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Publications (51)
Journal Article
We design a lab-in-the-field experiment involving naturally occurring groups operating in three South-African townships. We introduce an incentives-based mechanism named 'participatory incentives' consisting of monetary incentives that are awarded conditional on the group reaching a threshold of...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that involving beneficiaries in charity decision-making ensures better governance processes. This study provides the first experimental test of the effects of beneficiaries’ participation in the decision of how to spend a charity's funds. We consider four different...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– Do urban agglomeration economies matter?
The effects of a rural roads programme depend on labour mobility, how the programme is financed, and agglomera-tion economies. If financed by a rural poll tax and cross-price effects and agglomeration economies are sufficiently small, the wage will rise, with some return migration. Taxes on trade...
Journal Article
– Mandated political representation and murders
This study provides the first country-wide research evidence that an affirmative action policy may induce a backlash. I exploit the timing of the implementation of castebased electoral quotas across and within the states of India. The results show that the implementation of the electoral quotas...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– Evidence from the Han and ethnic minorities in China
This study investigates the unexpected impact that enforcing birth control policies in China has upon the educational stratification between the Han majority, the policy target group, and ethnic minorities, a partially excluded group. Exploring county-level variation in the value of fines levied for...
Journal Article
We implement a lab-in-the-field experiment among childcare workers in Chandigarh, India, to evaluate discriminatory attitudes of the Hindu workers toward Muslim children. We use a third-party allocation game that controls for selfish payoff-maximizing preferences across the treatments and focus...
Journal Article
– Evidence from Chittagon Hill tracts of Bangladesh
We evaluate a development programme with an important maternal health care component in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh. The region and its mostly indigenous people experienced violent conflict in the past and face a constant risk of recurring conflict. Given this fragile setting, our work...
Journal Article
– The case of indigenous Australians
This paper provides new insights on the labour market discrimination faced by indigenous Australians one of the most disadvantaged indigenous populations in developed countries. Combining two large, nationally representative datasets, we decompose the employment gap between indigenous and non...
Working Paper
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This paper examines the relationship between poverty dynamics, causal pluralism, and mixed method research approaches. It reviews the nature and significance of the shift from the analysis of poverty status to poverty dynamics, discusses different approaches to causal reasoning and causal inference...
Working Paper
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– Benefits for town and country?
Do urban agglomeration economies enhance the social profitability of rural roads? When all goods are traded at parametric world prices, lower transport costs benefit villagers. Urban activities and welfare are unaffected if labour is immobile, but their levels fall when rural workers move freely to...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
We take school admission mechanisms to the lab to test whether the widely-used manipulable Immediate Acceptance mechanism disadvantages students of lower cognitive ability and whether this leads to ability segregation across schools. Results show this to be the case: lower ability participants...
Working Paper
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This paper introduces the origins and scope of humanitarian economics, a vibrant field of study and practice that deals with the economics and political economy of war, disaster, and humanitarian action. To illustrate the field’s scientific and policy relevance, the paper draws on various examples...
Working Paper
pdf
– Recent research advances and future agendas
We survey selected parts of the growing literature on the microeconomics of violent conflict, identifying where academic research has started to establish stylized facts and where methodological and knowledge gaps remain. We focus our review on the role of civilian agency in conflict; on wartime...
Working Paper
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– Which expected values are valid
This paper re-examines the validity of using expected values to evaluate the social profitability of public investments under uncertainty. Departing from the usual assumption of an aggregate good, the setting is a small open economy that faces stochastic world prices for tradable goods and...
Working Paper
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– A revival is long overdue
This paper makes the case for the systematic appraisal of public sector projects using shadow prices as the signals of social scarcities. In so doing, it attempts to redress the balance between estimating inputs and outputs, central though that task is, and valuing them correctly. The account of how...
Blog
Racial wage inequality and discrimination have pervaded South African society for centuries. Apartheid legislation cemented these disparities by institutionalizing white job reservation and many other unfair practices. While racial wage gaps started to decline towards the end of apartheid in 1994...
Displaying 16 of 51 results