PSE Chaired Professor
Development economics
Location 48 Boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris, France
Location R2-01
Presence On site
Co-organised by PSE, J-PAL, CEPREMAP and DIAL, this seminar has been led since 1992. On various themes, french and internationally renowned speakers introduce their more recent works on Development Economics.
This seminar is co-funded by a French government subsidy managed by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche under the framework of the Investissements d’avenir programme reference ANR-17-EURE-0001.
Organizers
-
-
PSE Chaired Professor
operational contact
-
Administration Assistant
Multiple event dates
-
-
This paper examines the link between financial security and social cohesion, in a low-income setting where cohesion is crucial: the integration of refugees into ultra-poor host communities in the developing world. We first generate an exogenous shock to financial security by implementing a field experiment of a large cash transfer and employment support program. Increasing the financial security of both refugees and hosts leads to higher levels of trust, new friendships with out-groups, a greater willingness to share resources with out-groups and a stronger sense of belonging for refugees (our overall social integration index increased by 0.73 standard deviations relative to the control group). We then leverage a negative shock to financial security in the form of a climate event: two years after our intervention, a category three tropical cyclone caused damage to some houses in our study area. Consistent with a causal interpretation of the relationship between financial security and social cohesion, participants who experienced even a moderate reduction in their financial security reported a disproportionately large weakening of social cohesion (by 0.37 standard deviations). Levels of trust and willingness to share resources persisted for those not affected by the cyclone. Taken together, these findings suggest that individuals can shift between cooperative and competitive mindsets in response to their experiences. On the one hand, providing social protection to both refugees and low-income host community members can lead to more cooperative attitudes and behaviors, thus promoting socioeconomic integration. However, these gains are fragile and easily undone when individuals are exposed to negative climate shocks that make scarcity top of mind again.
-
This paper explores the relationship between female genital cutting (FGC) and the marriage market. I develop a general equilibrium model of parents’ decisions to cut their daughters, where the bride price, the groom’s traditional payment to the bride’s family upon marriage, is determined endogenously in the marriage market. The model predicts that in a context where FGC is a marker of chastity, an unobservable but valuable trait in the marriage market, the practice increases the marital surplus, the bride price. I use a difference-in-differences approach and test the model’s predictions on Egyptian data. I build a village-level dataset of the coverage of an anti-FGC campaign, using archive information on Egyptian radio transmitters and Irregular Terrain Model (ITM) software. I find that cohorts exposed to the campaign are 13% less likely to be cut and receive a 24% lower bride price. To further support my finding that FGC generates marriage market returns, I provide evidence suggesting that the scarcity of cut women led to an increase in their bride price. When investigating whether FGC is a marker of chastity, I find that the decline in FGC is substituted by an increase in pre-marital virginity testing and child marriage. Finally, to better understand whether these marriage market returns provide an incentive for parents to cut their daughters, I conduct a cross-Africa analysis. I find that the practice of bride price is associated with a 16% higher likelihood of a daughter being cut.
