Calendrier du 19 septembre 2018
Development Economics Seminar
Du 19/09/2018 de 16:30 à 18:00
PSE, Room R2.01 - 14 Bd Jourdan 75014 Paris
DESERRANNO Erika (Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University)
Social ties and the delivery of development programs
Abstract
The delivery of development programs is often delegated to local delivery agents (DAs). A common presumption is that, in the absence of financial rewards, social ties with potential beneficiaries might motivate the DA but also distort targeting. We provide evidence on the conditions underpinning the trade-off by means of a two-layered field experiment in the context of an extension program meant for the poorest farmers in Western Uganda. The first layer is a standard cross-village RCT that reveals significant gains in agricultural output and consumption in treated villages. The second layer randomizes the selection of the delivery agent between two elite farmers. This creates a counterfactual delivery agent (CA) for the agent and for her social ties. We find that social ties create bias but also improve coverage and that it is the rivalry between the agent and her counterfactual that creates this trade-off. The results have implications for the procedural rules used by governments or NGOs when recruiting DAs, and help explain why otherwise similar development often succeed in some communities and fail in others.
Economic History Seminar
Du 19/09/2018 de 12:30 à 14:00
Salle R2-20, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
MONTIALOUX Claire (CREST)
Minimum Wages and Racial Inequality in the US (1938-1980)
écrit avec Ellora Derenoncourt (Harvard)
Racial earnings gaps fell dramatically in the late 1960s. We study the contribution of the federal minimum wage to this decline. The 1966 Fair Labor Standards Act introduced high federal minimum wages to sectors that were previously uncovered and where black workers were overrepresented. We show that this reform increased wages for workers in newly covered industries and that the impact was twice as large for black workers as for white. We find no effect of the reform on employment. The 1966 extension of the minimum wage can explain 25% of the reduction in the racial wage gap in the United States as a whole in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Our findings shed new light on the impacts of labor standards on racial inequality.