Suchergebnisse

Empoderar a las mujeres es un objetivo político que ha despertado mucho interés por parte de los responsables políticos del mundo en desarrollo en los últimos años, aunque se sabe poco sobre las formas eficaces de promoverlo de forma sostenible. La mayoría de las intervenciones existentes no abordan la naturaleza multidimensional del empoderamiento. Utilizando un diseño de emparejamiento doble para construir el marco muestral y estimar los efectos causales, evalúo el impacto a largo plazo de una intervención política multifacética diseñada para mejorar el empoderamiento de las mujeres en la región atlántica de Colombia. Esta intervención proporcionó información sobre los derechos de la mujer, habilidades sociales y formación profesional, capital semilla y tutoría simultáneamente. Encuentro que esta intervención tiene resultados mixtos: mejoras en los ingresos y otras dimensiones económicas junto con grandes efectos de capital político y social, pero impactos limitados o nulos en el conocimiento de los derechos de las mujeres y el control sobre el propio cuerpo. Usando un experimento de lista, incluso encuentro un aumento en la probabilidad de violencia dentro del hogar. Los resultados resaltan la importancia de abordar el carácter multidimensional del empoderamiento de las mujeres en las innovaciones políticas diseñadas para fomentarlo, incorporando a los hombres en estos esfuerzos. ; Empowering women is a policy goal that has received a lot of interest by policy-makers in the developing world in recent years, yet little is known about effective ways to promote it sustainably. Most existing interventions fail to address the multidimensional nature of empowerment. Using a double matching design to construct the sampling frame and to estimate causal effects, I evaluate the long-term impact of a multifaceted policy intervention designed to improve women's empowerment in the Atlantic region in Colombia. This intervention provided information about women's rights, soft-skills and vocational training, seed capital, and mentoring simultaneously. I find that this intervention has mixed results: improvements in incomes and other economic dimensions along with large political and social capital effects, but limited or null impacts on women's rights knowledge and control over one's body. Using a list experiment, I even find an increase in the likelihood of intra-household violence. The results highlight the importance of addressing women's empowerment multidimensional nature in policy innovations designed to foster it, incorporating men in these efforts.

El presente trabajo se propone superar algunas de estas limitaciones mediante un enfoque creíble para estimar el efecto causal de cambios en los ingresos fiscales de las municipalidades sobre el comportamiento corrupto de sus funcionarios públicos en su interacción con los ciudadanos. Para superar los problemas de información existentes, se tomará ventaja del módulo de gobernabilidad incluido en la Encuesta Nacional de Hogares (ENAHO), el cual incluye un conjunto completo de preguntas relacionadas con el pago de sobornos para el período 2002-20063. Una ventaja importante de este conjunto de datos es que contiene información sobre la interacción de los miembros del hogar con funcionarios públicos, así como la solicitud de sobornos por parte de estos últimos.

AbstractWe study the role of natural resource windfalls in explaining the technical efficiency of public expenditure. Using a rich dataset of expenditure and public good provision for 1836 municipalities in Peru for the period 2001–2010, we estimate a nonmonotonic relationship between the efficiency of public good provision and the level of natural resource transfers. Local governments that were extremely favored by the boom in mineral prices were more efficient in using fiscal windfalls, whereas those that only benefited from modest transfers were more inefficient. These results can be explained by the increase in political competition associated with the boom. However, the fact that increases in efficiency were related to reductions in public good provision casts doubts on the beneficial effects of political competition in promoting efficiency.

We study the role of natural resource windfalls in explaining the efficiency of public expenditures. Using a rich dataset of expenditures and public good provision for 1,836 municipalities in Peru for period 2001-2010, we estimate a non-monotonic relationship between the efficiency of public good provision and the level of natural resource transfers. Local governments that were extremely favored by the boom of mineral prices were more efficient in using fiscal windfalls whereas those benefited with modest transfers were more inefficient. These results can be explained by the increase in political competition associated with the boom. However, the fact that increases in efficiency were related to reductions in public good provision casts doubts about the beneficial effects of political competition in promoting efficiency.

Is it possible to revert the resource curse through institutional reform? Evidence suggests that there is a negative relationship between abundance of natural resources and economic growth, political stability, democracy, and peace. However, evidence illustrating how institutional reform can revert this situation is scarce. In this paper, we exploit an institutional reform that took place in Colombia in 2011. We evaluate the effects of the reform to the royalties system, that modified the allocation rule of these rents but also introduced important changes in terms of control and accountability, on the living standards of Colombian households. We instrument municipality-level allocations of royalties using international variations in the price of oil, and we find that the reform had important effects on several household welfare indicators. We find positive impacts on important dimensions, such as poverty, income, employment, housing conditions, health, and education, among others. Results are mixed or null in other areas, such as formality or employment in the service sector. We test for different channels explaining these effects, which include theories of state capacity, competition for resources, and increased control and accountability. Our evidence supports the state capacity mechanism.

We study how non-monetary incentives, motivated by recent advances in behavioral economics, affect civil servant performance in a context where state capacity is weak. We collaborated with a government agency in Peru to experimentally vary the content of text messages targeted to civil servants in charge of a school maintenance program. These messages incorporate behavioral insights in dimensions related to information provision, social norms, and weak forms of monitoring and auditing. We find that these messages are a very cost-effective strategy to enforce compliance with national policies among civil servants. We further study the role of social norms and the salience of social benefits in a follow-up experiment and explore the external validity of our original results by implementing a related experiment with civil servants from a different national program. The findings of these new experiments support our original results and provide additional insights regarding the context in which these incentives may work. Our results highlight the importance of carefully designed non-monetary incentives as a tool to improve civil servant performance when the state lacks institutional mechanisms to enforce compliance.

How do resource booms affect human capital accumulation? We exploit time and spatial variation generated by the commodity boom across local governments in Peru to measure the effect of natural resources on human capital formation. We explore the effect of both mining production and tax revenues on test scores, finding a substantial and statistically significant effect for the latter. Transfers to local governments from mining tax revenues are linked to an increase in math test scores of around 0.23 standard deviations. We find that the hiring of permanent teachers as well as the increases in parental employment and improvements in health outcomes of adults and children are plausible mechanisms for such large effect on learning. These findings suggest that redistributive policies could facilitate the accumulation of human capital in resource abundant developing countries as a way to avoid the natural resources curse.

We exploit time and spatial variation generated by the commodities boom to measure the effect of natural resources on human capital formation in Peru, a country with low governance indicators. Combining test scores from over two million students and district-level administrative data on mining production and the redistribution of mining taxes to local governments, we find no effect from production. However, redistribution of mining taxes increases math test scores by 0.23 standard deviations. We identify the improvements in the quality of teachers and in school infrastructure, together with increases in adult employment and health outcomes of adults and children, as key mechanisms from the redistribution. Policy implications for the avoidance of the natural resource curse are discussed.