JDE《发展经济学》2022年第157卷目录及摘要
全文链接：
https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-development-economics/vol/157/suppl/C
Volume 157, June 2022
Overcoming smallholder farmers’ post-harvest constraints through harvest loans and storage technology: Insights from a randomized controlled trial in Tanzania
Hira Channa, Jacob Ricker-Gilbert, Shiferaw Feleke, Tahirou Abdoulaye
Identifying communication spillovers in lab-in-the-field experiments
Alexander Coutts
Clans and calamity: How social capital saved lives during China's Great Famine
Jiarui Cao, Yiqing Xu, Chuanchuan Zhang
Group lending with covariate risk
Christian Ahlin, Godwin Debrah
From bilateral trade to centralized markets: A search model for commodity exchanges in Africa
Yaw Nyarko, Heitor S. Pellegrina
Caveat utilitor: A comparative assessment of resilience measurement approaches
Joanna Upton, Susana Constenla-Villoslada, Christopher B. Barrett
Misperceiving and misreporting input quality: Implications for input use and productivity
Tesfamicheal Wossen, Kibrom A. Abay, Tahirou Abdoulaye
Active learning improves financial education: Experimental evidence from Uganda
Tim Kaiser, Lukas Menkhoff
Slums and pandemics
Luiz Brotherhood, Tiago Cavalcanti, Daniel Da Mata, Cezar Santos
Using household grants to benchmark the cost effectiveness of a USAID workforce readiness program
Craig McIntosh, Andrew Zeitlin
Sweet unbinding: Sugarcane cultivation and the demise of foot-binding
Nora Cheng, Elliott Fan, Tsong-Min Wu
Natural disasters, intra-national FDI spillovers, and economic divergence: Evidence from India
Felix L. Friedt, Aidan Toner-Rodgers
The welfare effects of India’s rural employment guarantee
Stefan Klonner, Christian Oldiges
Land property rights and rural enterprise growth: Evidence from land titling reform in China
Di Bu, Yin Liao
Filling a niche? The maize productivity impacts of adaptive breeding by a local seed company in Kenya
Samuel S. Bird, Michael R. Carter, Travis J. Lybbert, Mary Mathenge, Timothy Njagi, Emilia Tjernström
Farming output, concentration, and market access: Evidence from the 19th-century American railroad expansion
Jeff Chan
Top lights: Bright cities and their contribution to economic development
Richard Bluhm, Melanie Krause
From past lies to current misconduct: The long shadow of China's Great Leap Forward
Shuo Chen, Haoyuan Ding, Shu Lin, Haichun Ye
Export capacity constraints and distortions
Xiao Feng, Yongjin Wang, Laixun Zhao
Overcoming smallholder farmers’ post-harvest constraints through harvest loans and storage technology: Insights from a randomized controlled trial in Tanzania
Hira Channa Jacob Ricker-Gilbert Shiferaw Feleke Tahirou Abdoulaye
Abstract：Maintaining staple grains throughout the year and managing liquidity are two major challenges that smallholder farmers face at harvest. We implemented a randomized controlled trial in Tanzania that was designed to address these post-harvest constraints. First, we offered treated farmers two hermetic (airtight) storage bags, which helped preserve grain quantity and quality. Second, we offered other treated farmers a loan at harvest, which reduced the liquidity constraints they faced. Repayment was due with interest six months from harvest when maize prices were traditionally higher. We did not find a significant impact of the storage intervention. However, those offered the loan stored 29 percent more and sold 50 percent more maize on average in the lean season compared to farmers in the control group. Nevertheless, an unexpected maize export ban in Tanzania likely attenuated the outcomes of both interventions. This highlighted the challenges surrounding agricultural financial products in the developing world.
Identifying communication spillovers in lab-in-the-field experiments
Alexander Coutts
Abstract：Use of lab-in-the-field experiments has steadily increased, given benefits of studying relevant populations and their preferences. In the field, researchers must often relinquish the control of a standard laboratory, raising the specter of communication from past to future participants. Little is known about the consequences of such spillovers, and recent literature indicates variation in how authors deal with them. I provide estimates of communication spillovers using existing data from public goods games in Rwanda, leveraging variation in planning the sequence of visiting 147 villages. The resulting order created opportunities for some villages to communicate with past participants. Using ex-post matching of villages with and without these opportunities I find that communication led to substantial increases in cooperation, suggesting that unanticipated spillovers can bias inference. I conclude with advice for creating protocols to deal with communication spillovers.
