Listen here to the third 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. Alex Armand, resident member of NOVAFRICA and Assistant Professor at Nova SBE, is the coordinator of this Podcast.
Join us!
#Episode 11: “Goals for Development: Experimental Evidence from Cassava Processors in Ghana”, with Patricio Dalton, (Tilburg University).
Workers’ motivation is a constraint for small firm growth in low-income countries. In this paper we test whether the practice of setting daily production goals can improve workers’ performance in informal agricultural small firms in Ghana.
#Episode 10: “The Management of the Pandemic and its Effects on Trust and Accountability”, with Monica Martinez-Bravo, (Center for Monetary and Financial Studies).
The management of the COVID-19 pandemic represented one of the greatest challenges that policymakers had to face in recent history. The rapidly changing reality and directives may have contributed to a popular perception of erratic management of governments in many countries.
#Episode 9: “Predicting conflict”, with Christopher Rauh, (University of Cambridge)
In this project we propose a framework to tackle conflict prevention, an issue which has received interest in several policy areas. A key challenge of conflict forecasting for prevention is that outbreaks of conflict in previously peaceful countries are rare events and therefore hard to predict.
#Episode 8: “Big Loans to Small Businesses: Predicting Winners and Losers in an Entrepreneurial Lending Experiment”, with Gharad Bryan (London School of Economics)
We experimentally study the impact of substantially larger enterprise loans, in collaboration with an Egyptian lender. Larger loans generate small average impacts, but machine learning using psychometric data reveals dramatic heterogeneity.
#Episode 7: “Asymmetry in Civic Information: An Experiment on Tax Participation among Informal Firms in To”, with Moussa Blimpo (World Bank)
In low-income countries, a substantial wedge exists between firms’ knowledge of their tax obligations and what is required by law, especially for micro enterprises in the informal sector.
#Episode 6: “Household Food Consumption Responses to Terrorism: evidence from high frequency in-home-scanner data”, with Elena Stancanelli (Paris School of Economics)
This paper adds to the scant literature on the impact of terrorism on consumer behavior by focusing, for the first time, on goods that are especially sensitive to hormonal and brain stress neurocircuitry, such as sugar-and fat-rich foods, which have additive components, lead to obesity and other negative health outcomes.
#Episode 5: “Benchmarking a Child Nutrition Program Against Cash: Evidence from Rwanda”, with Andrew Zeitlin (Georgetown University)
We present the results of a study designed to ‘benchmark’ a major USAID-funded child malnutrition program against what would have occurred if the cost of the program had simply been disbursed directly to beneficiaries to spend as they see fit.
#Episode 4: “Optimal Assignment of Bureaucrats: Evidence from Randomly Assigned Tax Collectors in the DRC”, with Jonathan Weigel (London School of Economics)
The assignment of workers to tasks and teams is a key margin of firm productivity and a potential source of state effectiveness. This paper investigates whether a low-capacity state can increase its tax revenue through the optimal assignment of its tax collectors. We study the two-stage random assignment of property tax collectors (i) into teams and (ii) to neighborhoods in a large Congolese city.
#Episode 3: “Political Influences on Police Responses to Crime”, with Katherine Vyborny (Duke University)
We investigate how political influences affect the response to crime using microdata from over 1 million complaints logged by police in Lahore, Pakistan. We test how political alignment with the party in power affects the recording of and response to crime.
#Episode 2: “Entrenched Political Dynasties and Development under Competitive Clientelism: Evidence from Pakistan”, with Jean Philippe Platteau (Namur University)
How political dynasties affect economic development in the context of poor countries is a moot question. Theoretical predictions do not yield a clear answer and empirical studies, albeit recently on the increase, remain few.
#Episode 1: “Two Sides of Gender: Sex, Power, and Adolescence” with Manisha Shah (UCLA)
Adolescents in Sub-Saharan Africa have among the highest rates of unplanned pregnancy and intimate partner violence (IPV) across the globe. We implement a randomized controlled trial offering females access to free contraceptives.