-
-
-
The Price of Faith: Economic Costs and Religious Adaptation in Sub-Saharan Africa
Add to my calendarFrom
Opening time –
How do religious organizations adapt to changing economic costs of membership, and how do these costs affect individual religious choices? We examine these questions in the context of the Seventh-Day Adventist (SDA) church in Sub-Saharan Africa. The SDA church prohibits or strongly discourages tobacco, coffee, and tea production, creating opportunity costs that vary with local crop suitability and global prices. We construct a novel measure of SDA membership opportunity cost that fluctuates over time and space. Analyzing detailed church data and SDA member surveys, we investigate responses from both individual members and the church as an institution. We find that higher opportunity costs of membership lead to fewer new memberships and increased self-reports of spiritual struggle among current members. The church, in turn, demonstrates organizational flexibility through two main strategies: establishing educational institutions to generate new benefits of membership, and reducing emphasis on certain religious tenets to mitigate membership costs. This study reveals how religious organizations employ sophisticated adaptive strategies to maintain their appeal in changing economic environments, while also showing how economic factors influence individual religious choices. Our findings contribute to understanding the dynamic interplay between economic incentives and religious adaptation in rapidly changing societies. -
Hiring on Skills or Qualifications, joint with Rob Garlick, Lukas Hensel and Jennifer Kades
Add to my calendarFrom
Opening time –
Developing country firms often struggle to find suitable workers despite large pools of applicants. In the absence of other information, they rely on traditional signals — education and experience — or referrals, potentially excluding suitable candidates without signals of their skills. We provide experimental evidence on how broadening the information in firms’ hiring decisions affects both firm and workseeker outcomes. Partnering with the largest recruitment agency in South Africa, we randomize the criteria used to shortlist job applicants for job listings at partner firms. In vacancies in the “Traditional” group, firms receive shortlists of candidates ranked on education and experience. In vacancies in the “Broader information” group, shortlists rank candidates on these criteria and, in addition, measures of soft skills correlated with labour market outcomes. Broadening firms’ information set alters which candidates are hired: in “Soft skills” vacancies, hired applicants have on average higher soft skills and less work experience than in “Traditional” vacancies. It also boosts hiring: in “Soft skill” vacancies, firms issue more interview invitations and make more actual hires. Individuals who would have been shortlisted for the job posting if it had been assigned to a different treatment are not negatively affected, other than by not getting the one job in the posting. Findings are in line with models where higher match quality raises labor demand. Later data collection will track earnings, retention and job satisfaction. -
Forced Displacement, the Perpetuation of Autocratic Leaders, and Development in Origin Countries with Nicolas Cabra-Ruiz, Sandra V. Rozo & Maria Micaela Sviatschi
Add to my calendarFrom
Opening time –
How does forced displacement shape development in origin countries? We examine the case of Venezuela, where over seven million people have been forcibly displaced. Our study compares municipalities with different proportions of foreign-born populations before and after the international oil price shocks that accelerated forced displacement between 2014 and 2019. Our findings show that municipalities with higher foreign-born populations in 1990, exhibiting greater out-migration from Venezuela after 2014, experienced lower economic development and higher inequality. We shed light on a novel mechanism: forced displacement facilitates the perpetuation of autocratic leaders, further hindering development. It does so by weakening the opposition’s voices and facilitating the expansion of organized crime and illicit sources of income.
-
-
-
Sex, Power, and Adolescence: Intimate Partner Violence and Sexual Behaviors
Add to my calendarFrom
Opening time –
-
Default Contagion – joint work with Natalia Rigol and Rafael Tiara Torres
Add to my calendarFrom
Opening time –
Group lending and joint-liability are hallmarks of microfinance. Though intended to reduce non-payment, they have also been hypothesized to lead to default contagion, whereby non-payment by one borrower may reduce the likelihood of repayment by groupmates. Utilizing unexpected deaths, we document significant default contagion in one of Chile’s largest microfinance institutions. We provide a lower-bound estimate that 75% of observed default is due to default contagion. To combat default contagion, our partner lender implemented a policy whereby loan officers could remove problematic borrowers from the joint-liability scheme, without removing them from the group. We provide evidence that this greatly reduced default contagion
-
-
-
Sexuality-based stigma and access to HIV care: Intersecting perspectives between healthcare providers and Men who have Sex with Men (MSM) in Senegal
Add to my calendarFrom
Opening time –
