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This dissertation consists of three empirical essays in development economics. In the first essay, I examine the impact of a health insurance scheme called the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY), launched in 2008 in India, on schooling decisions and gender differences in education. At the outset, it is not entirely obvious as to whether health insurance would benefit education or have a detrimental impact. Healthier children could either mean greater future economic returns from schooling or greater value as child labour. More specifically, the questions I seek to answer are twofold: (1) Does access to a health insurance scheme designed for the poor have an impact on school expenditure decisions of households? (2) Does it affect school enrollment of boys and girls within the household? Employing difference-in-differences and triple differences approaches, I find that access to RSBY is beneficial for child education as school expenditure increases by 20 to 28 percent after the treatment. Additionally, I find RSBY to be relatively more advantageous to girls as it reduces the existing gender gap in school enrollment by 1/3rds. From a policy perspective, it is interesting to see that a health insurance scheme has unintended positive consequences not only on household school expenditure but also on parental responses within household in terms of enrollments of boys versus girls. Such responses should ideally be considered when designing policies to remedy any disadvantages among children, since parents can eliminate these effects by aiming at equitable child human capital formation within the family. In the second essay, I study the impact of India's Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MG-NREGA) on the pattern of household consumption behaviour. NREGA, passed in 2005, created the world's largest public works programme under a statutory framework, legally guaranteeing hundred days of employment. Guaranteeing such employment opportunities can directly affect intra-household decisions through a change in total resources but also allocation of resources. Using the phase wise roll-out of NREGA to districts and employing a difference-in-differences approach, I find a shift in discretionary spending towards `wiser' consumption choices like school expenditure and durable goods, away from `wasteful' expenditure like entertainment. These effects are broadly suggestive of an increase in female bargaining power since men and women are seen to have systematically different consumption preferences and spending patterns. I also find the shifts in consumption patterns to be amplified in regions with higher share of women employed through NREGA; in states that guarantee employment at higher minimum wages; and in rice growing regions of India, where females are traditionally more intensively involved in production. This dissertation also delves into the relationship between human capital formation and socio-economic conditions in developing countries. To this effect, in the third essay, I evaluate the impact of quality of education on violence and crime, using data from Colombia, a country with a long standing history of violence and conflict. Over the long run, successful efforts to improve school quality would imply an extraordinary rate of return, and may be a tool for social mobility and development. I exploit geographic and time variation at the municipality level and use an Instrumental Variable approach to identify this effect. The instruments are based on transfer of funds from the central government to municipalities for investments in education. I find that better education quality, measured by student test scores on a mandatory school-exit examination, has a significant and negative impact on the intensity of crime. A 1 standard deviation increase in test scores leads to a decline of 6.2 standard deviations in property crimes. These effects are perhaps indicative of an 'opportunity cost effect' of education. I also find that better education quality reduces violent crimes as well as presence of illegal armed groups suggesting a 'pacifying effect' of education.

Defence date: 12 October 2018 ; Examining Board: Prof. Jérôme Adda, European University Institute and Bocconi University (Supervisor); Prof. Michèle Belot, European University Institute; Prof. Noam Yuchtman, UC-Berkeley; Prof. Eliana La Ferrara, Bocconi University ; This dissertation studies the nexus between weak institutions, epidemic disease and conflict. In the first chapter I provide descriptive evidence of an empirical pattern found across countries that introduces the two main chapters of the dissertation. Countries with higher incidence of disease outbreaks are more likely to exhibit civil violence, conditional on population and income. This effect varies, however, with institutions and health expenditure. The relationship disappears in countries with above average political rights or above average civil liberties. There is some evidence that health investments last year also diminish the relationship between disease outbreaks this year and civil violence next year. This descriptive evidence suggests that while disease outbreaks are associated with social unrest, this depends on the particular institutions at hand and there is scope for public policy interventions that halt both the burden of disease and civil conflict. The second chapter, co-authored with Elena Esposito, seeks to identify the causal impact of a rapidly spreading epidemic on civil violence in the context of the largest Ebola outbreak in history, in Western Africa. The identification strategy relies on the epidemiological features of the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD). We exploit the dynamics of the disease and weekly frequency data at the local level to analyze the effect of new infections on riots, protests and violence against institutional authorities. The impacts are large, localized and tied to containment efforts. The results suggest that state coercion and demand for public goods are mechanisms fueling conflict. Containing the epidemic requires a change in cultural practices which leads to social unrest, especially for groups facing higher costs of cultural adaptation, low trust in institutional authorities and depending on the response of the state. This further deepens mistrust in institutions after the epidemic, especially among these communities. In the third and last chapter I study the impact of local radios on the spread of a major epidemic in the context of the Ebola outbreak in Guinea in 2014-16. This is a unique setting to explore the role of media as a coordination device to change cultural norms in a high stakes environment. Using original data collected in Guinea and a quasi-experimental design based on exogenous variation in radio signal reception by distinct media outlets, combined with the precise timing of distinct information campaigns about Ebola, I seek to identify the effect of local radios on the spread of the disease, social resistance and treatment uptake. The results show that sustained access to a local radio program in forming about protective measures, encouraging treatment, addressing Ebola rumors and new burial practices, lowered social resistance behavior, increased treatment uptake and led to a drop in infected cases seven months after the start of the campaign. Access to local radios affected cultural norms, such as burial practices, and facilitated technological adoption, but there is no evidence of impacts on private actions, such as chlorine use. ; -- 1 Epidemic Disease and Conflict: Stylized facts -- 1.1 Introduction -- 1.2 Data -- 1.3 Correlates of Civil Conflict -- 1.4 Event study -- 1.5 Conclusion -- 2 Epidemics and Conflict: Evidence from the Ebola outbreak in Western Africa -- 2.1 Introduction -- 2.2 Background -- 2.3 Data -- 2.4 Empirical strategy -- 2.4.1 Epidemic spread and civil violence -- 2.4.2 Drivers of civil violence -- 2.4.3 Long-run Impacts on Trust -- 2.4.4 Robustness checks -- 2.5 Conclusion -- 3 Local Media and the Spread of Ebola: Evidence from Guinea -- 3.1 Introduction -- 3.2 Background -- 3.3 Conceptual framework -- 3.4 Data -- 3.5 Empirical Strategy -- 3.5.1 Local radios and the spread of Ebola -- 3.5.2 Mechanisms -- 3.5.3 Robustness and validity checks -- 3.6 Conclusion -- Bibliography

