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Last update: Mgr. Anna Papariga (01.02.2022)
The goal of this course is to expose you to the research frontier in applied microeconomic research in development economics, particular empirical and policy oriented research, and research that involves field experiments. After taking this course, you should be able to identify promising research questions, and know methodological challenges and best practices in this field. |
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Last update: Mgr. Anna Papariga (01.02.2022)
The central reading will be based on academic articles listed below. The following book provides a helpful overview and introduction to the topic: Banerjee, Abihijit, and Esther Duflo. 2011: Poor Economics.
The following book is great for setting the frame on the phenomena we study: Hartmann, Betsy, and Kames K. Boyce. 2013: A Quiet Violence: View from A Bangladeshi Village.
The needed econometrics can be read up again in: Angrist, Josh, and Joern-Steffen Pischke. 2009: Mostly Harmless Econometrics.
Imbens, Guido, and Jeffrey Wooldridge. 2009: Recent Developments in the Econometrics of Program Evaluation, Journal of Economic Literature 47 (1): 5-86.
A practical introduction into the methodology of Randomized Controlled Trials that will be referenced a few times is Glennester, Rachel, and Kudzai Takavarasha. 2013: Running Randomized Evaluations: A Practical Guide, Princeton Press.
* indicates required reading (R) indicates articles that will be presented by students and are required reading for all.
Week 1: Introduction Banerjee, Abhijit, and Esther Duflo. 2008: What is Middle Class about the Middle Classes around the World?, Journal of Economic Perspectives 22 (2): 3-28 *
Banerjee, Abhijit, and Esther Duflo. 2007: The Economic Lives of the Poor, Journal of Economic Perspectives 21(1): 141-168 *
Dollar, David, Tatjana Kleineberg, and Art Kraay. 2016: Growth still is good for the Poor, European Economic Review 81: 68-85.
Ravallion, Martin. 2005: Inequality is Bad for the Poor, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 3677.
Mankiw, N. Gregory, David Romer, and David N. Weil. 1992: A Contribution to the Empirics of Economic Growth, Quarterly Journal of Economics 107 (2): 407-437.
Caselli, Francesco. 2005: Accounting for Cross-Country Income Differences, Chapter 9 in Handbook of Economic Growth Vol. 1, Part A: 679-741.
Bandiera, Oriana, Robin Burgess, Narayan Das, Selim Gulesci, Imran Rasul, and Munshi Sulaiman. 2017: Labor Markets and Poverty in Village Economies, Quarterly Journal of Economics 132(2): 811-870 *
Egger, Dennis, Johannes Haushofer, Edward Miguel, Paul Niehaus, and Michael Walker. 2019: General Equilibrium Effects of Cash Transfers: Experimental Evidence from Kenya, Working Paper, Berkeley *
Kraay, Art, and David McKenzie. 2014: Do Poverty Traps Exist? Assessing the Evidence, Journal of Economic Perspectives 28 (3): 127-148.
Haushofer, Johannes. 2019: Is there a Psychological Poverty Trap?, Working Paper, Princeton.
Banerjee, Abhijit and Esther Duflo. 2005: Growth Theory through the Lens of Development Economics, in Aghion and Durlauf, eds., Handbook of Economic Growth. Elsevier Press.
Alatas, Vivi, Abhijit Banerjee, Rema Hanna, Benjamin Olken, and Julia Tobias. 2012: Targeting the Poor: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Indonesia, American Economic Review 102 (4): 1206-1240.
Week 2: Microfinance DeMel, Suresh, David McKenzie, and Christopher Woodruff. 2008: Returns to Capital in Microentreprises: Evidence from a Field Experiment, Quarterly Journal of Economics 123 (4): 1329-1372 *
Keniston, Daniel. 2011: Experimental vs. Structural Estimates of the Return to Capital in Microentreprises, Working Paper, Yale.
Banerjee, Abhijit, Esther Duflo, Rachel Glennester, and Cynthia Kinnan. 2015: The Miracle of Microfinance? Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation, AEJ: Applied Economics 7 (1): 22-53 * Banerjee, Abhijit., Dean Karlan, and Jonathan Zinman. 2015.b: Six randomized evaluations of microcredit: Introduction and further steps, AEJ: Applied Economics. 7 (1): 1–21. Banerjee, Abhijit, Esther Duflo, Nathanael Goldberg, Dean Karlan, Robert Osei, William Parienté, Jeremy Shapiro, Bram Thuysbaert, and Christopher Udry. (2015.c): A multifaceted program causes lasting progress for the very poor: Evidence from six countries, Science348 (6236): 772. Meager, Rachel. 2019: Understanding the Average Impact of Microcredit Expansions: A Bayesian Hierarchical Analysis of Seven Randomized Experiments, AEJ: Applied Economics 11 (1): 57-91.
