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I study the impact of industrial policy on industrial development by considering a canonical intervention. Following a political crisis, South Korea dramatically altered its development strategy with a sector-specific industrial policy: the Heavy and Chemical Industry (HCI) drive, 1973-1979. With newly assembled data, I use the sharp introduction and withdrawal of industrial policies to study the impacts of industrial policy---during and after the intervention period. I show (1) HCI promoted the expansion and dynamic comparative advantage of directly targeted industries. (2) Using variation in exposure to policies through the input-output network, I show HCI indirectly benefited downstream users of targeted intermediates. (3) I find direct and indirect benefits of HCI persisted even after the end of HCI, following the 1979 assassination of the president. These effects include the eventual development of directly targeted exporters and their downstream counterparts. Together, my findings suggest that the temporary drive shifted Korean manufacturing into more advanced markets and created durable industrial change. These findings clarify lessons drawn from South Korea and the East Asian growth miracle. Current Version: June 2022 [First Draft: October 2016]

On March 24, 2020, the Government of India announced a 21-day national lockdown that has since been extended to May 31, 2020. The lockdown left urban food markets in disarray with severe supply bottlenecks and restrictions on doing business. At a time when food prices in India were declining consistently, supply disruptions consequent to the lockdown have reversed the trend on average. Based on an analysis of publicly available data on wholesale and retail prices for 22 commodities from 114 Centres, we find that prices have increased since the lockdown, as of August 1, 2020. There is significant diversity across commodities and geographies that mask aggregate figures. Average price increases were to the tune of over 6% for several pulses, over 3.5% for most edible oils, 15% for potato 28% for tomato in the four weeks post-lockdown compared to prices during the four weeks preceding the lockdown. Price of meat and fish too have registered large increases. Price wedge between retail and wholesale prices increased as did spatial dispersion, both signifying friction in supply chains. We find that smaller cities have seen a much higher increase in prices with some seeing a rise in retail food prices by as much as 20%. Three rounds of surveys, conducted between April and July, of food retailers in 14 Indian cities reveal serious operational challenges. These include, among others, transport and labor shortages, police harassment and social discrimination. At the same time, several innovative arrangements and adaptations have evolved as well suggesting resilience. The paper reviews these aspects and outlines some lessons for food policy in emerging economies.

We conducted an audit experiment to examine whether street vendors in Bogotá (Colombia) exert price discrimination based on buyers’ attributes, such as gender and nationality, and based on product characteristics, such as the increasing marginal valuation of items needed to complete a collection. We exploited the seasonal demand for album stickers related to the FIFA World Cup Russia 2018. In our within-subjects design, experimenters carried out in-person audits and quoted a pre-determined list of missing stickers. They interacted with 59 sticker vendors located in five geographic clusters and collected 287 vendor–buyer interactions. We find that prices quoted to foreign buyers are higher than prices quoted to Colombian buyers. By contrast, we do neither find evidence supporting direct gender-based discrimination, nor that vendors charge a higher price per sticker when the list of missing stickers is shorter. We complement the study with a qualitative analysis based on interviews that reveal vendors’ pricing strategies, their awareness of price discrimination, and the trade of counterfeits. The qualitative results suggest that price discrimination appears to be unconscious.

We study a simple savings scheme that allows workers to defer receipt of part of their wages for three months at zero interest. The scheme significantly increases savings during the deferral period, leading to higher post-disbursement spending on lumpy goods. Two years later, after two additional rounds of the savings scheme, we find that treated workers have made permanent improvements to their homes. The popularity of the scheme implies a lack of good alternative savings options. The results of a follow-up experiment suggest that demand for the scheme is partly due to its ability to address self-control issues. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

We exploit changes in U.S. visa policies for nurses to measure the origin-country human capital response to international migration opportunities. 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. The supply of nursing programs expanded. Nurse quality, measured by licensure exam pass rates, declined. Despite this, for each nurse migrant, 9 additional nurses were licensed. New nurses switched from other degree types, but graduated at higher rates than they would have otherwise, increasing the human capital stock in the Philippines.

