The Economics of Women’s Rights Michèle Tertilt, Anne Hannusch, Matthias Doepke and Laura Montenbruck Abstract Two centuries ago, in most countries around the world, women were unable to vote, had no say over their own children or property, and could not obtain a divorce. Women have gradually gained rights in many areas of life, […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 614, November 2022
Scaling Agricultural Policy Interventions Lauren Falcao Bergquist, Benjamin Faber, Thibault Fally, Matthias Hoelzlein, Edward Miguel and Andres Rodriguez-Clare Abstract Policies aimed at raising agricultural productivity have been a centerpiece in the fight against global poverty. Their impacts are often measured using field or quasi-experiments that provide strong causal identification, but may be too small-scale […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 613, September 2022
Imperfect Competition and Sanitation: Evidence from Randomized Auctions in Senegal Jean-Francois Houde, Molly Lipscomb, Terence Johnson and Laura Schechter Abstract We document the impact of imperfect competition in the sanitation market in Dakar Senegal, both in the traditional market and in an experimental, just-in-time auction system that we designed in collaboration with the government. […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 612, August 2022
Stress, Ethnicity, and Prosocial Behavior Johannes Haushofer, Sara Lowes, Nathan Nunn, Abednego Musau, Moritz Poll, David Ndetei and Nancy Qian Abstract While observational evidence suggests that people behave more prosocially towards members of their own ethnic group, many laboratory studies fail to find this effect. One possible explanation is that coethnic preference only emerges […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 611, August 2022
Social Media and the Behavior of Politicians: Evidence from Facebook in Brazil Pedro Bessone., Filipe Campante, Claudio Ferraz and Pedro CL Souza Abstract We study the relationship between the spread of social media platforms and the communication and responsiveness of politicians towards voters, in the context of the expansion of Facebook in Brazil. We […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 610, August 2022
Social Protection and Social Distancing During the Pandemic: Mobile Money Transfers in Ghana Dean Karlan, Matt Lowe, Robert Osei, Isaac Osei-Akoto, Benjamin N. Roth and Christopher Udry Abstract We study the impact of mobile money transfers to a representative sample of low-income Ghanaians during the COVID-19 pandemic. The announcement of the upcoming transfers affects […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 609, July 2022
Does the Invisible Hand Efficiently Guide Entry and Exit? Abhijit Banerjee, Greg Fischer, Dean Karlan, Matt Lowe, and Benjamin N. Roth Abstract What accounts for the ubiquity of small vendors operating side-by-side in the urban centers of developing countries? Why don’t competitive forces drive some vendors out of the market? We ran an experiment […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 608, May 2022
The Rise and Fall of SES Gradients in Heights around the World Elisabetta Aurino, Adriana Lleras-Muney, Alessandro Tarozzi and Brendan Tinoco Abstract We use data from a large sample of low and middle income countries to study the association (or “gradient”) between child height and maternal education. While the strong positive association between child […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 607, March 2022
Estimating the Economic Value of Zoning Reform Santosh Anagol, Fernando Ferreira and Jonah Rexer Abstract We develop a framework to estimate the economic value of a recent zoning reform in Sao Paulo. Using a block-level regression discontinuity design, we find that developers request more permits in blocks with higher allowable densities. We incorporate these […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 606, March 2022
On the Dynamics of Human Behavior: The Past, Present, and Future of Culture, Conflict, and Cooperation Nathan Nunn Abstract I provide a theoretically-guided discussion of the dynamics of human behavior, focusing on the importance of culture (socially-learned information) and tradition (transmission of culture across generations). Decision-making that relies on tradition can be an effective […]