Calendrier du 22 mai 2024
Development Economics Seminar
Du 22/05/2024 de 16:30 à 18:00
R2.01
DUFLO Esther (MIT)
Can microfinance unlock a poverty trap for some entrepreneurs" (With Abhijit Banerjee, Emily Breza and Cynthia Kinnan)
Can microcredit help unlock a poverty trap for some people by putting
their businesses on a different trajectory? Could the small microcredit treatment effects often
found for the average household mask important heterogeneity? In Hyderabad, India, we find
that “gung ho entrepreneurs” (GEs), households who were already running a business before
microfinance entered, show persistent benefits that increase over time. Six years later, the
treated GEs own businesses that have 35% more assets and generate double the revenues as
those in control neighborhoods. We find almost no effects on non-GE households. A model
of technology choice in which talented entrepreneurs can access either a diminishing-returns
technology, or a more productive technology with a fixed cost, generates dynamics matching
the data. These results show that heterogeneity in entrepreneurial ability is important and
persistent. For talented but low-wealth entrepreneurs, short-term access to credit can indeed
facilitate escape from a poverty trap.
Histoire des entreprises et de la finance
Du 22/05/2024 de 16:00 à 17:30
R2.20
FABRE Antoine ()
La fabrique managériale de l’Anthropocène, Le rôle du prix de revient des plantations d’hévéa dans la déforestation en Indochine au début du XXe siècle
écrit avec Labardin P., Loizeau J., Boyer C.
Economic History Seminar
Du 22/05/2024 de 12:00 à 13:30
R1.09
JUHASZ Reka (UBC)
Codification and Technology Absorption: Evidence from Trade Patterns
écrit avec Réka Juhász, Shogo Sakabe, David E. Weinstein,
This paper studies technology absorption around the world in the late nineteenth
century. We construct several novel datasets to test the idea that the codification of
useful knowledge in the vernacular was necessary for countries to absorb the technologies
of the Industrial Revolution. Using the rapid and unprecedented codification
of useful knowledge in Meiji Japan as a natural experiment, we show that productivity
growth in Japan was higher in industries that had a higher supply of Western
useful knowledge, but only after the Japanese government undertook a large public
good investment to provide this knowledge to its citizens. We find no similar patterns
in other parts of the world which did not codify knowledge. Taken together,
our findings shed new light on the frictions associated with technology diffusion, and
offer a novel take on why Meiji Japan was unique among non-Western countries in
successfully industrializing during the first wave of globalization.
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