Seminars and Events

Time: 5:45pm-6:45pm GST on Zoom 

Speaker: 

Douglas Gollin (Oxford) on Perpetual Motion: Human Mobility and Spatial Frictions in Three African Countries

Abstract:

Recent literature points to the importance in developing countries of spatial and sectoral gaps in wages and living standards. These gaps seemingly imply frictions to human mobility. In this paper, we present new evidence on mobility within three African countries. We use a novel data source that provides highly detailed location data on more than one million smartphone devices across three large African countries for an entire year. This allows us to examine high-frequency mobility patterns for a subset of people for whom we can determine home locations confidently. The data offer insights into patterns of mobility, with corresponding implications for the nature and extent of mobility frictions. In particular, our data point to the ubiquity of relatively high-frequency journeys within countries – i.e., visits. We observe that many users travel to relatively distant within-country locations, with big cities acting as particularly attractive magnets. We develop a conceptual framework that characterizes the role of visits for individuals and provides a number of testable predictions that are consistent with the movement patterns that we observe in the data. The analysis suggests that distance-linked mobility costs are not so high as to discourage travel. In fact, travel enables users to benefit from the opportunities that large cities provide, without having to incur the costs of relocation. The frictions sustaining spatial and sectoral gaps thus seem to reflect deep fixed costs associated with the dislocations of migration and sectoral change, rather than the direct costs of movement.

Read the paper here.

The seminar is for researchers and academics interested in Development topics. If you are interested in joining the seminar, please email us at devlab@nyu.edu.

Time: 5:45pm-6:45pm GST on Zoom 

Speaker: 

Lauren Falcao Bergquist (University of Michigan) on Search Cost, Intermediation, and Trade: Experimental Evidence from Ugandan Agricultural Markets

Abstract: 

High search costs weaken market integration in developing country agricultural markets, harming both farmers and consumers. We present evidence from a large-scale experiment designed to reduce search costs in randomly selected subcounties in Uganda by introducing a mobile phone-based marketplace for agricultural commodities. The intervention drives increases in trade flows and reductions in price divergence across treated markets. Entry by traders into treated markets increases, and profits of incumbents decrease. However, small-scale farmers find it difficult to reach the scale necessary to find buyers on the platform; only the largest farmers use the platform. As a result, we are only able to detect significant increases in revenues among the farmers most likely to use the platform. Point estimates suggest effects that are meaningful in magnitude, but not statistically significant for the majority of farmers. Since farmers are so numerous and the cost per-farmer is low, these income gains per household aggregate to make the intervention strongly cost-beneficial from an overall welfare perspective.

The seminar is for researchers and academics interested in Development topics. If you are interested in joining the seminar, please email us at devlab@nyu.edu.

Time: 4pm-5:30pm GST on Zoom 

Afrobarometer Presentation – African Voices on African Issues
by Robert Mattes, Afrobarometer co-founder and board member

Speaker: 

Robert Mattes is professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland and board member and co-founder of Afrobarometer. Originally from the United States, he spent 25 years researching and teaching in South Africa before moving to Strathclyde in 2016. He was visiting research scholar at Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies in 2016.

He is honorary professor of political studies and former director of the Democracy in Africa Research Unit in the Centre for Social Science Research at the University of Cape Town. Robert was principal investigator in major research projects such as the African Legislatures Project and the South African National Election Study.

He is the co-author author of Public Opinion, Democracy, and Markets in Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2005). His articles have appeared in American Journal of Political Science, World Development, and Party Politics, among others. Robert holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

The seminar is for researchers and academics interested in Development topics. If you are interested in joining the seminar, please email us at devlab@nyu.edu.

