Over the past two decades, sports programs have proliferated as a mode of engaging youth in development projects. Thousands of organizations, millions of participants, and hundreds of millions of dollars are invested in sports-based development programs each year. The underlying belief that sports promote socioemotional skills, improve psychological well-being, and foster traits that boost labor force

A frequently debated question is whether the use of intellectual property (IP) protection benefits the residents of low and middle income countries. We contribute to this debate with an analysis of the use of patents and trademarks by firms in Chile over the decade 1995-2005 as the then middle-income country experienced rapid economic growth. Using a novel dataset containing the merge of detailed firm-level

We use a social experiment to test whether the government of Zambia’s cash transfer program affects intertemporal choice. A cash transfer program may also alter expectations about future quality of life and make one happier, two conditions that can affect intertemporal decision-making and the desire to invest in the future. We find that the program affects time discounting and that psychological states

This paper investigates the impact of informal microfinance groups (self-help groups, or SHGs) on children’s education and work in rural India. In 2002, 24 eligible villages were randomly selected for opening SHGs, and 12 others were randomly selected as a control group. Households were surveyed three times over a 5-year period, allowing for the study of medium-term outcomes. We find a robust and strong

We conduct dictator-type games in rural Paraguay; different treatments involve manipulating players’ information and choice sets. From individuals’ choices in the games, we draw inferences regarding impediments to efficient risk sharing in the larger village supergame. Outcomes from the experimental games suggest that players in most villages are reacting to the kinds of incentives that we would predict

We implemented a randomized controlled trial among transnational households in the Philippines estimating impacts of a financial education treatment, a financial access treatment, and the combination of the two on financial behaviors. We test whether there are complementarities between both interventions and provide insight into the nature of constraints operating in financial services markets. We

This paper documents a strong correlation between fertility and superstition among the Chinese ethnic diaspora in Malaysia and examines the effect of this Chinese adherence to their cultural norm on the fertility behavior and economic outcomes of ethnic Malays. We exploit a short-term change in fertility preferences induced by the Chinese zodiac calendar that leads to a 14.3% rise in birth rates during

This paper investigates whether new health facilities affect maternal care use, maternal/child health, and travel patterns to facilities. Community- and mother-level fixed effects models are applied to decade-long panel data from Uganda. The results show that the openings of large facilities increase delivery at formal facilities, while new clinics increase regular antenatal care usage. The first facility

Titling programs have focused mostly on providing initial tenure security and have not properly addressed maintaining the formality of future property transactions. Deregularization due to unregistered transactions can threaten the long-run success of titling programs. In this study, we document the incidence of unregistered property transactions in urban slums in Peru. We also exploit a natural experiment

I conduct a randomized audit study in the Ugandan antimalarial drug market to test whether providers adjust prices or prescribing behavior when patients are less reliant on their advice. Standardized patients (SPs) purchase drugs using scripts that vary whether the SP (1) self-diagnoses malaria or asks for a diagnosis and/or (2) knows the first-line treatment or asks for a recommendation. I find that

We examine the long-term impact of violence on educational attainment, with evidence from Colombia’s La Violencia, a period of intense political violence in the mid-twentieth century. We find that individuals exposed to violence during and especially before their schooling years experience a significant and economically meaningful decrease in years of schooling. Exploring consequences beyond human

We estimate the effects of the minimum wage on women’s intrahousehold bargaining power in Indonesia. Using province-specific minimum wage increases in Indonesia from 20002014 and a sample of married household heads and their spouses from a panel of Indonesian households, we implement a method that exploits differences in minimum wages between geographically proximate districts located near the border

Are well-functioning formal judicial institutions important for economic development, or can informal contracting arrangements provide adequate substitutes? This paper aims to answer this question using variation across industries in their reliance on contracts along with variation across Indian states in the average speed of courts. The identification strategy is motivated by theory from the incomplete

We study the effects of education on the financial outcomes of young people using Kenya’s introduction of free primary education (FPE) in 2003 as an exogenous shock to schooling. Our identification strategy compares changes across cohorts and across regions with differing levels of pre-FPE enrollment. We find that FPE is associated with increases in educational attainment and increased use of formal

That crime and conflict can negatively affect child health is well documented, but one potentially important mechanism has received little attention: Do increases in local violence reduce the utilization of curative and preventative care? Combining a database of violent events with the 2013 Demographic and Health Survey of the Philippines, I exploit within-location variation in violence over time.