Karlan, Dean, and Jonathan Zinman. 2009: Observing Unobservables: Identifying Information Asymmetries with a Consumer Credit Field Experiment, Econometrica 77 (6): 1993-2008 *
Bryan, Gharad, Dean Karlan, and Jonathan Zinman. 2015: Referrals: Peer Screening and Enforcement in a Consumer Credit Field Experiment, AEJ: Microeconomics 7 (3): 174-204.
Gine, Xavier, and Dean Karlan. 2014: Group versus individual liability: Short and long term evidence from Philippine microcredit lending groups, Journal of Development Economics 107: 65-83 *
Gine, Xavier, Karuna Krishnaswarmy, and Alejandro Ponce. 2013: Strategic Default in Joint Liability Groups: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in India, Unpublished.
Field, Erica, Rohini Pande, John Papp, and Natalia Rigol. 2013: Does the classic microfinance model discourage entrepreneurship among the poor? Experimental evidence from India”, AEJ: Applied Economics. 103 (6): 2196–2226.
Banerjee, Abhijit, and Esther Duflo. 2014: Do Firms Want to Borrow More? Testing Credit Constraints, Review of Economic Studies 81 (2): 572-607.
Week 3: Credit Markets and Property Rights Rutherford, Stuart, and Sukhwinder Arora. 2009: The Poor and Their Money, Practical Action Publishing, UK.
Dupas, Pascaline, and Jonathan Robinson. 2013. "Why Don't the Poor Save More? Evidence from Health Savings Experiments." American Economic Review, 103 (4): 1138-71.
Dupas, Pascaline, and Jonathan Robinson. 2013: Savings Constraints and Microenterprise Development: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Kenya. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 5 (1): 163-92. *
Ashraf, Nava, Dean Karlan, and Wesley Yin. 2006: Tying Odysseus to the Mast: Evidence from a Commitment Savings Product in the Philippines, Quarterly Journal of Economics 121 (2): 635-672.
Afzal, Uzma, Giovanna d’Adda, Marcel Fafchamps, Simon Quinn, and Farah Said. 2018: Two Sides of the Same Rupee? Comparing Demand for Microcredit and Microsaving in a Framed Field Experiment in Rural Pakistan, Economic Journal 128 (614): 2161-2190.
Karlan, Dean, Robert Osei, Isaac Osei-Akoto, and Chrostopher Udry. 2014: Agricultural Decisions after Relaxing Credit and Risk Constraints, Quarterly Journal of Economics 129 (2): 597-652 *
Haushofer, Johannes, Matthieu Chemin, Chaning Jang, and Justin Abraham. 2019: Economic and Psychological Effects of Health Insurance and Cash Transfers: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in Kenya, Working Paper, Princeton.
Besley, Timothy, Konrad Burchardi, and Maitreesh Ghatak. 2012: Incentives and the De Soto Effect, Quarterly Journal of Economics 127 (1): 237-282.
De Chaisemartin, Clement, and Jaime Ramirez-Cuellar. 2020: At What Level Should One Cluster Standard Errors in Paired Experiments, and in Stratified Experiments with Small Strata?, Working Paper, University of California, Santa Barbara.
De Mel, Suresh, David McKenzie, and Christopher Woodruff. 2019: Micro-Equity for Microentreprises, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 8799 (R).
De Janvry, Alain, Kyle Emerick, Marco Gonzalez-Navarro, and Elisabeth Sadoulet. 2015: Delinking Land Rights from Land Use: Certification and Migration in Mexico, American Economic Review 105 (10): 3125-3149 (R).
Week 4: Schooling Duflo, Esther. 2001: Schooling and Labor Market Consequences School Construction in Indonesia, American Economic Review 91 (4): 795-813.
Schultz, T. Paul. 2004: School subsidies for the poor: Evaluating the Mexican Progress Poverty Program, Journal of Development Economics, 74 (1): 199-250.
