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Project
Women's mobility, job search, and employment: Follow-up evidence from a randomised control trial
Unemployment and economically inactive people are one of the biggest challenges facing urban labour markets in low-income countries. In South Asian cities, this pattern is more pronounced across gender lines with women less likely than men to participate in the labour market, even at relatively high levels of education. This project investigates the constraints on women’s...
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Project
Countering Islamic radicalisation in northern Mozambique: Radio campaigning and adolescent sensitisation in religious schools
In recent years, major global violent conflicts have happened in Muslim-majority countries. Of these conflicts, a substantial and increasing share has been related to Islamist insurgents. However, the process of radicalisation and the effectiveness of measures to counteract it are widely understudied. Northern Mozambique is where a substantial discovery of natural gas took...
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Countering COVID-19: Real-time data from Pakistan
The on-going pandemic put a strain on the developed economy with a sharp collapse of GDP and mounting unemployment. Simultaneously, the fragile socio-economic structure of low and middle-income countries are extremely vulnerable to the pandemic's effects. Amongst the many constraints that local authorities face in responding to the pandemic, these countries have few...
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Project
COVID-19 and the value of relationships in informal economies
Governments in many developing countries have put in place restrictions to economic activity and mobility to curb the spread of the coronavirus. This is true also in Uganda, where public transport and non-essential businesses were closed from early April to June. While firms were closed, there were reports of workers leaving cities and traveling back to their home villages....
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Project
Spatial analysis of firm productivity in Ghana: Misallocation versus market power
There is mounting evidence, especially for developing countries, that resources are often not allocated to their optimal use. This manifests itself in a failure of first-order conditions to hold, such that the marginal (social) benefit of a production factor is not equated to its marginal cost. Such misallocation is often interpreted as resulting from frictions or market...
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Project
Estimating income losses and consequences of the COVID-19 crisis in Uganda
COVID-19 continues to take its toll on the world and more recently, the African continent. While the continent still accounts for fewer cases or deaths, in cities such as Uganda the incidence of the disease has risen sharply. Uganda is not new to infectious diseases and has successfully battled outbreaks of Ebola, Marburg and even HIV/AIDS. Whilst COVID-19 has relatively...
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Project
The selection and the making of civil servants: Evidence from China’s College Graduate Civil Services programme
The quality, incentives, and ideologies of local civil servants greatly affect policy implementation and governance efficacy, especially in the developing world with weak formal institutions. This project aims to understand what shapes the background, preferences, attitudes, and behaviours of civil servants in rural China. Specifically, we focus on the College Graduate...
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Project
Formalizing informal taxation: Evidence from the D.R. Congo
Informal taxation, which often involves contributing labour toward local public goods provision, is a frequently overlooked source of local public finance in developing countries. However, in most countries the incidence of informal taxation is regressive: poor households often contribute more work hours than better-off households, and at times the most disadvantaged...
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Tax evasion in customs: Firm level evidence from Uganda
Developing countries are constrained by a lack of resources to fund growth enhancing public investments. Trade taxes are one important source of tax revenues for almost all of these economies. Uganda is no exception: In fiscal year 2017/18 revenues from import duties (tariffs) alone contributed about 8.5 percent to total tax collection. For this project we propose to...
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Project
Strengthening state capacity and enhancing bureaucratic effectiveness
Developing state capacity is essential for promoting economic growth and development. This does not only involve developing fiscal capacity of the state by improving its resource mobilization techniques but also ensuring that a well-functioning and motivated bureaucracy is in place that can deliver essential services. Over the last decade, a reasonably large literature...
Project
Female politicians and economic growth: Evidence from state elections in India
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TS7YtrR2yjU&feature=emb_logo The project studies close elections between men and women for election to India's state legislative assemblies. It finds significantly higher growth in economic activity in constituencies that elect women. Given average GDP growth in India of about 7% per year (during the study period), the researchers...