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Colonial powers typically organized economic activity in the colonies to maximize their economic returns. While the literature has emphasized long-run negative economic impacts via institutional quality, the changes in economic organization implemented to spur production historically could also directly influence economic organization in the long-run, exerting countervailing effects. We examine these in the context of the Dutch Cultivation System, the integrated industrial and agricultural system for producing sugar that formed the core of the Dutch colonial enterprise in 19th century Java. We show that areas close to where the Dutch established sugar factories in the mid-19th century are today more industrialized, have better infrastructure, are more educated, and are richer than nearby counterfactual locations that would have been similarly suitable for colonial sugar factories. We also show, using a spatial regression discontinuity design on the catchment areas around each factory, that villages forced to grow sugar cane have more village-owned land and also have more schools and substantially higher education levels, both historically and today. The results suggest that the economic structures implemented by colonizers to facilitate production can continue to promote economic activity in the long run, and we discuss the contexts where such effects are most likely to be important.

Background: The paucity of public health messages that directly address communities of color might contribute to racial and ethnic disparities in knowledge and behavior related to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Objective: To determine whether physician-delivered prevention messages affect knowledge and information-seeking behavior of Black and Latinx individuals and whether this differs according to the race/ethnicity of the physician and tailored content. Design: Randomized controlled trial. (Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT04371419; American Economic Association RCT Registry, AEARCTR-0005789) Setting: United States, 13 May 2020 to 26 May 2020. Participants: 14 267 self-identified Black or Latinx adults recruited via Lucid survey platform. Intervention: Participants viewed 3 video messages regarding COVID-19 that varied by physician race/ethnicity, acknowledgment of racism/inequality, and community perceptions of mask wearing. Measurements: Knowledge gaps (number of errors on 7 facts on COVID-19 symptoms and prevention) and information-seeking behavior (number of web links demanded out of 10 proposed). Results: 7174 Black (61.3%) and 4520 Latinx (38.7%) participants were included in the analysis. The intervention reduced the knowledge gap incidence from 0.085 to 0.065 (incidence rate ratio [IRR], 0.737 [95% CI, 0.600 to 0.874]) but did not significantly change information-seeking incidence. For Black participants, messages from race/ethnicity-concordant physicians increased information-seeking incidence from 0.329 (for discordant physicians) to 0.357 (IRR, 1.085 [CI, 1.026 to 1.145]). Limitations: Participants' behavior was not directly observed, outcomes were measured immediately postintervention in May 2020, and online recruitment may not be representative. Conclusion: Physician-delivered messages increased knowledge of COVID-19 symptoms and prevention methods for Black and Latinx respondents. The desire for additional information increased with race-concordant messages for Black but not Latinx respondents. Other tailoring of the content did not make a significant difference., National Science Foundation (Award 2029880)

Celebrity endorsements are often sought to influence public opinion. We ask whether celebrity endorsement per se has an effect beyond the fact that their statements are seen by many, and whether on net their statements actually lead people to change their beliefs. To do so, we conducted a nationwide Twitter experiment in Indonesia with 46 high-profile celebrities and organizations, with a total of 7.8 million followers, who agreed to let us randomly tweet or retweet content promoting immunization from their accounts. Our design exploits the structure of what information is passed on along a retweet chain on Twitter to parse reach versus endorsement effects. Endorsements matter: tweets that users can identify as being originated by a celebrity are far more likely to be liked or retweeted by users than similar tweets seen by the same users but without the celebrities' imprimatur. By contrast, explicitly citing sources in the tweets actually reduces diffusion. By randomizing which celebrities tweeted when, we find suggestive evidence that overall exposure to the campaign may influence beliefs about vaccination and knowledge of immunization-seeking behavior by one's network. Taken together, the findings suggest an important role for celebrity endorsement., Comment: 55 pages, 13 tables, 6 figures

Many people believe that social protection generally involves rich countries aiding those that are poor. Aid is important, particularly for extremely poor countries. Bad shocks can quickly devolve into humanitarian disasters and promote conflict in fragile states, as seen with the current famine in South Sudan, the incipient famine and cholera in Yemen, and the recent Ebola outbreak in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.