Baird, Sarah, Craig McIntosh, and Berk Özler. 2011: Cash or Condition? Evidence from a Randomized Cash Transfer Program, Quarterly Journal of Economics 126 (4): 1709-1753.
Benhassine, Najy, Florencia Devoto, Esther Duflo, Pascaline Dupas, and Victor Pouliquen. 2015: Turning a Shove into a Nudge? A "Labeled Cash Transfer" for Education, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 7 (3): 86-125.
Heath, Rachel, and A. Mushfiq Mobarak. 2015: Manufacturing growth and the lives of Bangladeshi women, Journal of Development Economics, 115: 1-15.
Atkin, David. 2016: Endogenous Skill Acquisition and Export Manufacturing in Mexico, American Economic Review, 106 (8): 2046-85.
Romero, Mauricio, Justin Sandefur, and Wayne Aaron Sandholtz. Forthcoming: Outsourcing Education: Experimental Evidence from Liberia.
Attanasio, Orazio, Adriana Kugler, and Costas Meghir. 2011. "Subsidizing Vocational Training for Disadvantaged Youth in Colombia: Evidence from a Randomized Trial." American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 3 (3): 188-220.
Lee, David. 2009: Training, Wages, and Sample Selection: Estimating Sharp Bounds on Treatment Effects, Review of Economic Studies 76 (3): 1071-1102.
Almeida, Rita, Sarojini Hirschleifer, David McKenzie, and Cristobal Ridao-Cano. 2016: The Impact of Vocational Training for the Unemployed: Experimental Evidence from Turkey, Economic Journal, 126(597): 2115-2146. (R).
Muralidharan, Karthik, Abhijeet Singh, and Alejandro J. Ganimian. 2019: Disrupting Education? Experimental Evidence on Technology-Aided Instruction in India, American Economic Review 109 (4): 1426-1460 (R).
Week 5: Health Baird, Sarah, Joan Hamory Hicks, Michael Kremer, and Edward Miguel. 2016: Worms at Work: Long-run Impacts of a Child Health Investment, Quarterly Journal of Economics 131 (4): 1637-1680 * Baird, Sarah, Joan Hamory Hicks, Michael Kremer and Edward Miguel. 2017: Commentary: Assessing long-run deworming impacts on education and economic outcomes: a comment on Jullien, Sinclair and Garner (2016). Zhang, W. 2016: Worm Wars: Do Mass Worming Campaigns Really Improve Education?, Working Paper, Yale University. Cameron, Lisa, Susan Olivia, and Manisha Shah. 2019: Scaling up sanitation: Evidence from an RCT in Indonesia, Journal of Development Economics 138: 1-16. Banerjee, Abhijit, Esther Duflo, and Rachel Glennester. 2008: Putting a Band-Aid on a Corpse: Incentives for Nurses in the Indian Public Health System, Journal of the European Economic Association 6 (2): 487-500. Deaton, Angus, and Jean Dreze. 2009: Food and Nutrition in India: Facts and Interpretations, Economic and Political Weekly 154 (7): 42-65. Banerjee, Abhijit, and Esther Duflo. 2010: Improving immunisation coverage in rural India: clustered randomised controlled evaluation of immunisation campaigns with and without incentives, British Medical Journal 340 (2220). Field, Erica, Omar Robles, and Maximo Torero. 2009: Iodine Deficiency and Schooling Attainment in Tanzania, AEJ: Applied Economics 1 (4): 140-69 * Alix Peterson Zwane, Jonathan Zinman, Eric Van Dusen, William Pariente, Clair Null, Edward Miguel, Michael Kremer, Dean S. Karlan, Richard Hornbeck, Xavier Giné, Esther Duflo, Florencia Devoto, Bruno Crepon, and Abhijit Banerjee. 2011: Being surveyed can change later behavior and related parameter estimates, PNAS 108 (5): 1821-1826.
Cohen, Jessica, Pascaline Dupas, and Simone Schaner. 2015. Price Subsidies, Diagnostic Tests, and Targeting of Malaria Treatment: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial. American Economic Review, 105 (2): 609-45 (R).
Kremer, Michael, Jessica Leino, Edward Miguel, Alix P. Zwane. 2011: Spring Cleaning: Rural Water Impacts, Valuation, and Property Rights Institutions, Quarterly Journal of Economics 126 (1): 145-205 (R).