I examine replications of empirical papers in development economics published in the top-5 and next-5 general interest journals between the years 2000 through 2015. Of the 1,138 empirical papers, 71 papers (6.2 percent) were replicated in another published paper or working paper. The majority (77.5 percent) of replications involved reanalysis of the data using different econometric specifications to assess robustness. The strongest predictor of whether a paper is replicated or not is the paper's Google Scholar citation count, followed by year of publication. Papers based on randomized control trials (RCTs) appear to be replicated at a higher rate (12.5 percent).

[eng] Development economics seeks to provide evidence to improve life quality standards of the societies. This thesis contributes to this field with a multidisciplinary research on health, environmental and crime economics. This essay is composed of 3 academic papers that analyze actual social problems that have received little attention by policy makers and scholars, and that are negatively affecting newborns health and women wellbeing, in the context of Ecuador. The pivotal economic literature has shown the relevance of studying the impact of different types of externalities on health at birth and infant health (Barker, 1995; Almond et al., 2005; Black et al., 2007; Almond and Currie, 2011; Almond, Currie, and Duque, 2018). Social problems such as insecurity or environment pollution play a fundamental role in the newborns' growing environment. Nowadays, there is a wide evidence on the consequences that adverse environmental externalities received during intra-uterine growth generate in the future development and living conditions of the population, affecting relevant aspects like their cognitive ability, psychological and personality traits, scholarity, and wages (Currie and Vogl, 2013; Bharadwaj et al., 2013; Almond, Currie, and Duque, 2018). Similarly, there is a growing empirical evidence on the negative consequences of insecurity and crime on infant cognitive capacity and human capital formation (Duque, 2017; Sharkey et al., 2012). Moreover, crime generates psychological stress to those individuals who are directly or indirectly exposed to it (Aizer, 2016; Koppensteiner and Manacorda, 2016; Currie et al., 2020). This thesis contributes to this literature examining three relevant problems that affects the population of Ecuador: environmental pollution due to the use of pesticides in agriculture; maternal stress due to violent crimes, and violence against women. Moreover, each chapter provides strong evidence to address future public policy design. The second chapter of the thesis examines the effects of the use of pesticides in the banana plantations of Ecuador on newborns' health outcomes. The results drawn from this research reveal that the exposure to the intensive use of pesticides leads to a deficit in the birth weight when the exposure occurs during the first trimester of gestation. Moreover, exposure to intensive use of pesticides during the last gestation stage increases the likelihood of low birth weight and low Apgar score at first minute. The third chapter of the thesis reveals the existence of a retaliation effect after a reform of the penal code in 2014 that increased the penalties for gender-related violence and that introduce the femicide penalty type. I show that this legislative reform, and its enforcement, led to a (temporally) increase in the women victimization rates. The fourth chapter of this thesis examines the effects of the maternal stress generated by violent crimes on newborns' health outcomes. The results obtained from this research reveal that mothers' indirect exposure to homicides during pregnancy causes a deficit in the birth weight, which is especially important when this exposure occurs during the first trimester of gestation. Moreover, I demonstrate that mothers' past exposure to violent crimes attenuates the effects of homicides during pregnancy. Furthermore, the exposure to homicides during the last gestation term reduces gestation length and the Apgar score at the first minute.