Time: 5:45pm-6:45pm GST on Zoom 

Speaker: 

Torsten Figueiredo Walter (NYUAD) On the Microfoundations of National Statistics in Sub-Saharan Africa, joint work with Niclas Moneke (Oxford)

Abstract: 

National statistics are essential for policy, business and research. Policymakers and private agents use national statistics to inform resource allocation decisions and policy design, researchers use national statistics as inputs to the study of economic processes.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, national statistics are commonly perceived to be of low quality, but systematic evidence of this is scarce. Therefore, the magnitude of errors in national statistics as well as their effects on research findings and policy analysis remain unknown. This project aims to take a first step towards filling this gap.

We propose a systematic approach to measure the extent to which national statistics are consistent with each other in Sub-Saharan Africa. We start from the observation that two concurrently conducted, nationally representative surveys should not yield statistically significantly different estimates of a given population parameter. To put this proposition to an empirical test, we gather all available individual and household survey (e.g., DHS, LSMS, MICS) and census micro data from Sub-Saharan Africa from the 1980s until today and compare statistical indicators derived from different survey instruments within countries over time. Then, we explore the causes of the uncovered discrepancies and their implications for policy and research.

The seminar is for researchers and academics interested in Development topics. If you are interested in joining the seminar, please email us at devlab@nyu.edu.

Time: 5:45pm-6:45pm GST on Zoom 

Speaker: 

David Lagakos (Boston University) on Technology and Local State Capacity: Evidence from Ghana, joint work with James Dzansi, Anders Jensen, and Henry Telli

Abstract: 

This paper studies the role of technology in local-government tax collection capacity in the developing world. We first conduct a new census of all local governments in Ghana to document a strong association between technology use and property tax billing, collection and enforcement. We then randomize the use of a new revenue collection technology within one large municipal government. Revenue collectors using the new technology delivered 27 percent more bills and collected 103 percent more tax revenues than control collectors. Collectors using the new technology learned faster about which households in their assigned areas were willing and able to make payments. We reconcile these experimental findings in a simple Beckerian time-use model in which technology allows revenue collectors to better allocate their time towards households that are the most likely to comply with taxpaying duties. The model's predictions are consistent with experimental evidence showing that treatment collectors are more likely to target households with greater liquidity, income, awareness of taxpaying duties, and satisfaction with local public goods provision. 

Read the paper here.

The seminar is for researchers and academics interested in Development topics. If you are interested in joining the seminar, please email us at devlab@nyu.edu.

Time: 5:45pm-6:45pm GST on Zoom 

Speaker: 

Jenny Aker (Tufts University) on Harvesting the rain: The adoption of environmental technologies in the Sahel, joint work with Kelsey Jack (University of California, Santa Barbara)

Abstract:

Many agricultural and environmental technologies require large upfront investments in exchange for longer-term benefits. This time profile of costs and benefits makes adoption particularly sensitive to liquidity and credit constraints, which are prevalent in low-income settings. We test the importance of these barriers to the adoption of an agricultural technique that helps reduce land degradation and restore soil fertility in Niger. We find little evidence that liquidity or credit constraints deter adoption: instead, providing farmers with training increases the share of adopters by over 90 percentage points, while adding conditional or unconditional cash transfers has no additional effect. Adoption increases agricultural output, reduces land turnover and leads to adoption spillovers up to three years after treatment. We present suggestive evidence that labor availability and non-informational channels help explain the large effect of training on technology adoption.

Read the paper here.

The seminar is for researchers and academics interested in Development topics. If you are interested in joining the seminar, please email us at devlab@nyu.edu.

Time: 5:45pm-6:45pm GST on Zoom 

Speaker: 

Martin Rotemberg (NYU) on Futures Markets and Spot Prices

Abstract:

How do futures markets affect prices? We study an important historical event in order to shed light on this question: in 1865, the Chicago Board of Trade set up formal futures markets for some but not all commodities. We digitize weekly information on spot prices and storage for both affected and unaffected crops. Futures markets lead both prices and storage to fall in the short run, but prices recover within a year. We describe a model of forward looking buyers and sellers with access to storage that can fit this pattern.

The seminar is for researchers and academics interested in Development topics. If you are interested in joining the seminar, please email us at devlab@nyu.edu.