This paper demonstrates the acute sensitivity of education program effectiveness to the choices of inputs and outcome measures, using a randomized evaluation of a mother-tongue literacy program. The program raises reading scores by 0.64 SD and writing scores by 0.45 SD. A reduced-cost version instead yields statistically insignificant reading gains and some large negative effects (−0.33 SDs) on advanced writing. We combine a conceptual model of education production with detailed classroom observations to examine the mechanisms driving the results; we show they could be driven by the program initially lowering productivity before raising it, and potentially by missing complementary inputs in the reduced-cost version.

We analyze consumption distribution in India purely on the basis of location – a combination of the state and sector (urban, rural) – and find that it explains a third of the variation in living standards. Consumption is also shown to be positively related to locational inequality. The main reason is that in poorer locations, consumption is tightly (less unequally) distributed around a low level, making class a poor predictor of higher living standards compared to the aggregate. In effect, from an individual’s perspective, living standards are higher in richer, but more unequal, locations in India. We analyze these paradoxes as evidence of an ongoing Kuznets type processes. Our results have implications for the persistence of economic migration within a fast-growing emerging economy. Individuals can choose to change their location to enjoy better living standards, but not necessarily trade other social, or individual predictors, like caste, religion and gender.

The Wall Street Consensus is an elaborate effort to reorganize development interventions around partnerships with global finance. The UN's Billions to Trillions agenda, the World Bank's Maximizing Finance for Development or the G20's Infrastructure as an Asset Class update the Washington Consensus for the age of the portfolio glut, to ‘escort’ global (North) institutional investors and the managers of their trillions into development asset classes. Making development investible requires a two‐pronged strategy: enlist the state into risk‐proofing development assets and accelerate the structural transformation of local financial systems towards market‐based finance that better accommodates portfolio investors. Ten policy commandments forge the ‘de‐risking state’. They create a safety net for investors in development assets, protecting their profits from demand risks attached to commodified infrastructure assets; from political risks attached to (progressive) policies that would threaten cash flows, including nationalization, higher minimum wages and, critically, climate regulation; and from liquidity and currency risks. These risks are transferred to the balance sheet of the state. The new ‘development as de‐risking’ paradigm narrows the scope for a green developmental state that could design a just transition to low‐carbon economies.

Existing research suggests a strong link between mining and local conflict but makes no distinction between artisanal and industrial mining. We exploit variation in mineral prices and the granting of industrial mining concessions to investigate how the mode of extraction affects conflict in Eastern Congo. Rising mineral prices increase battles over artisanal mines, indicating competition between armed groups. This effect is much less pronounced for industrial mining. Moreover, the expansion of industrial mining decreases battles, suggesting that companies can secure their concessions. Such expansion does, however, trigger riots, and, when it crowds out artisanal mining, also increases violence against civilians and looting. In line with case-study evidence, these negative effects only materialize when industrial mining companies expand their activities from the research to the production phase.

Can development aid empower women? We randomly assigned 1,250 Congolese communities to a development program that distributed development funds and included women in project selection and implementation, with the goal of empowering women. In 2010 and 2011, we revisited 816 treatment and control communities to collect survey data. Furthermore, in 413 communities we implemented a $1,000 unconditional cash transfer program to assess behavioral change. We find only weak evidence that the program influenced the role of women in the community and policy outcomes and no evidence that the program had an impact on the role of women within the household or attitudes toward them.

People expect the state to create jobs and provide them with a social security net. Whatever its defects, whatever the virtues of the private sector, no structure other than the state can today provide citizens with the basic public goods. Under the present right-wing government of Nea Dimokratia in Greece , which is not particularly at odds with neoliberalism, a very active role of the state is not expected. Also is nor expected the introduction of a serious program of public investment and demand-boosting to stimulate the national economy and enter into a virtuous circle of recovery. Greece, which has undergone the economic crisis with drastic cuts in its traditionally deficient social state, has to respond directly to the marked underinvestment in public goods (in key areas such as education, health, natural disasters, dealing with decent living conditions ). The most important tool for inputting resources for policy is the tax system

Dematerialization through services is a popular proposal for reducing environmental impact. The idea is that by shifting from the production of goods to the provision of services, a society can reduce its material demands. But do societies with a larger service sector actually dematerialize? I test the `dematerialization through services' hypothesis with a focus on fossil fuel consumption and carbon emissions --- the primary drivers of climate change. I find no evidence that a service transition leads to carbon dematerialization. Instead, a larger service sector is associated with greater use of fossil fuels and greater carbon emissions per person. This suggests that `dematerialization through services' is not a valid sustainability policy.

