Using a randomized survey experiment in urban Ghana, this paper demonstrates that the length of the reference period and the interview modality (in-person or over the phone) affect how people respond in labor surveys, with impacts varying... more
Using a randomized survey experiment in urban Ghana, this paper demonstrates that the length of the reference period and the interview modality (in-person or over the phone) affect how people respond in labor surveys, with impacts varying markedly by job type. Survey participants report significantly more self-employment spells when the reference period is shorter than the traditional one week, with the impacts concentrated among those in home-based and mobile self-employment. In contrast, the reference period has no impact on the incidence of wage-employment. The wage-employed do report working fewer days and hours when confronted with a shorter reference period. Finally, interviews conducted on the phone yield lower estimates of employment, hours worked, and days worked among the self-employed who are working from home or a mobile location as compared to in-person interviews.
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Household panel data document a remarkable closing of the gender gap in school enrolment in rural Pakistan between 2001 and 2004. During this 3-year period, there was an 8 point increase in the percentage of girls entering school, while... more
Household panel data document a remarkable closing of the gender gap in school enrolment in rural Pakistan between 2001 and 2004. During this 3-year period, there was an 8 point increase in the percentage of girls entering school, while the corresponding increase for boys was less than 2 percentage points. More than half of the rise for girls can be explained by the substantial increase in household incomes, whereas comparatively little is accounted for by increased school availability. Unpacking these enrolment trends and their determinants requires solving the classic period-age-cohort identification problem. The paper shows how to do so using auxiliary information on the distribution of school entry ages. JEL Classification: O15, O40, I 25, I21 Keywords: School Enrolment, Gender, Income Growth, Gender Gap
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... evidence from a tenancy reform in West Bengal (Banerjee, et al., 2002) appears to reinforce this view, showing that a mod-est reallocation ... In the double-sided moral hazard model of Eswaran and Kotwal (1985), both tenant and... more
... evidence from a tenancy reform in West Bengal (Banerjee, et al., 2002) appears to reinforce this view, showing that a mod-est reallocation ... In the double-sided moral hazard model of Eswaran and Kotwal (1985), both tenant and landlord supply a noncontractible input, which in ...
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Research Interests: Cognitive Science, Natural Resources, Community Development, Empowerment, Exclusion, and 15 moreDecentralization, Learning, Livelihood, Accommodation, Corruption, Livelihoods, Intervention, Externalities, Education Systems, Interventions, Counterfactual, Audits, Living Standards, Block Grants, and Beneficiaries
Research Interests: Development Economics, Political Economy, Natural Resources, Manufacturing, International Trade, and 15 moreFree Trade, Crossing, Air, Openness, Income, Currency, Ports, GDP, Global trade, Capital Accumulation, Inspection, Balance of Payments, Carriage, Gross Domestic Product, and Landlocked countries
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When contracts are incomplete, relationship specific investments may be under- provided due to the threat of opportunistic expropriation or holdup. This paper finds evidence of such underinvestment on tenanted land in rural Pakistan.... more
When contracts are incomplete, relationship specific investments may be under- provided due to the threat of opportunistic expropriation or holdup. This paper finds evidence of such underinvestment on tenanted land in rural Pakistan. Using data from households cultivating multiple plots under different tenure arrangements, the paper shows that land-specific investment is lower on leased plots. This result is robust to
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The paper studies the competitive strategies of two informal lenders, traders and landlords, in the provision of credit to tenants. Each lender has a distinct market or enforcement advantage. It is shown that when lenders compete... more
The paper studies the competitive strategies of two informal lenders, traders and landlords, in the provision of credit to tenants. Each lender has a distinct market or enforcement advantage. It is shown that when lenders compete 'directly', i.e. in contracts, the landlord has the 'interlocker's edge' but the trader will lend to tenants. If 'indirect' strategies are allowed, however, a more segmented market emerges. Traders lend to the tenants of 'small' landlords, while 'larger' landlords borrow from traders and on-lend to their own tenants. It is shown that such hierarchically linked contracts can reduce tenant welfare. Further, the terms of the tenancy contract vary systematically with the tenant's loan source. The model's predictions are tested empirically.