This dissertation consists of three self-contained chapters on development economics. The dissertation is focused primarily on one of the largest input subsidy program in the world in terms of how beneficiaries are whether households hide income. As a separate project, I also look at the impact of star students on their siblings test scores in the context of a Peruvian high-achievers national boarding school. In the first chapter, entitled "Measuring Sensitive Questions: Income Hiding and Subsidy Allocation ", I document the extent to which villagers hide income from local leaders and other villagers as a strategic behavior in the context of a large scale agricultural subsidy in Malawi (FISP). My main contribution is methodological. I use three different measures of income hiding to asses the extent of this practice: direct questions, list randomization, and, willingness to pay to hide income. I find that income hiding prevalence is between 17 to 27 percent depending on the measure employed. Also, I find that villagers hide income from different people and the three most common categories are village headmen (16%), neighbors (16%), and, friends (15%). The second chapter, entitled "Decentralization and Efficiency of Subsidy Targeting: Evidence from Chiefs in Rural Malawi", is joint work with Pascaline Dupas (Stanford) and, Jonathan Robinson (UCSC). We study the trade off between centralized and decentralized subsidy targeting in the context of two large-scale subsidy programs in Malawi (for agricultural inputs and food). Decentralized targeting is carried by traditional leaders ("chiefs") who are asked to target the needy. Using high-frequency household panel data on neediness and shocks, we find that nepotism exists but has only limited mistargeting consequences. Importantly, we find that chiefs target households with higher returns to farm inputs, generating an allocation that is more productively efficient than what could be achieved through a a proxy means test used for centralized targeting. This could be welfare improving, since within-village redistribution is common in the study setting.The third chapter, entitled "On the Peer Effects of Star Students", is joint work with Manuel Barron (assistant professor at Universidad del Pacifico), and, Gabriela Cuadra (Ph.D. Student, UCSC). We estimate the effect that star students have on their siblings' learning outcomes, measured by their high school grade point average (GPA) and their math grades. To this end, we couple administrative school data on grades with an unusual natural experiment in Peru that generates exogenous variation in the presence of star students at home. We find that star students increase their siblings' GPA by 0.33 standard deviations and their math grades by 0.22 standard deviations. The effect size is inversely related to number of siblings, suggesting that the remaining siblings act as substitutes for the star student.

This dissertation consists of three chapters, which study issues of development within the context of China and India. The first two study the causes and consequences of one of the most important historical events in 20-th century Chinese history, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. The third chapter reports findings from a field experiment focused on studying the role of self control in chronic illness management. In Chapter 1, I investigate the determinants of political violence during the Cultural Revolution in rural China. With its purported goals of tackling inequality and forestalling a ``capitalist restoration,'' the decade of 1966-1976 witnessed widespread violence, much of it directed towards the educated elite. Using a unique county-level dataset on collective killings, coupled with original economic data collected from archives of regional gazetteers, I investigate the reasons why some regions experienced high levels of violence, while others did not. Empirical results show that the extent of violence is positively correlated with male/female gender ratio, as well as agricultural output at the time of conflict, while being negatively correlated with ethnoliguistic fractionalization. In Chapter 2, I investigate the economic legacies of the Cultural Revolution in rural China. Building on the work from Chapter 1, I study the extent to which this historic event yielded different trajectories of development across regions in China. To address endogeneity concerns, I control for pre-revolution outcomes and exploit transitory shocks to agricultural income during the period of violence as an instrument. Empirical results show that more revolutionary regions were slower to industrialize, had lower levels of education and per-capita output. These effects are large in magnitude, detectable more than thirty years later, and in some cases begin to decline at longer time horizons. Trust-based informal lending appears to have been adversely affected, while the timing of policy reforms does not.In Chapter 3, we study the issue of self control in the context of chronic illness management. In particular, we construct a simple model of preventive health behavior under present-biased time preferences, and show how beliefs about future time preferences (sophistication, partial naivete, and perfect naivete) affect how agents are predicted to use, under-use or misuse different types of commitment contracts. We propose a type of commitment contract that has the potential to benefit not just sophisticated agents, but also naifs. We conduct a field experiment in northern India, to evaluate the effectiveness of these contracts at increasing the share of patients who actively manage their hypertension by visiting a doctor regularly. Preliminary analysis reveals (i) the commitment contracts have a meaningful impact on preventive care utilization and (ii) that even with commitment contracts preventive health care utilization could still be substantially increased.

This thesis is motivated by research questions faced by policy makers in developing country governments and donor agencies. In particular, it deals with the appropriate measurement of foreign aid and its possibly pernicious effects in a large cross-section of countries, and explores the microeconomic effects of a distinct macroeconomic policy innovation in Vietnam. While the nature of economic research means the contributions collected here engage with specific questions, those questions interact with a wider body of literature that is relevant to the practice and theory of development policy. ; TARA (Trinity?s Access to Research Archive) has a robust takedown policy. Please contact us if you have any concerns: rssadmin@tcd.ie