Tropical deforestation is one of the major drivers of climate change. Much of this loss is due to illegal logging. Unlike forests in the Congo basin and South-East Asia, the world’s largest tropical forest - the Amazon - has experienced a dramatic slowing in rates of deforestation over the last decade. The bulk of the Amazon is located in Brazil which has introduced a raft of policies to reduce illegal logging in recent years. We use Brazil’s border with its neighbors to identify the impact of Brazilian policies on deforestation. Because forests are a fixed resource and geography and infrastructure vary continuously over the border we can compare annual forest loss on either side of the border to tease out the impact of national forest policies from other drivers of deforestation. To do this we employ a satellite-derived data set that measures forest cover at a 30 x 30 meter resolution for the entire Amazon area across the 2000-2014 period. Our data reveals a sharp discontinuity at the border – in 2000 Amazonian pixels on the Brazilian side of the border are more likely to have been deforested and between 2001 and 2005 annual forest loss in Brazil was around four times the rate on the other side of the border. However, in 2006, just after the Brazilian government introduced a raft of policies to curtail illegal logging, these differences disappear and Brazilian rates of forest loss fall to those observed across the border. These results demonstrate the power of the state to affect whether or not natural resources are conserved or exploited even in the furthest reaches of the Amazonian jungle.

Redistribution programs in developing countries often “leak” because local officials do not implement programs as the central government intends. We study one approach to reducing leakage. In an experi- ment in over 550 villages, we test whether mailing cards with program information to targeted beneficiaries increases the subsidy they re- ceive from a subsidized rice program. On net, beneficiaries received 26 percent more subsidy in card villages. Ineligible households re- ceived no less, so this represents substantially lower leakage.

This article tests whether firm growth reduces corruption, using data from over 10,000 Vietnamese firms. We employ instrumental variables based on growth in a firm's industry in other provinces within Vietnam and in China. We find that firm growth reduces bribes as a share of revenues. We propose a mechanism for this effect whereby government officials’ decisions about bribes are modulated by inter-jurisdictional competition. This mechanism also implies that growth reduces bribery more for more mobile firms; consistent with this prediction, we find a larger effect for firms with transferable rights to their land or operations in multiple provinces., National Science Foundation (U.S.)

Targeted transfer programs for poor citizens have become increasingly common in the developing world. Yet, a common concern among policy-makers and citizens is that such programs tend to discourage work. We re-analyze the data from seven randomized controlled trials of government-run cash transfer programs in six developing countries throughout the world, and find no systematic evidence that cash transfer programs discourage work.

Performance pay for tax collectors has the potential to raise revenues, but might come at a cost if it increases the bargaining power of tax collectors vis-à-vis taxpayers. We report the first large-scale field experiment on these issues, where we experimentally allocated 482 property tax units in Punjab, Pakistan, into one of three performance pay schemes or a control. After two years, incentivized units had 9.4 log points higher revenue than controls, which translates to a 46% higher growth rate. The scheme that rewarded purely on revenue did best, increasing revenue by 12.9 log points (64% higher growth rate), with little penalty for customer satisfaction and assessment accuracy compared to the two other schemes that explicitly also rewarded these dimensions. The revenue gains accrue from a small number of properties becoming taxed at their true value, which is substantially more than they had been taxed at previously. The majority of properties in incentivized areas in fact pay no more taxes, but instead report higher bribes. The results are consistent with a collusive setting in which performance pay increases collectors’ bargaining power over taxpayers, who have to either pay higher bribes to avoid being reassessed or pay substantially higher taxes if collusion breaks down.

Tropical deforestation accounts for almost one-fifth of greenhouse gas emissions and threatens the world’s most diverse ecosystems. Much of this deforestation is driven by illegal logging. We use novel satellite data that tracks annual deforestation across eight years of Indonesian institutional change to examine how local officials’ incentives affect deforestation. Increases in the number of political jurisdictions lead to increased deforestation and lower timber prices, consistent with Cournot competition between jurisdictions. Illegal logging and local oil and gas rents are short-run substitutes, but this effect disappears over time with political turnover. The results illustrate how local officials’ incentives affect deforestation and show how standard economic theories can explain illegal behavior., United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Land Cover and Land Use Change and MEASURES programs, grant NNG06GD95G), United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Land Cover and Land Use Change and MEASURES programs, grant NNX08AP33A)

Recent years have seen a remarkable expansion in economists' ability to measure corruption. This in turn has led to a new generation of well-identified, microeconomic studies. We review the evidence on corruption in developing countries in light of these recent advances, focusing on three questions: how much corruption is there, what are the efficiency consequences of corruption, and what determines the level of corruption? We find robust evidence that corruption responds to standard economic incentive theory but also that the effects of anticorruption policies often attenuate as officials find alternate strategies to pursue rents., Hewlett-Packard Company, Great Britain. Dept. for International Development, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (Governance Initiative)

This paper uses historical fluctuations in temperature within countries to identify its effects on aggregate economic outcomes. We find three primary results. First, higher temperatures substantially reduce economic growth in poor countries. Second, higher temperatures may reduce growth rates, not just the level of output. Third, higher temperatures have wide-ranging effects, reducing agricultural output, industrial output, and political stability. These findings inform debates over climate's role in economic development and suggest the possibility of substantial negative impacts of higher temperatures on poor countries. (JEL E23, O13, Q54, Q56)