This paper examines the effects of the number of days worked by households under India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) on expenditure patterns, food security, and individual time use. I use plausible exogenous variation in administrative bottlenecks regarding the timing of work provision as an instrument for the number of days worked. The paper finds that a greater number of days

Public expenditures on noncontributory pensions are equivalent to at least 1% of gross domestic product in several countries in Latin America and are expected to increase. We explore the effect of noncontributory pensions on well-being by studying the Pension 65 program in Peru, which uses a poverty eligibility threshold. Households with a beneficiary increased their level of consumption by 40%. The

Income transfers from social programs are often not gender neutral, according to the vast literature on intrahousehold decision-making and allocation, and should affect the distribution of bargaining power within the household. This result, however, was by and large established under the assumption of marriage stability. If this assumption does not hold (because of divorce or separation), then the

I examine how exposure to conflict affected household-level access to cash transfers after the 2010 floods in Pakistan. Using instrumental variables estimation to overcome the endogeneity of conflict exposure and access to aid, I find that conflict reduced households’ access to two large government-run cash transfer programs— namely, the Citizens Damage Compensation Program and the Benazir Income Support

We estimate the causal impact of remittances on child labor and school participation in Colombia using data from its main metropolitan areas. We develop an instrumental variable strategy that leverages the unemployment shocks induced by the 2008 financial crisis in Colombian migrants’ main destination countries. We find that remittances reduce child labor but not schooling. Relative to their mean participation

This paper identifies the role of roads in improving agricultural livelihoods and examines the key market mechanisms through which improved connectivity translates into economic gains for agricultural households. I use a rigorous identification strategy based on the rugged terrain that significantly influences the design and costs of constructing roads in Nepal, along with new geospatial data to find

Economic shocks have been shown to affect child labor, particularly when households cannot access credit. This paper asks whether access to agricultural labor markets also reduces the impact of productivity shocks on child labor. Using panel data from Tanzania, I show that (1) child labor rises with a positive rainfall shock, (2) child labor rises less when households have access to a labor market

To measure hunger and poverty requires studying the lower tail of distributions, which calls for accurate surveying of both means and variances. Surveys often gather data on respondents for only a short period—taking what is here called a “snapshot”—and although these surveys may be adequate for measuring means and totals, they overstate annual variances and the chronic hunger rate. A new method of

We evaluate whether the Juntos conditional cash transfer program in Peru has a larger effect on children who benefited initially from the program during the first 4 years of life compared with those children who benefited initially between ages 5 and 8. The former group was exposed during early-life sensitive periods, received the program for a longer period, and received more growth monitoring sessions

Can information technology preserve the short-term learning gains associated with adult education programs? This study estimates the medium-term impacts of a mobile phone module (Project ABC) that was added to a standard adult education curriculum and for which there were significant short-term impacts on educational outcomes. Two years after the end of the program, students in ABC villages had reading

This paper examines the relationship between ethnic heterogeneity and the demand for formal land tenure in urban Tanzania. Using a unique census of two highly-fractionalized unplanned settlements in Dar es Salaam, I show that households located near coethnics are significantly less likely to purchase a limited form of land tenure recently offered by the government. I attempt to address one of the chief

Conditional cash transfers (CCTs) aim to increase human capital in poor families. They do this directly through conditions but may also influence household decision-making in other ways. Using a regression discontinuity design, we test whether a large CCT program affects discounting choices and aspirations for children’s education. A greater willingness to defer consumption and desire to invest in

A field experiment generated random variation in access to fiction for youth living in villages in southwestern Burkina Faso to test whether reading fiction affects economic preferences. There were few differences in trust, contribution to public goods, risk, and patience between those participating in the reading program and the control group. The results run counter to a supposition that reading

Adoption of yield-increasing technologies is crucial to boost staple food production in sub-Saharan Africa. However, empirical evidence is lacking on the impact of improved agricultural technologies that are scaled up from research at agricultural experiment stations to the farm level. We assess the impact of a new technology, row planting, on farmers’ yields of teff in Ethiopia. Results of a randomized

This study explores the links between education, resource incomes, and wealth distribution, using a 2-period household model and data from an Indian fishery. The model predicts an ambiguous and wealth-dependent impact of increasing resource incomes on education. The empirical approach uses geographical variations in exogenously increasing fish catches to show that higher fish catches increase the average

We estimate the effect of participation in a large antipoverty program in Colombia on turnout and electoral choice. Using variation in the proportion of beneficiaries across voting booths within a polling station and eligibility as an instrument for take-up, we find that in the 2010 presidential elections, enrolled women were more likely to vote and support the incumbent party candidate. Results for

Voter education campaigns often aim to increase voter participation and political accountability. Randomized interventions were implemented nationwide during the 2009 Mozambican elections using leaflets, text messaging, and a free newspaper. We study the local peer effects triggered by the campaign. We investigate whether treatment effects are transmitted through social networks and geographical proximity