child interactions. The effect on males is concentrated among the poorer and those residing with a partner. In contrast, womens mental health was not impacted. Yet, their use of physical violence toward children decreased by 18 percent. Our results align with theories linking economic deprivation and family structure to caregivers cognitive overload and mental health.

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Ausgangsbeschrankungen im Rahmen der Covid-19-Pandemie haben moglicherweise unbeabsichtigte soziale, gesundheitliche und wirtschaftliche Kosten verursacht, da diese mit einer Zunahme von hauslicher Gewalt einhergehen. Hausliche Gewalt kann in Form von Gewalt durch den Lebenspartner oder auch in Form von Vernachlassigung und Missbrauch von Kindern auftreten. Es wird erwartet, dass die Pandemie durch ihre Auswirkungen auf den Arbeitsmarkt die Schwere und Haufigkeit von familiarer Gewalt weiter erhohen wird. Es gibt jedoch Moglichkeiten, wie Regierungen dieser Entwicklung entgegenwirken konnen, indem sie i) den Zugang zu Sozialleistungen fur bestimmte Zielgruppen erleichtern und ii) die Prozesse vereinfachen, uber die Opfer von hauslicher Gewalt Hilfe erhalten konnen.

This chapter provides a rational choice theory to explain why features of administrative law vary across jurisdictions. It relates these varying features of administrative law to economic performance (as measured by macroeconomic variables or more specific variables such as rule of law, judicial effectiveness, governance indicators, or quality of legal institutions). The chapter also reveals a normative dimension related to the inevitable question of which arrangements or institutions produce better results. To that end, it reviews the current economic models of administrative adjudication. The chapter next takes a look at some more specific topics: specialized agencies, specialized courts, and state liability. Finally, it looks at the role of the interaction between administrative and constitutional law as well as rule-making and other types of executive policy-making.