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Sharecropping has long fascinated economists, and perhaps no question has drawn more attention than that of the efficiency of this contractual arrangement. With a couple of notable exceptions, past studies find small or insignificant... more
Sharecropping has long fascinated economists, and perhaps no question has drawn more attention than that of the efficiency of this contractual arrangement. With a couple of notable exceptions, past studies find small or insignificant productiv-ity differentials between sharecropped and owner-cultivated land. This paper provides more conclusive evidence using a large, nationwide, micro-data set from rural Pak-istan. Our estimates show that the average yield differential between share-tenanted and owner-cultivated plots is highly unlikely to exceed 8 percent. An analysis of tenant labor allocation corroborates this conclusion. To understand why sharecropping does not lead to substantial productivity losses on average, we use unique data on monitoring frequency collected directly from ten-ants. We find that "unsupervised" tenants are significantly less productive than their "supervised" counterparts. We show that the coexistence of these two types of tenants is cons...
Though sharecropping has long fascinated economists, the debate over the extent of moral hazard is far from settled. We show that accounting for landlord su-pervision may help resolve the empirical confusion. When tenant effort is... more
Though sharecropping has long fascinated economists, the debate over the extent of moral hazard is far from settled. We show that accounting for landlord su-pervision may help resolve the empirical confusion. When tenant effort is observable, but at a cost to the landlord, otherwise identical share-tenants can receive different levels of supervision and have different productivity. Unique data on monitoring fre-quency collected from share-tenants in rural Pakistan confirms that, controlling for selection, "supervised" tenants are significantly more productive than "unsupervised" ones. Also, landlords' decisions regarding the intensity of supervision and the type of incentive contract to offer depend importantly on the cost of supervising tenants.
When contracts are incomplete, relationship specific investments may be under- provided due to the threat of opportunistic expropriation or holdup. This paper finds evidence of such underinvestment on tenanted land in rural Pakistan.... more
When contracts are incomplete, relationship specific investments may be under- provided due to the threat of opportunistic expropriation or holdup. This paper finds evidence of such underinvestment on tenanted land in rural Pakistan. Using data from households cultivating multiple plots under different tenure arrangements, the paper shows that land-specific investment is lower on leased plots. This result is robust to
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Research Interests: Property Rights, Land tenure, Economic Theory, Real Estate Development, Risk, and 13 moreAgriculture, Contract Theory, Adverse Selection, Risk Aversion, Tenancy, Asymmetric Information, Maximum Likelihood Estimation, Return on Investment, Opportunity Cost, Production Function, Rents, Incomplete Contracts, and Production Efficiency
Research Interests: Entrepreneurship, Accounting, Advertising, Empowerment, Computer Literacy, and 15 moreCustomer Loyalty, E Business, Commerce, Cost Analysis, Cultural Norms, Financial Capital, Business Operations, Buyer, Bookkeeping, Capital Market, Balance Sheet, Capital Requirements, Branches, Credit History, and business sector
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Can marriage institutions limit marital inefficiency? We study the pervasive custom of watta satta in rural Pakistan, a bride exchange between families coupled with a mutual threat of retaliation. Watta satta can be seen as a mechanism... more
Can marriage institutions limit marital inefficiency? We study the pervasive custom of watta satta in rural Pakistan, a bride exchange between families coupled with a mutual threat of retaliation. Watta satta can be seen as a mechanism for coordinating the actions of two sets of parents, each wishing to restrain their son-in-law. We find that marital discord, as measured by estrangement, domestic abuse, and wife's mental health, is indeed significantly lower in watta satta versus “conventional” marriage, but only after accounting for selection bias. These benefits cannot be explained by endogamy, a marriage pattern associated with watta satta. (JEL J12, J16, O15, O18, Z13)
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... Ghazala Mansuri Development Economics Research Group, The World Bank March 28, 2005 ... However, the asset measures we focus on, livestock and land, are largely productive assets, since these are the main assets held by rural... more
... Ghazala Mansuri Development Economics Research Group, The World Bank March 28, 2005 ... However, the asset measures we focus on, livestock and land, are largely productive assets, since these are the main assets held by rural households in the context we study. ...