Clans and calamity: How social capital saved lives during China's Great Famine
Jiarui Cao Yiqing Xu Chuanchuan Zhang
Abstract：This paper examines the role of social capital, embedded in kinship-based clans, in disaster relief during China's Great Famine (1958–1961). Using a county-year panel and a difference-in-differences strategy, we find that the rise in the mortality rate during the famine years is significantly less in counties with a higher clan density. Analysis using a nationally representative household survey corroborates this finding. Investigation of potential mechanisms suggests that social capital's impact on famine may have operated through enabling collective action against excessive government procurement. These results provide evidence that societal forces can ameliorate damages caused by faulty government policies in times of crisis.
Group lending with covariate risk
Christian Ahlin Godwin Debrah
Abstract：Group-based lending with joint liability has been a major tool microfinance institutions (“MFIs”) have employed to improve lending feasibility. The related theoretical literature typically assumes borrowers face independent risk. This paper examines how covariate risk affects the usefulness of joint liability lending, in the hidden-information setting of Stiglitz and Weiss (1981) and Ghatak (2000). In a benchmark setting where all agents face the same degree of covariate risk, greater correlation renders group lending less effective; this is because the effective rate of joint liability is reduced when borrowers are more likely to fail together. We focus on a setting where the extensive and intensive margins are distinguished: some agents face independent risk while others face correlated risk. We find that an intermediate prevalence of correlated risk can lead to lower outreach than both a low and a high prevalence. Thus, reaching a market with mixed covariate risk profiles, e.g. farmers and micro-entrepreneurs, can be harder than reaching markets with a single profile of either kind. Assuming limited ability of lenders to use information on borrower correlatedness, we find that higher outreach is often achievable by separately servicing correlated and non-correlated borrowers. This can help explain the existence of specialized institutions such as agricultural banks versus standard microenterprise-focused MFIs.
From bilateral trade to centralized markets: A search model for commodity exchanges in Africa
Yaw Nyarko Heitor S. Pellegrina
Abstract：Several African countries have recently centralized their agricultural markets by launching a commodity exchange. What will be the impact of such a move? Who will be the winners and the losers? We develop a simple search model to study the impact of introducing a commodity exchange in a village economy where traders and farmers exchange on a bilateral basis. We study the efficiency gains from moving from the status quo to a trading regime where farmers have the option of selling their produce to a commodity exchange. We describe how the gains from trade are distributed between farmers, traders and the commodity exchange itself. We show that a dual economy where high-cost farmers remain in the bilateral exchange market while low-cost ones sell to the commodity exchange can exist in equilibrium, and that forcing all farmers to sell into the commodity exchange can make some farmers worse off.
Caveat utilitor: A comparative assessment of resilience measurement approaches
Joanna Upton Susana Constenla-Villoslada Christopher B. Barrett
Abstract：As development and humanitarian agencies increasingly advance the objective of ‘building resilience’, three resilience measurement methods have come into especially widespread use: the Resilience Indicators for Measurement and Analysis approach developed by FAO, the multi-dimensional index approach developed by TANGO International, and the probabilistic approach of Cissé and Barrett. We compare performance across those three methods using nationally representative panel data from Ethiopia and Niger. We find that the three measures exhibit significantly different distributions and orderings among households, and they vary significantly in the households they identify as resilient or least resilient. All three measures exhibit only modest out-of-sample predictive accuracy, generating many false negatives and false positives relative to the food security outcome measure whose resilience they are meant to reflect. It remains unclear what these measures capture and what value they add beyond more established wellbeing measures such as the food consumption score or real expenditures. There is significant room for improvement in resilience measurement to better guide and evaluate development resilience interventions.
Misperceiving and misreporting input quality: Implications for input use and productivity
Tesfamicheal Wossen Kibrom A. Abay Tahirou Abdoulaye
Abstract：Farmers in developing countries routinely misperceive or misreport input quality for various reasons, which introduces substantial measurement error in farm survey data. In this paper, we motivate and illustrate, both analytically and empirically, the inferential and behavioral implications of misperception and misreporting using a unique crop variety identification data from Nigeria. Using a non-parametric framework for testing the presence of measurement error, we show that crop variety misclassification in our data is mostly driven by misperception. We then demonstrate the inferential challenges of treating misperception as misreporting and vice versa. Finally, we show that misperception induces crowding-in(out) of complementary agricultural inputs but these misperception-driven input allocations may not necessarily be yield-enhancing. As such, rectifying misperception by addressing agricultural input market imperfections may improve farmers’ investment choices and productivity outcomes.