Men who have sex with men (MSM) in Senegal face a challenging socio-legal context, marked by homophobia and the illegality of homosexuality. In addition, HIV prevalence among MSM is 27.6%, 46 times greater than the one in the general population (0.5%). Nevertheless, access to healthcare by MSM may be hampered by stigmatizing attitudes from health facility staff (medical and non-medical). This article describes the health facility staff/MSM relationship and analyses its effects on access to healthcare by MSM. The data was collected in 2019 and 2020 through field observations and qualitative interviews with MSM, NGO staff and healthcare providers. We identify the following stigmatizing factors limiting access to care, including (1) fear of meeting a relative, (2) difficult relationships with medical and non-medical support staff, (3) HIV status disclosure and (4) self-stigma and potential conflicts with other MSM. The article shows that hospitals are divided into several areas, based on the stigma perceived by MSM. It is therefore important to map out MSM’s care trajectories and to enroll all types of staff working within them in stigma reduction interventions. The presentation of the article will be followed by the screening of the documentary film “Nio Far” based on some of these interviews. The film has English subtitles. -
The persistence of female political power in Africa, with Sophia Du Plessis, Sahar Parsa and James Robinson
Add to my calendarFrom
Opening time –
Research on female political representation has tended to overlook the traditional role of women as leaders across many societies. Our study aims to address this gap by investigating the enduring influence of historical female leadership on contemporary formal political representation in Africa. We test for this persistence by compiling two original datasets: one detailing female leadership in pre-colonial societies and another on current female representation in local elections. Our findings indicate that ethnic groups historically allowing women in leadership roles do tend to have a higher proportion of elected female representatives in today’s formal local political institutions. We also observe that institutional factors, rather than economic ones, significantly shape traditional female political influence. Moreover, in accord with historical accounts, we uncover some evidence of a reversal of female political power due to institutional changes enforced by the colonists.
-
-
-
Breaking the Gang: A Preventive Approach to Reduce Recruitment in Schools
Add to my calendarFrom
Opening time –
In this paper we study an alternative approach to reduce the expansion of criminal organizations: preventing gang recruitment at schools, where criminal organizations commonly target children. To do so, we exploit the staggered implementation of a preventive program in El Salvador that increased anti-gang recruitment campaigns by police patrolling at schools. We show that by focusing on schools, the use of police officers as a preventive measure can reduce gang recruitment at an early age, having positive long-term effects on children’s human capital and potentially reducing gangs’ revenues. In particular, we show that children at key ages for recruitment are significantly less likely to drop out of school and join gangs. Using administrative data from field informants, we find that immediately after the start of the program, gang recruitment declined by 50% and that children are less likely to be detained in juvenile centers due to gang-related crimes. In turn, these outcomes reduce the likelihood that children become involved in a cycle of crime within organized crime networks. We find that affected children are less likely to be incarcerated for gang-related crimes in adulthood. As a result of this decline, we find evidence that gangs’ main business, extortion, is affected in the long run. By addressing a root cause of future criminality, this policy effectively limits gang expansion and decreases revenue streams, as they have less labor to perform their activities. -
Women at Work: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in Urban Djibouti, By Florencia Devoto, Emanuela Galasso, Kathleen Beegle, and Stefanie Brodmann
Add to my calendarFrom
Opening time –
In some developing countries, women’s labor force participation remains persistently low. This gives rise to questions regarding what types of employment opportunities or interventions can draw women into work in such contexts. In this study in urban Djibouti, with restrictive gender norms and very low female employment rates, women are randomly offered the opportunity to be employed in a public works program designed specifically to facilitate their participation. Program take-up is very high, and most participants do not delegate their work opportunity to another adult. However, in the medium term after the program ends, women who receive the temporary employment offer revert back to non participation in the labor market. These results suggest that while social norms can be a deterrent to women’s work in settings with very low employment rates, women will participate in work opportunities when they are offered and suitable. -
Medium-Term Impacts of Integrated Social Safety Nets: Cash Transfers, Information Meetings, and Home Visits for Child Development
Add to my calendarFrom
Opening time –
Cash transfers are a critical part of social safety nets. More recently, integrated programs combining either information or home visits have been adopted to help households overcome barriers to improving child development. Working with the Burkina Faso government, we conduct a randomized experiment in 225 rural villages to assess the impact of an integrated social safety net over the child’s life cycle. Villages were randomized to a control group or one of the following treatments: cash transfers; cash transfers plus government-run information meetings focused on children’s health and psychosocial development; or cash transfers, information, and home visits reinforcing the information meetings. Fifteen months after the treatment ended, households receiving the cash, information, and home visits have fewer pregnancies, more medically assisted childbirths, enhanced health behaviors, and better educational outcomes. Home visits are critical for improving early childhood development, while cash transfers, with or without information, do not show lasting impacts.
