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The Dodd-Frank Act imposes reporting requirements on US companies regarding supply chain links to conflict minerals. Previous research uses within-DRC variation in the location of mineral mines to identify the effect of the Dodd-Frank Act on conflict. Due to the presence of spillovers, these previous estimates may underestimate the effect. Moreover, the legislation regulates reporting on minerals mined in the DRC and all countries surrounding the DRC. To fully evaluate this legislation, I investigate the prevalence of conflict events in the DRC and all surrounding countries. Difference-in-differences estimates suggest that, although there is no evidence of any reduction in conflict within all covered countries pooled together, the unintended consequences of this legislation within the DRC may be larger than previously reported. Supplemental analyses (i) investigate possible mechanisms that drive these results and (ii) find that the enforcement suspension of the legislation is unlikely to reduce conflict in the DRC.

The aspirations gap is the distance between an individual’s current and aspired standard of livelihood. A growing theoretical literature predicts that aspirations both “too close” and “too far” away from current standards lead to less investment in the future. These theories imply an inverted U-shaped relationship between the aspirations gap and investments. I test this hypothesis and extend existing empirical findings to rural Myanmar by examining the relationship between the income aspirations gap and real estate investment choices. I find that income aspirations that are ahead, but not too far ahead, of current income levels provide the best incentive for investment. Analysis of heterogeneity highlights that this relationship is strongest for those with relatively low income and those who hold fatalistic beliefs. These findings suggest the presence of psychological constraints to poverty alleviation and development in rural Myanmar.

Can changes in psychological well-being lead to changes in economic well-being? Across many settings, the view that inexpensive psychological interventions can lead to meaningful change in economic...

Researchers make hundreds of decisions about data collection, preparation, and analysis in their research. We use a many‐analysts approach to measure the extent and impact of these decisions. Two published causal empirical results are replicated by seven replicators each. We find large differences in data preparation and analysis decisions, many of which would not likely be reported in a publication. No two replicators reported the same sample size. Statistical significance varied across replications, and for one of the studies the effect's sign varied as well. The standard deviation of estimates across replications was 3-4 times the mean reported standard error.

Many researchers use an ordinal scale to quantitatively measure and analyze concepts. Theoretically valid empirical estimates are robust in sign to any monotonic increasing transformation of the ordinal scale. This presents challenges for the point-identification of important parameters of interest. I develop a partial identification method for testing the robustness of empirical estimates to a range of plausible monotonic increasing transformations of the ordinal scale. This method allows for the calculation of plausible bounds around effect estimates. I illustrate this method by revisiting analysis by Nunn and Wantchekon (2011, American Economic Review, 101, 3221–3252) on the slave trade and trust in sub-Saharan Africa. Supplemental illustrations examine results from (i) Aghion et al. (2016, American Economic Review, 106, 3869–3897) on creative destruction and subjective well-being and (ii) Bond and Lang (2013, The Review of Economics and Statistics, 95, 1468–1479) on the fragility of the black–white test score gap.

We document trends in food security up to one full year after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in four African countries. Using household-level data collected by the World Bank, we highlight differences over time amid the pandemic, between rural and urban areas, and between female-headed and male-headed households within Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Malawi, and Nigeria. We first observe a sharp increase in food insecurity during the early months of the pandemic with a subsequent gradual decline. Next, we find that food insecurity has increased more in rural areas than in urban areas relative to pre-pandemic data within each of these countries. Finally, we do not find a systematic difference in changes in food insecurity between female-headed and male-headed households. These trends complement previous microeconomic analysis studying short-term changes in food security associated with the pandemic and existing macroeconomic projections.

Governments, multinational companies, and researchers today collect unprecedented amounts of data on human feelings. These data provide information on citizens' happiness, levels of customer satisfaction, employees' satisfaction, mental stress, societal trust, and other important variables. Yet a key scientific difficulty tends to be downplayed, or even ignored, by many users of such information. Human feelings are not measured in objective cardinal units. This paper aims to address some of the ensuing empirical challenges. It suggests an analytical way to approach the scientific complications of ordinal data. The paper describes a dichotomous-around-the-median (DAM) test, which, crucially, uses information only on direction within an ordering and deliberately discards the potentially unreliable statistical information in ordered data. Applying the proposed DAM approach, the paper demonstrates that it is possible to check and replicate some of the key conclusions of previous research—including earlier work on the effects upon human well-being of higher income.