Active learning improves financial education: Experimental evidence from Uganda
Tim Kaiser Lukas Menkhoff
Abstract：We conduct a randomized field experiment to study the effects of two financial education interventions offered to small-scale retailers in rural western Uganda. The treatments contrast “active learning” with traditional “lecturing” within standardized lesson-plans. After six months, active learning has a positive effect on savings and investment outcomes, in contrast to small or zero effects for lecturing. After four years, estimates come with substantial uncertainty but are generally larger for the active learning group, such as a 60 percent increase in investments. As an adverse outcome, reported late payment on loans increases by about 30 percent for both treatments. The findings suggest that teaching methods can play an important role in affecting how financial education programs impact financial behavior and outcomes.
Slums and pandemics
Luiz Brotherhood Tiago Cavalcanti Daniel Da Mata Cezar Santos
Abstract：How do slums shape the economic and health dynamics of pandemics? A difference-in-differences analysis using millions of mobile phones in Brazil shows that residents of overcrowded slums engaged in less social distancing after the outbreak of Covid-19. We develop and calibrate a choice-theoretic equilibrium model in which individuals are heterogeneous in income and some people live in high-density slums. Slum residents account for a disproportionately high number of infections and deaths and, without slums, deaths increase in non-slum neighborhoods. Policy analysis of reallocation of medical resources, lockdowns and cash transfers produce heterogeneous effects across groups. Policy simulations indicate that: reallocating medical resources cuts deaths and raises output and the welfare of both groups; mild lockdowns favor slum individuals by mitigating the demand for hospital beds, whereas strict confinements mostly delay the evolution of the pandemic; and cash transfers benefit slum residents to the detriment of others, highlighting important distributional effects.
Using household grants to benchmark the cost effectiveness of a USAID workforce readiness program
Craig McIntosh Andrew Zeitlin
Abstract：We use a randomized experiment to benchmark a workforce training program to cash transfers in Rwanda. Conducted in a sample of poor and underemployed youth, this study measures the impact of the training program relative not only to a control group, but also to the counterfactual of simply disbursing the cost of the program directly to beneficiaries in cash. The training program was successful in improving a number of core outcomes, including productive hours, assets, savings, and subjective well-being. However, cost-equivalent cash transfers move all these outcomes as well as consumption, income, and wealth. At cost-equivalent levels, cash transfers prove superior across a number of economic outcomes, while training outperforms cash only in the production of business knowledge. Above cost-equivalent levels, we see limited benefits from increasing cash transfer amounts; going from $410 to $750 generates few benefits and an apparent decrease in labor hours. There is a surprising absence of complementarity between human and physical capital interventions, with an arm receiving both interventions doing slightly worse than what we would expect from the independent impacts of each of the two, though given diminishing returns to cash this combined arm outperforms a cash transfer of approximately equal cost. Heterogeneity in impacts and spillover effects are limited, suggesting that the relative impacts of these interventions will be similar across different targeting rules and saturation levels within this population.
Sweet unbinding: Sugarcane cultivation and the demise of foot-binding
Nora Cheng Elliott Fan Tsong-Min Wu
Abstract：We analyze the economic motives for the sudden demise in foot-binding, a self-harming custom widely practiced by Chinese females for centuries. We use newly-discovered Taiwanese data to estimate the extent to which females unbound their feet in response to the rapid growth in sugarcane cultivation in the early 20th century, growth which significantly boosted the demand for female labor. We find that cane cultivation significantly induced unbinding, with the IV estimations utilizing cane railroads – lines built exclusively for cane transportation – support a causal interpretation of the estimated effect. This finding implies that increased female employment opportunities can help eliminate norms that are harmful for females. Further analysis suggests that the need for human capital improvement was more likely to have driven the effects of cane cultivation, rather than the increased intra-household bargaining power for females.
Natural disasters, intra-national FDI spillovers, and economic divergence: Evidence from India
Felix L. Friedt Aidan Toner-Rodgers
Abstract：This paper studies the effects of natural disasters on foreign direct investment, considering the case of India. We document large and persistent investment reductions in affected regions following a disaster as well as lasting positive spillovers into otherwise unaffected Indian regions. Intra-national relocations account for more than two-thirds of the losses in affected areas, explaining the puzzlingly small country-level findings of previous works. Furthermore, we show that these investment shifts tend to flow into more developed, less disaster-prone regions, fueling the prominent divergence in India’s economic growth. Combined, our results suggest that multinational firms consider both local cost and region-specific disaster risk when selecting locations for production.
The welfare effects of India’s rural employment guarantee
Stefan Klonner Christian Oldiges
Abstract：We assess the welfare effects of India’s workfare program NREGA using a novel, almost sharp regression discontinuity design. We find large seasonal consumption increases in states implementing the program intensely, which are a multiple of the direct income gains. We also find increases in adolescents’ schooling. Our results imply substantial beneficial indirect effects of this large welfare program. We conclude that public employment programs hold significant potential for reducing poverty and insuring households against various adverse implications of seasonal income shortfalls — when properly implemented.
