Listen to the first Season of the “NOVAFRICA Sustainable Development Talks” Podcast here.
This series of audio talks about development in Africa brings together experts from a wide range of institutions. Alex Armand, resident member of NOVAFRICA and Assistant Professor at Nova SBE, is the coordinator of this Podcast.
Join us!
#Episode 15: “Does Exposure to Other Ethnic Regions Promote National Integration? Evidence from Nigeria” with Oyebola Okunogbe (World Bank)
This paper examines how temporary exposure to a different ethnic region affects national integration using original survey data from participants in Africa’s largest national youth service program.
#Episode 14: “Trade frictions and agricultural markets in Uganda” with Craig McIntosh (University of California)
High search costs weaken market integration in developing country agricultural markets, harming both farmers and consumers. We present evidence from a large-scale experiment designed to reduce search costs in randomly selected subcounties in Uganda by introducing a mobile phone-based marketplace for agricultural commodities.
#Episode 13: “Fight fire with finance: a randomized field experiment in Indonesia” with Ryan Edwards (Australian National University)
This paper presents one of the first randomized evaluations of collective pay-for-performance payments for ecosystem services. We test whether community-level fiscal incentives can curtail the use of land-clearing ¬re, a major source of emissions and negative health externalities.
#Episode 12: “Electoral impacts of programmatic policies in Tanzania” with Ken Opalo (Georgetown University)
A large literature documents the electoral benefits of clientelist and programmatic policies in low-income states. We extend this literature by showing the cyclical electoral responses to a large programmatic intervention to expand access to secondary education in Tanzania over multiple electoral periods.
#Episode 11: “Local Politicians and the Deforestation of the Amazong” with Thomas Fujiwara (Princeton University)
We study how Brazilian municipal governments affect the market structure of illegal deforestation of the Amazon rainforest. In particular, we focus on the role of the size of legislatures (councils).
#Episode 10: “Social Signaling and Childhood Immunization, in Sierra Leone” with Anne Karing (Princeton University)
This paper investigates social signaling in the context of childhood immunization in Sierra Leone. I introduce a durable signal – in the form of differently colored bracelets – which children receive upon vaccination and implement a 22-month-long experiment in 120 public clinics.
#Episode 9: “A Firm of One’s Own: Experimental Evidence on Credit Constraints and Occupational Choice” with Pamela Jakiela (Williams College)
This study presents results from a randomized evaluation of two labor market interventions targeted to young women aged 18 to 19 years in three of Nairobi’s poorest neighborhoods. One treatment offered participants a bundled intervention designed to simultaneously relieve credit and human capital constraints
#Episode 8: “Islam and the State: Religious Education in the Age of Mass Schooling” with Samuel Bazzi (University of California, San Diego)
Public schooling systems are an essential feature of modern states. These systems often developed at the expense of religious schools, which undertook the bulk of education historically and still cater to large student populations worldwide.
#Episode 7: “Can microfinance unlock a poverty trap for some entrepreneurs?” with Cynthia Kinnan (Tufts University)
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?
#Episode 6: “Eat Widely, Vote Wisely? Lessons from a Campaign Against Vote-Buying in Uganda” with Benjamin Marx (Sciences-Po)
We estimate the effects of one of the largest anti-vote-buying campaigns ever studied — with half a million voters exposed across 1427 villages—in Uganda’s 2016 elections. Working with civil society organizations, we designed the study to estimate how voters and candidates responded to their campaign in treatment and spillover.
#Episode 5: “Medical Worker Migration and Origin-Country Human Capital: Evidence from U.S. Visa Policy” with Caroline Theoharides (Amherst College)
We exploit changes in U.S. visa policies for nurses to measure brain drain versus gain. Combining data on all migrant departures and postsecondary institutions in the Philippines, we show that nursing enrollment and graduation increased substantially in response to greater U.S. demand for nurses.
#Episode 4: “Flexible Microcredit: Effects on Loan Repayment and Social Pressure”, with Lisa Spantig (University of Essex)
Flexible repayment schedules allow borrowers to invest in profitable yet risky projects, but practitioners fear they erode repayment morale. We study repayment choices in rigid and flexible loan contracts that allow discretion in repayment timing.
#Episode 3: "Does management matter for development?”, with Nick Bloom (University of Stanford)
We revisited Indian weaving firms nine years after a randomized experiment that changed their management practices. While about half of the practices adopted in the original experimental plants had been dropped, there was still a large and significant gap in practices between the treatment and control plants.
#Episode 2: “Improving Business Practices and the Boundary of the Entrepreneur: A Randomized Experiment Comparing Training, Consulting, Insourcing and Outsourcing”, with David McKenzie (World Bank)
Many small firms lack the finance and marketing skills needed for firm growth. The standard approach in many development programs has been to attempt to train the entrepreneur to develop these skills, through business training sessions or personalized consulting services.
#Episode 1: “Psychological and Material Determinants of Economic Investments”, with Kate Orkin (University of Oxford)
There is growing evidence that certain psychological preconditions determine the degree to which humans, including the poor in low-income countries, seize untapped opportunities. Even when material constraints are eased, psychological constraints may remain which prevent people taking actions that might alter their socio-economic position.