BackgroundEconomic recessions carry an impact on population health and access to care; less is known on how health systems adapt to the conditions brought by a downturn. This particularly matters now that the COVID-19 epidemic is putting health systems under stress. Brazil is one of the world's most affected countries, and its health system was already experiencing the aftermath of the 2015 recession.MethodsBetween 2018 and 2019 we conducted 46 semi-structured interviews with health practitioners, managers and policy-makers to explore the impact of the 2015 recession on public and private providers in prosperous (São Paulo) and impoverished (Maranhão) states in Brazil. Thematic analysis was employed to identify drivers and consequences of system adaptation and coping strategies. Nvivo software was used to aid data collection and analysis. We followed the Standards for Reporting Qualitative Research to provide an account of the findings.ResultsWe found the concept of 'health sector crisis' to be politically charged among healthcare providers in São Paulo and Maranhão. Contrary to expectations, the public sector was reported to have found ways to compensate for diminishing federal funding, having outsourced services and adopted flexible-if insecure-working arrangements. Following a drop in employment and health plans, private health insurance companies have streamlined their offer, at times at the expenses of coverage. Low-cost walk-in clinics were hit hard by the recession, but were also credited for having moved to cater for higher-income customers in Maranhão.ConclusionsThe 'plates' of a health system may shift and adjust in unexpected ways in response to recessions, and some of these changes might outlast the crisis. As low-income countries enter post-COVID economic recessions, it will be important to monitor the adjustments taking place in health systems, to ensure that past gains in access to care and job security are not eroded.

Nigeria is generally referred to as an ‘oil economy’ because of the country’s large amount of oil reserves Yet, the petroleum sector in Nigeria currently contributes less than 10 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). In comparison, some Gulf states petroleum sector’s GDP contribution is usually more than 30 percent. A fundamental reappraisal of the Nigeria’s petroleum sector’s relationship with the economy is required. This paper posits that the missing link between the petroleum sector and Nigeria’s GDP growth is the country’s petroleum refining capacity. Capacity utilization of Nigeria’s refineries dropped to 14 percent in 2014 against a global average refining capacity utilization of 90 percent. The constraints of crude oil supply to Nigeria’s refineries are revealed as well as policy interventions by the Federal Government of Nigeria aimed to increase in-country oil refining capacity. Refining capacity is suggested as an antidote to Nigeria’s so-called ‘resource curse’.

Scholars have conjectured that the return to speaking a language increases with the number of speakers. Long-run economic and political integration would accentuate this advantage, increasing the population share of the largest languages. I show that, to the contrary, language size and growth are uncorrelated except for very small languages (

In recent years, the use of experimental methodologies has emerged as a central means of evaluating international aid interventions. Today, proponents of randomized control trials (so-called randomistas) are among the most influential of development experts. This article examines the growth of this thought collective, analysing how uncertainty has become a central concern of development institutions. It demonstrates that transformations within the aid industry – including the influence of evidence-based policy, the economization of development, and the retreat from macro-planning – created the conditions of possibility for experimentation. Within this field, the randomistas adeptly pursued a variety of rhetorical, affective, methodological, and organizational strategies that emphasized the lack of credible knowledge within aid and the ability of experiments to rectify the situation. Importantly, they have insisted on the moral worth of experimentation; indeed, the experimental ethic has been proposed as the way to change the spirit of development. Through causal certitude, they propose to reduce human suffering. The rise of experimentation has not, however, eliminated accusations of uncertainty; rather, it has redistributed the means through which knowledge about development is considered credible.

Poor-quality data about conflict events can hinder humanitarian responses and bias academic research. There is increasing recognition of the role that new information technologies can play in producing more reliable data faster. We piloted a novel data-gathering system in the Democratic Republic of Congo in which villagers in a set of randomly selected communities report on events in real time via short message service. We first describe the data and assess its reliability. We then examine the usefulness of such “crowdseeded” data in two ways. First, we implement a downstream experiment on aid and conflict and find evidence that aid can lead to fewer conflict events. Second, we examine conflict diffusion in Eastern Congo and find evidence that key dynamics operate at very micro levels. Both applications highlight the benefit of collecting conflict data via cell phones in real time.