Calendrier du 12 décembre 2018
Development Economics Seminar
Du 12/12/2018 de 16:30 à 18:00
Salle R2.01 Campus Jourdan, 48 Bd Jourdan 75014 Paris
NIEHAUS Paul (University of California San Diego)
Authentication and targeted transfers: experimental evidence from India
In developing countries, the state often has limited capacity to effectively target transfers. We examine the effects of enhanced authentication technology on the performance of India's largest targeted transfer scheme, the Public Distribution System. We conduct an experiment at scale with the state government of Jharkhand, randomizing the rollout of "Aadhaar"-based biometric authentication. On its own, this reform had little effect on corruption or on average beneficiary access to transfers while slightly increasing transaction costs. When paired with new protocols for reconciling supply chain balances using data from authenticated transactions, however, it significantly reduced both corruption and beneficiary access (and was swiftly suspended). Contrasted with results from (our own) earlier work, these findings highlight the importance of “construct validity” and of political economy when extrapolating from past program evaluations to predict the effects of future reforms.
Economic History Seminar
Du 12/12/2018 de 12:30 à 14:00
Salle R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
JO Yoon (TAMU)
The impact of the redistribution of Church land during the Revolution on 19th c. agricultural investments and output
This study exploits the confiscation and auctioning off of Church property
that occurred during the French Revolution to assess the role played by transaction
costs in delaying the reallocation of property rights in the aftermath of fundamental
institutional reform. French districts with a greater proportion of land redistributed
during the Revolution experienced higher levels of agricultural productivity in 1841
and 1852 as well as more investment in irrigation and more efficient land use. We
trace these increases in productivity to an increase in land inequality associated with
the Revolutionary auction process. We also show how the benefits associated with
the head-start given to districts with more Church land initially, and thus greater
land redistribution by auction during the Revolution, dissipated over the course of the
nineteenth century as other districts gradually overcame the transaction costs associated
with reallocating the property rights associated with the feudal system.
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