Week 6: Infrastructure and Agriculture Asher, Sam, and Paul Novosad. 2019: Rural Roads and Local Economic Development, American Economics Review, forthcoming *
Ghani, Ejaz, Arti Grover Goswami, and William R. Kerr. 2016: Highway to Success: The Impact of the Golden Quadrilateral Project for the Location and Performance of Indian Manufacturing, Economic Journal 126 (591): 317-357.
Kenneth Lee, Edward Miguel, and Catherine Wolfram Year. 2019: Experimental Evidence on the Economics of Rural Electrification, Working Paper, Berkeley.
Dinkelman, Taryn. 2011. The Effects of Rural Electrification on Employment: New Evidence from South Africa, American Economic Review, 101 (7): 3078-3108.
Atkin, David, and Dave Donaldson. 2012: Who's Getting Globalized? The Size and Implications of Intranational Trade Costs, Working Paper, MIT.
Jensen, Robert. 2007: The Digital Provide: Information (Technology), Market Performance, and Welfare in the South Indian Fisheries Sector, Quarterly Journal of Economics 122 (3): 879–924.
Burke, Marshall, Lauren Falcao Bergquist, and Edward Miguel. 2019: Sell Low and Buy High: Arbitrage and Local Price Effects in Kenyan Markets, Quarterly Journal of Economics 134 (2): 785-842 (R).
Duflo, Esther, Michael Kremer, and Jonathan Robinson. 2011: Nudging Farmers to Use Fertilizer: Theory and Experimental Evidence from Kenya, American Economic Review, 101 (6): 2350-90 (R).
Week 7: Small Firms de Mel, Suresh, McKenzie, David and Christopher Woodruff. 2013: The Demand for, and Consequences of, Formalization among Informal Firms in Sri Lanka, AEJ: Applied Economics, 5 (2): 122-150 *
McKenzie, David. 2018: How Should the Government bring Small firms into the Formal system? Experimental evidence from Malawi, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper no. 8601.
de Mel, Suresh, McKenzie, David and Christopher Woodruff. 2019: Labor Drops: Experimental Evidence on the Return to Additional Labor in Microenterprises, AEJ: Applied Economics, 11 (1): 202-35 (R).
Brooks, Wyatt, Kevin Donovan, and Terrence Johnson. 2018: Mentors or Teachers? Microentreprise Training in Kenya, AEJ Applied Economics 10 (4): 196-221 (R).
Week 8: Large Firms Chang-Tai Hsieh & Benjamin A. Olken. 2014: The Missing "Missing Middle", Journal of Economic Perspectives 28 (3): 89-108 *
Bloom, Nicholas, Raffaella Sadun, and John Van Reenen. 2012: The organization of firms across countries, Quarterly Journal of Economics 127 (4): 1663-1705 *
Bloom, Nicholas, Benn Eifert, David McKenzie, Aprajit Mahajan, and John Roberts (2013): Does Management Matter? Evidence from India, Quarterly Journal of Economics 128 (1), 1-51.
Bloom, Nicholas, Raffaella Sadun, and John Van Reenen. 2016: Management as a Technology? Working Paper, Stanford.
Atkin, David, Azam Chaudhry, Shamyla Chaudry, Amit K. Khandelwal, Eric Verhoogen. 2017: Organizational barriers to Technology Adoption: Evidence from Soccer-Ball Producers in Pakistan, Quarterly Journal of Economics 132 (3): 11101-1164.
Bandiera, Oriana, Lemos, Renata, Prat, Andrea and Raffaella Sadun. 2018: Managing the Family Firm: Evidence from CEOs at Work, Review of Financial Studies 31 (5): 1605-1653.
Rajan, Raghuram G., and Luigi Zingales. 1998: Financial Dependence and Growth, American Economic Review 88 (3): 559-586.
Khwaja, Asim Ijaz, Atif Mian. 2005: Do Lenders Favor Politically Connected Firms? Rent Provision in an Emerging Financial Market, Quarterly Journal of Economics 120 (4): 1371–1411.
Atkin, David, Amit K. Khandelwal, Adam Osman. 2017: Exporting ad Firm Performance: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment (R).
Week 9: Labor Markets and Migration Blattman, Christopher, and Stefan Dercon. 2018: The Impacts of Industrial and Entrepreneurial Work on Income and Health: Experimental Evidence from Ethiopia, AEJ: Applied Economics, 10 (3): 1-38 *
Alfonsi, Livia, Bandiera, Oriana, Bassi, Vittorio, Burgess, Robin, Rasul, Imran, Sulaiman, Munshi and Vitali, Anna. 2017: Tackling Youth Unemployment: Evidence from a Labour Market Experiment in Uganda, Working Paper, LSE.
