Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic led governments around the world to impose unprecedented restrictions on economic activity. Were these restrictions equally justified in poorer countries with fewer demographic risk factors and less ability to weather economic shocks? We develop, validate, and estimate a fully specified model of the macroeconomy with epidemiological dynamics, incorporating subsistence constraints in consumption and allowing preferences over “lives versus livelihoods” to vary with income. Poorer countries’ demography pushes them unambiguously toward laxer policies. But because both infected and susceptible agents near the subsistence constraint will remain economically active in the face of infection risk and even to some extent under government containment policies, optimal policy in poorer countries becomes more rather than less strict. For reasonable income-elasticities of the value of a statistical life, the model can fully rationalize equally strict or stricter policies in poorer countries.
Abstract: Smallholder farming in many developing countries is characterized by low productivity and low quality output. Low quality limits the price farmers can command and their potential income. We conduct a series of experiments among maize farmers in Uganda to shed light on the barriers to quality upgrading and to study its potential. First, we document that quality is low but partly observable. Second, we show that the causal return to quality is zero, suggesting that the market for quality maize is effectively missing. Third, we generate experimental variation in access to a market for premium quality maize, combined with training on agricultural best-practices, and document large increases in both farm productivity and income. Fourth, we show that agricultural training alone does not affect agricultural outcomes. Our findings reveal the importance of demand-side constraints in limiting rural income and productivity growth.
Abstract: Health, and in turn income and welfare, depend on access to safe drinking water. Although the majority of rural households worldwide obtain drinking water from community water sources, there is limited evidence about how effectively these sources provide safe drinking water. This study combines a randomized experiment with water quality testing to evaluate the impact of a program that provides community deep tubewells in rural Bangladesh. The program reduces exposure to arsenic, a major natural pollutant, but not fecal contamination. Households may use fewer sources with fecal contamination, but any such effects are offset by recontamination through transport and possibly storage. The results suggest that while community deep-tubewell construction programs may reduce exposure to arsenic in Bangladesh, reducing exposure to fecal contamination may require interventions that go beyond community sources.
Abstract: Early reports suggest the fatality rate from COVID-19 varies greatly across countries, but non-random testing and incomplete vital registration systems render it impossible to directly estimate the infection fatality rate (IFR) in many low- and middle-income countries. To fill this gap, we estimate the adjustments required to extrapolate estimates of the IFR from high- to lower-income regions. Accounting for differences in the distribution of age, sex, and relevant comorbidities yields substantial differences in the predicted IFR across 21 world regions, ranging from 0.11% in Western Sub-Saharan Africa to 0.95% for High Income Asia Pacific. However, these predictions must be treated as lower bounds, as they are grounded in fatality rates from countries with advanced health systems. In order to adjust for health system capacity, we incorporate regional differences in the relative odds of infection fatality from childhood influenza. This adjustment greatly diminishes, but does not entirely erase, the demography-based advantage predicted in the lowest income settings, with regional estimates of the predicted COVID-19 IFR ranging from 0.43% in Western Sub-Saharan Africa to 1.74% for Eastern Europe.
Abstract: Educational poverty is one of the greatest challenges of our times, in several countries around the world. Despite the growing number of children and youth enrolled in primary and secondary schools, learning outcomes remain alarmingly low, particularly for those in vulnerable and underprivileged communities, facing obstacles to accessing quality education. This may be due to several factors such as limited resources, conflicts, gender inequality, and discrimination. In this book, we present the work carried out by the Laboratory of Effective Anti-Poverty Policies at Bocconi University (LEAP). Through our projects, we offer scientific evidence that measures the impact of innovative policies and best practices aimed at enhancing education quality. Using rigorous quantitative methods and sophisticated experimental protocols, we provide policymakers with scientific and pragmatic insights into what works and what doesn’t, helping them design efficient and effective solutions. By sharing results and interventions, we encourage dialogue, debate, and the development of policies to ensure that the potential of all children, regardless of background or social position, is realized.
Abstract: We assess the effect on students’ aspirations of a 1-minute motivational video featuring a role model describing their path to success. We use a randomized control trial on a sample of primary and middle school students from a disadvantaged neighbourhood in Naples. We find that exposure to treatment increases schools and career aspirations and boosts self-confidence and grit of the students, at a cost of decreased mood and lower reported empathy and closeness to classmates. Finally, watching a video featuring a female role model decreases gender bias among the male treated students. This study shows the short-run effects of a very brief, inexpensive, and potentially widely replicable intervention, conducted in a developed country, on a sample of children from a fragile socio-economic background. Beyond documenting its potential in boosting aspirations, we caution against backlashes on students’ well-being and prosociality.
Abstract: Community contribution requirements are a ubiquitous but understudied feature of projects to provide local public goods in developing countries. A randomized experiment in rural Bangladesh shows that cash contribution requirements strongly reduce take-up and impact of safe drinking water infrastructure projects, compared to a contribution waiver. Labour contribution requirements do not, despite having similar value when priced at the market wage, because most households value their time below the market wage and because labour contributions appear less costly to coordinate. Neither contribution requirement increases cost-effectiveness once we account for coordination and monitoring costs, undermining a central rationale for their imposition.
Abstract: Development programmes featuring community decision making increasingly require co-funding from the community, but little is known about the effects of contribution requirement on their outcomes. This study explores the effects of requiring contributions on the distribution of project benefits within the community and on the efficiency of public good provision. I design and run a controlled experiment in rural Bangladesh where participants are asked to bargain among themselves on how to redistribute a common endowment, with and without co-funding requirements. I find that requiring contributions decreases efficiency by 12% and increases inequality by 30%. The experimental design allows me to disentangle the mechanisms behind the rise in inequality, focusing on the role of fairness preferences and individual bargaining power from wealth and status. The results show that participants would prefer a lower inequality but they fail to achieve the desired level of redistribution, even when initial wealth is equalized. Moreover, co-funding increasing the application of self-serving fairness norms by the participants with high social status in the community, but the effects do not explain the overall increase in inequality.
Questo documento è il “Quaderno dell’insegnante” di supporto al progetto “Su.Per.Prof.”, un progetto nato con lo scopo di combattere, da un lato, l’elevato stress e rischio di burnout dei professori delle scuole medie, e, dall’altro, il dropout e il disinteresse per la scuola dei ragazzi. Il progetto, sperimentato in 30 scuole secondarie di primo grado della città di Napoli e comuni limitrofi nell’anno scolastico 2023/24, si articola in otto incontri di persona tra gli insegnanti di una sezione delle scuole medie ed uno psicologo formatore, osservati e verbalizzati da un osservatore per fini di ricerca. Il progetto ha lo scopo di aiutare i professori ad instaurare un miglior rapporto con gli studenti e tra di loro, e di dare loro strumenti e motivazione per la creazione di un clima scolastico accogliente e produttivo per i professori e gli studenti stessi. Il progetto è oggetto, in un working paper separato, di una valutazione di impatto tramite un esperimento randomizzato con gruppo di controllo che ha coinvolto, oltre alle 30 scuole selezionate casualmente come trattate, 30 scuole di controllo.
"HERO Teachers: Harbouring Empathy to Raise Opportunities. A Study of Teachers' Burnout risks and Students' Outcomes", with Noemi Facchetti, Giovanna Marcolongo and Marco Le Moglie - AEA RCT registration.
Funded by PRIN 2022 e PRIN PNRR 2022."WIDEHO - Widening the horizons: the impact of information and role model on high school choices", with Giovanna Marcolongo and Diletta Savoldi - AEA RCT registration.
Funded by MUSA -SILAB PNRR.