-
-
-
We examine whether international migration from low- and middle-income countries can alleviate the negative impacts of labor supply shocks resulting from population aging in the European Union (EU). The paper develops a quantitative model to analyze the effects of labor supply and migration shocks on the welfare of different worker groups. Our main findings indicate that labor supply shocks could exacerbate inequalities among various age groups, with younger natives potentially benefiting from increased wages, while the older population suffering from rising price indexes. The results also suggest that migration could serve as a counterbalancing mechanism, helping to mitigate these effects and reduce disparities between younger and older populations in the host economies.
-
Wearing your religion: Evidence on employers’ preferences in Indonesia
Add to my calendarFrom
Opening time –
In collaboration with one of the largest job portals in Indonesia and involving more than 1,200 employers, we examine the effect of displaying gendered religious identity–headscarf for female and beard for male–on labor market outcomes. Applying a modified version of Incentivized Resume Rating (IRR) method, we find that displaying religious identity reduces hiring outcomes across all different measurement, including the likelihood of hiring, the probability of being interviewed, as well as the amount of salary offered to candidates. The penalties of headscarf and beard are very similar in magnitude, and do not seem to vary across different job levels, job types, job gender requirements, as well as gender of employers. In a beliefs elicitation exercise with employers, we find that candidates wearing religious attributes are indeed perceived to be more religious. However, they are ranked lower by employers in a number of quality and personality traits perceived to be important by employers in the workplace. In a beliefs elicitation exercise with jobseekers, we find that jobseekers underestimate the penalty for displaying religious identity. -
Land Tenure, Land Markets and Land Allocation: Evidence from Uganda
Add to my calendarFrom
Opening time –
Land formalization and market activity are accelerating across much of sub-Saharan Africa, yet data limitations have constrained progress in understanding the determinants and impacts of this process. This study draws on parcel-level administrative records from the Uganda Land Registry, combined with detailed geographic variation in land tenure and tenure conversion events, to examine trends in land tenure and ownership, and to assess how different tenure regimes influence land transactions, land use, and land concentration.
-
-
-
When poverty is correlated with supply costs across space, firms may charge the poor higher prices. To resolve such inequality, the government, for example, can provide transportation subsidies to firms. How might such government programs be designed? What issues arise in the government’s interaction with firms? And what are the welfare effects of monitoring firms? We study these issues by examining Ghana’s Unified Petroleum Pricing Fund Program — the only scalable program we know of in the world that redistributes transportation costs to resolve inequalities.
-
We address key challenges in estimating multivariate earnings models, including selection into employment and jobs, and the nonlinear nature of outcomes. Leveraging subjective expectations data on counterfactual outcomes, we achieve identification under weak assumptions and employ straightforward estimation methods. Subjective probabilities directly inform the joint distribution of latent earnings and employment/job choices. Our model features a productivity process, a job match process, and employment dynamics involving job-to-job and unemployment- to-employment transitions. First-step fixed-effects regressions estimate risk, persis- tence, and transition effects, while second-step GMM estimates reveal covariance structures, such as ability, mobility, and job match effects. Using the NY Fed Survey of Consumer Expectations, we disentangle uncertainty from heterogeneity. Key findings include lower persistence of ability than prior studies, greater vari- ability in ability and mobility effects, smaller risk estimates, and low persistence in job quality after job changes. Unobserved heterogeneity explains much observed reduced-form persistence.
-
Add to my calendar
From
Opening time –
-
-
-
When this map is selected with the keyboard, you can use the + and − keys of the keyboard to perform a zoom in or out, as well as the up, down, right et left keys of the keyboard to move the map.
Paris School of Economics
Paris School of Economics
Address: 48 boulevard jourdan 75014 Paris