Listen here to the fourth series of the “NOVAFRICA Sustainable Development Talks” Podcast.
This series of audio talks about development in Africa brings together experts from a wide range of institutions. Myriam Marending, resident member of NOVAFRICA and researcher in Development Economics at Nova SBE, is the coordinator and NOVAFRICA Student Group hosted the podcast, which was produced at Fidelidade Creative Studio.
Join us!
#Episode 14: “Where Do My Tax Dollars Go? Tax Morale Effects of Perceived Government Spending”, with Ricardo Perez-Truglia (UC Berkeley – Haas School of Business).
Do perceptions about how the government spends tax dollars affect the willingness to pay taxes? We designed a field experiment to test this hypothesis in a natural, high-stakes context and via revealed preferences.
#Episode 13: “What We Do in the Shadows: How Urban Density Facilitates Information Diffusion”, with Evan Plous Kresch (Oberlin College).
Does urban density facilitate the diffusion of information? This paper exploits plausibly exogenous variation generated by a unique national policy in China that requires all residential buildings to receive sufficient hours of sunshine.
#Episode 12: “Making policies matter: Voter responses to campaign promises”, with Julien Labonne (University of Oxford).
Can voters in clientelist countries be swayed by programmatic campaign promises? We combine a structural model and a large-scale field experiment disseminating candidate policy platforms in Philippine mayoral elections to show how voters respond to campaign promises.
#Episode 11: “Targeting Social Assistance with Machine Learning”, with Joshua Blumenstock (University of California, Berkeley).
Do perceptions about how the government spends tax dollars affect the willingness to pay taxes? We designed a field experiment to test this hypothesis in a natural, high-stakes context and via revealed preferences. We measured how taxpayers perceive the destination of their tax dollars.
#Episode 10: “Does Identity Affect Labor Supply?”, with Suanna Oh (Paris School of Economics).
How does identity influence economic behavior in the labor market? I investigate this question in rural India, focusing on the effect of caste identity on job-specific labor supply. In a field experiment, laborers choose whether to take up various job offers, which differ in associations with specific castes.
#Episode 9: “Public Opinion, Racial Bias, and Labor Market Outcomes”, with Silvia Prina (Northeastern University).
The effect of negative shifts in public opinion on the economic lives
of minorities is unknown. We study the role of racial bias in the U.S. labor
market by investigating sudden changes in public opinion about Asians following
the anti-Chinese rhetoric that emerged with the COVID-19 pandemic.
#Episódio 8: “Forced Displacement and Human Capital”, with Elias Papaioannou (London Business School).
We examine the impact of conflict-driven displacement on human capital by looking at the Mozambican civil war (1977 − 1992), during which more than four million civilians fled to the countryside, cities, refugee camps, and settlements in neighboringcountries.
#Episode 7: “Monetary Incentives and Image Motivation: Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment with Nigerian Midwives”, with Marcos Vera-Hernandez (University College London).
We test the relevance of image motivation in prosocial jobs through a large-scale experiment involving midwives deployed to underserved areas. We randomize incentives to encourage midwife retention and measure midwives’ image motivation, and social norms regarding length of service, using lab-in-the-field games.
#Episode 6: “It Will Rain: The Effect of Information on Flood Preparedness in Urban Mozambique”, with Stefan Leffers, (NOVAFRICA, Nova School of Business and Economics, Nova SBE).
Floods are among the costliest and most recurring natural disasters. Many governments provide disaster preparedness information, but there is limited evidence of the efficacy of such policies.
#Episode 5: “Community effects of electrification: Evidence from Burkina Faso’s grid extension”, with Alexander Moradi, (Free University of Bozen-Bolzano).
Using true and pseudo panel data of localities and households, we study the effects of Burkina Faso’s large scale electricity grid expansion 2008-2017. We show that the timing of electrification was driven by engineering constraints and thus largely exogenous.
#Episode 4: “Human Capital, Internal Migration and Structural Transformation in Africa”, with Jorge Agüero, (University of Connecticut).
Economic development requires the transformation of the spatial organization of a country. Yet, in Sub-Saharan Africa most of the population still resides in rural areas and works in agriculture limiting the structural transformation required for economic development.
#Episode 3: “The effects of health behaviours during the COVID-19 pandemic”, Gabriella Conti (University College London).
Health behaviors are actions individuals take that affect their health. Most health behaviors can have both positive and negative consequences for the individual, generating trade-offs in choice.
#Episode 2: “Real-life effects of health interventions in Guinea-Bissau”, with Ane Fisker, (University of Southern Denmark).
To reduce maternal and child mortality, health interventions are being rolled out and scaled-up across low-income countries. These health interventions are prioritised and promoted based on assumptions about health effects, rather than on real-life data.
#Episode 1: “Women Leaders Improve Environmental Outcomes: Evidence from Crop Fires in India”, with Meera Mahadevan, (UC Irvine).
Effective climate action requires leaders that implement pro-environmental policies. Survey evidence suggests that women have a greater concern for the environment. Yet, whether these concerns translate to policy changes when women are elected to political office is an open question.