Highlights • We document trends in inter-group conflict at this historical moment. • Globally, we see a dramatic short-term decline in conflict events as awareness of COVID-19 spread. • This overall trend is mostly driven by a short-term decline in protest events globally. • We also document critical heterogeneity and exceptions to this general finding. • In some contexts inter-group conflict events have declined, in others these events have increased. • Quantitative case studies highlight challenges in estimating robust causal estimates., What does the threat of and the policy response to the coronavirus pandemic mean for inter-group conflict worldwide? We examine time series trends for different types of conflict and evaluate discernible changes taking place as global awareness of COVID-19 spread. At the country level, we examine changes in trends following policy responses, such as lockdowns, curfews, or ceasefires. We specifically examine violent conflict events (e.g., battles, remote violence and bombings, and violence against civilians) as well as civil demonstrations (e.g., protests and riots) using data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) project. Globally we see a relatively short-term decline in conflict, mostly driven by a sharp decrease in protest events, that has since recovered to pre-pandemic levels. Critical heterogeneity at the country level, however, persists. Finally, context-specific details challenge robust causal inference identifying the specific relationship between policy responses and conflict.

This paper documents some of the first estimates of the effect of the coronavirus pandemic on food security in a low- and middle-income country context. It combines nationally representative pre- pandemic household survey data with follow-up phone survey data from Mali and exploits sub- national variation in the intensity of pandemic-related disruptions between urban and rural areas. These disruptions stem from both government policies aiming to slow the spread of the virus and also individual behavior motivated by fear of contracting the virus. The paper finds evidence of increasing food insecurity in Mali associated with the pandemic. Difference-in-difference estimates show that moderate food insecurity increased by about 8 percentage points -- a 33 percent increase -- in urban areas compared with rural areas in Mali. The estimates are substantially larger than existing predictions of the average effect of the pandemic on food security globally and therefore highlights the critical importance of understanding effect heterogeneity.

This paper documents some of the first estimates of changes in experienced food insecurity associated with the coronavirus pandemic in a low-income country. It combines nationally representative pre-pandemic household survey data with follow-up phone survey data from Mali and examines sub-national variation in the intensity of pandemic-related disruptions between urban and rural areas. Although rural households are more likely to experience food insecurity prior to the pandemic, we find that food insecurity increased more in urban areas than in rural areas. Just three months after the onset of the pandemic, the rural–urban gap in experienced food insecurity completely vanished. These findings highlight that understanding effect heterogeneity is critically important to effectively designing and targeting post-pandemic humanitarian assistance.

Although many urban areas around the world have grown steadily in recent years, the structural transformation, wherein an economy goes from relying primarily on agriculture and natural resources to relying primarily on manufacturing, has eluded many developing countries. In those countries, contract farming, whereby processors contract out the production of some agricultural commodity to growers, is often seen as a means of spurring the development of an agribusiness sector, and thus launch the structural transformation. As a result, economists and other social scientists have extensively researched contract farming over the last 30 years. We review the findings of the economics literature on contract farming and discuss its implications for development policy and research. In so doing, we highlight the methodological weaknesses that limit much of the literature on contract farming in answering questions of relevance for policy. Despite valiant research effort, many of the core features of contract farming imply substantial challenges for researchers aiming to study the question “Does contract farming improve welfare?” We conclude with a discussion of where we see the literature on contract farming evolving over the next few decades.

We estimate the relationship between neighborhood violence and psychological well-being using nationally representative panel data from South Africa. We use data on household-level perceptions of neighborhood violence as well as reported crimes and local media reports to measure violence. First, we find the poor live in neighborhoods that they perceive to have higher levels of violence and have objectively more violence. Second, higher levels of both perceived and objective violence are strongly linked to elevated depressive symptoms and an increased likelihood of being at risk of depression. Finally, we show that living in urban neighborhoods with high levels of violence while poor is predictive of future poverty in our sample.

In recent years, as the need for global refugee assistance has increased, so have fears and concerns of the costs of refugee resettlement in Western nations. Now, seemingly more than ever, international security and regional development depend largely on the composition and distribution of the world population. In many Western nations, dispersal policies are specifically designed to manage the distribution of recently arrived refugees. Secondary migration presents a challenge to the goals of dispersal policies and raises questions regarding regional development, population pressures, job security, welfare dependency, and the future of global refugee assistance. We survey administrators and caseworkers in a series of qualitative interviews about their experiences with secondary migration. We conclude that the US refugee resettlement system is ill-equipped in handling the complications of secondary migration. These results lead us to reimagine a better strategy for achieving the goals of refugee resettlement.

Presentation ID 15792

Development economists are increasingly considering the role of hope in behaviours relating to investment, production, and consumption decisions of the poor. Although several studies have examined how the concepts of hope and aspirations may fit into economic theories, empirical studies have yet to validate a reliable measurement of hope. We adapt a quantitative approach to measure hope in the context of rural Myanmar. We present three tests of measurement validity. This study finds that hope measurements are correlated with covariates in a way supported by theory, are distinct from other psychological concepts, and are positively correlated with welfare perceptions.