Abebe, Girum, Stefano Caria, Marcel Fafchamps, Paolo Falco and Simon Franklin. 2019: Anonymity or Distance? Job Search and Labour Market Exclusion in a Growing African City, R&R, Review of Economic Studies.
Kaur, Supreet. 2019: Nominal Wage Rigidity in Village Labor Markets, American Economic Review,109 (10): 3585-3616.
Boudreau, Laura, Rachel Heath, and Tyler McCormick, 2019: Migrants, Information, and Working Conditions in Bangladeshi Garment Factories, Working Paper, Columbia University.
Akram, Agha Ali, Shyamal Chowdhury, and Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak. 2018: Effect of Emigration on Rural Labor Markets, Working Paper, Yale.
Munshi, Kaivan, and Mark Rosenzweig. 2016: Networks and Misallocation: Insurance, Migration, and the Rural-Urban Wage Gap, American Economic Review, 106 (1): 46-98.
Week 10: Gender/Discrimination Duflo, Esther. 2012. "Women Empowerment and Economic Development." Journal of Economic Literature, 50 (4): 1051-79.
Dhar, Diva, Tarun Jain, and Seema Jayachandran. 2018: Reshaping Adolescents Gender Attitudes: Evidence from a School-Based Experiment in India, Working Paper, Northwestern University *
Beaman, Lori, Raghabendra Chattopadhay, Esther Duflo, Rohini Pande, and Petia Topalova. 2009: Powerful Women: Does Exposure Reduce Bias?, Quarterly Journal of Economics 124 (4): 1497-1540 *
Macchiavello, Rocco, Andreas Menzel, Atonu Rabbani, and Christopher Woodruff. 2020: Challenges of Change: Training Women to Supervise in the Bangladeshi Garment Sector, Working Paper.
Borker, Girija. 2018: Safety First: Perceived Risk of Street Harassment and Educational Choices of Women, Working Paper, Brown University.
Week 11: Case Study – Running a Field Experiment Duflo, Esther, Rachel Glennerster, and Michael Kremer. 2008: Using Randomization in Development Economics Research: A Toolkit, T. Schultz and John Strauss, eds., Handbook of Development Economics. Vol. 4.
Rosenzweig, Mark, and Christopher Udry. 2020: External Validity in a Stochastic World: Evidence from Low-Income Countries, Review of Economic Studies 87(1), pp: 343-381.
McKenzie, David, (2012), Beyond baseline and follow-up: The case for more T in experiments, Journal of Development Economics 99 (2): 210-221.
Baird, Sarah, J. Aislinn Bohren, Craig McIntosh, and Berk Ozler. 2018: Optimal Design of Experiments in the Presence of Interference, The Review of Economics and Statistics 100 (5): 844–860. * Anderson, Michael L. 2008: Multiple Inference and Gender Differences in the Effects of Early Intervention: A Reevaluation of the Abecedarian, Perry Preschool, and Early Training Projects, Journal of the American Statistical Association 103 (484): 1481–1495. * Young, Alwyn. 2019: Channeling Fisher: Randomization Tests and the Statistical Insignificance of Seemingly Significant Experimental Results, Quarterly Journal of Economics 134 (2): 557-598.
Czura, Kristina, Andreas Menzel, and Martina Miotto, 2019: Menstrual Health, Worker Productivity and Well-being among Female Bangladeshi Garment Workers, CERGE-EI Working Paper 649. |
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Last update: Mgr. Anna Papariga (01.02.2022)
Evaluation of this course will be based on a term paper (40%), in which you identify a research question and propose a data-collection and an identification strategy to answer the question, two paper presentations (each ca. 30 minutes) of papers in the course (each 15%), one assignment in which you replicate the results of a paper (20%), and brief summaries of one assigned paper each week (max ½ page – 10%). |
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Last update: Mgr. Anna Papariga (01.02.2022)
Week 1: Introduction Week 2: Microfinance Week 3: Credit Markets and Property Rights Week 4: Schooling Week 5: Health Week 6: Infrastructure and Agriculture Week 7: Small Firms
Week 8: Large Firms Week 9: Labor Markets and Migration Week 10: Gender/Discrimination Week 11: Case Study – Running a Field Experiment |