Land property rights and rural enterprise growth: Evidence from land titling reform in China
Di Bu Yin Liao
Abstract：We exploit a large-scale land titling reform in China that clearly entitles rural households to land rights by issuing uniform land use certificates and study how this impacted entrepreneurship in rural areas. We find that the reform significantly increases business creation in rural areas without decreasing the quality of new entrants or incumbent businesses. It also spurs entrepreneurship among professional and large farmers and attracts more urban residents to start new businesses in rural areas. Additional analysis provides evidence that increased land and labor availability and productivity, and improved social trust may serve as the mechanisms underlying these effects. Altogether, these results reveal that well-defined land property rights have enabled more enterprise growth in rural areas.
Filling a niche? The maize productivity impacts of adaptive breeding by a local seed company in Kenya
Samuel S. Bird Michael R. Carter Travis J. Lybbert Mary Mathenge Timothy Njagi Emilia Tjernström
Abstract：This paper studies whether the absence of locally adapted seed varieties constrains the productivity and incomes of farm households residing in small, agro-ecological niches. We empirically examine the disruption of the maize seed market in Western Kenya that took place when public sector foundation breeding and social impact investment capital came together and allowed a local seed company to expand and target a niche area with adaptively-bred maize varieties. The three-year randomized controlled trial reveals that these seed varieties increased farmer yields and revenues, both for better-resourced farmers (who used non-adapted hybrids and fertilizer prior to the intervention) as well as less well-resourced farmers (who did not). This theoretical and empirical evidence suggests news ways for thinking about seed systems in areas typified by high levels of agro-ecological heterogeneity.
Farming output, concentration, and market access: Evidence from the 19th-century American railroad expansion
Jeff Chan
Abstract：I examine how market access affects farming output and whether changes to output were driven by increasing concentration in production. To do so, I use the American railroad expansion in the late 19th century as a natural experiment. I first show that farm output increases in counties with greater market access but output concentration does not. I show that changes in farming output are driven by an expansion in land used for farming and increased rural population. Finally, I use potential yield data from FAO-GAEZ as county–crop-specific productivities to show that increased output as a result of market access shocks is not driven by crops in which a county has a comparative advantage. I conclude that, instead, the impact of market access on agricultural output comes from an increase in resources allocated to production as the rural population of counties grows and improves more farmland for use.
Top lights: Bright cities and their contribution to economic development
Richard Bluhm Melanie Krause
Abstract：Tracking the development of cities in emerging economies is difficult with conventional data. This paper shows that nighttime lights can be used as a reliable proxy for economic activity at the city level, provided they are first corrected for top-coding. The commonly-used satellite images of nighttime light intensity fail to capture the true brightness of larger cities. We present a stylized model of urban luminosity and empirical evidence which both suggest that these ‘top lights’ can be characterized by a Pareto distribution or similarly heavy-tailed distributions. We then propose a correction procedure that recovers the full distribution of city lights. Our results show that the brightest cities account for nearly a third of global light output. Applying this approach to cities in Sub-Saharan Africa, we find that primate cities are outgrowing secondary cities. Contrary to the top-coded data, our data show that differences at the intensive margin drive the differential in relative growth rates across city types.
From past lies to current misconduct: The long shadow of China's Great Leap Forward
Shuo Chen Haoyuan Ding Shu Lin Haichun Ye
Abstract：Using hand-collected data on yield over-reporting during China's Great Leap Forward (GLF) period, we find that GLF over-reporting in a chairperson's province of origin strongly predicts corporate financial misconduct today. Evidence from a variety of identification strategies establishes a causal relationship. We also extend our analyses to other aspects of corporate misconduct and local dishonest behaviors. We show that GLF over-reporting has shifted social norms toward a present-day tolerance for dishonesty. Our findings suggest that wrongdoings by local government officials in the past can lead to adverse effects on people's future behavior in the form of cheating.
Export capacity constraints and distortions
Xiao Feng Yongjin Wang Laixun Zhao
Abstract：We investigate how export capacity constraints (ECCs) affect resource misallocation and aggregate productivity by distorting the firm's export mode. Using unique datasets in China, we first document a number of observed patterns for the so-called “dual-channel exporters”, which export only a fraction of their products directly with the rest via intermediaries. We show that introducing capacity constraints reconciles the theory with the observed patterns in the data. Our quantitative exercise suggests that removal of the ECCs leads to gains of 2.27% in aggregate productivity, 4.97% in total exports and 0.37% in national welfare.
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编辑：代安澜
审核：龙文进