Tansnationals and foreign trade: Evidence from Brazil

A recursive model of exports and imports of manufactures, in which imports depend in part on exports, is estimated using data for a cross‐section of 17,053 industrial firms. In this sample, 652 firms are foreign‐owned. Explanatory variables include firm size, skill intensity, advertising and other variables in addition to foreign ownership. Foreign ownership has a large, independent effect on both export performance and import propensities, but foreign ownership in itself explains little of the relatively low export/import ratios registered by affiliates of transnationals.     

Political Competition and Local Social Spending: Evidence from Brazil

Electoral theories of democracy imply electoral competition insures accountability. Using data on local elections, socioeconomic factors, and municipal budgets from more than 5,000 municipalities in Brazil for the years 1996, 2000, and 2004, we find that municipalities with more competitive elections allocate less to social spending compared to municipalities with little political competition. We argue that previous theory on political competition and public goods obscures the critical role that financial resources play in shaping the dynamics of social spending and political competition. Municipalities with small budgets lack the resources necessary to engineer convincing electoral victories. Where resources are negligible, voter turnout is low, and incumbents rarely win reelection. Incumbent parties in municipalities with large financial resources win big. Armed with adequate resources, incumbent parties mobilize voters and win by large margins. This new argument and evidence reconcile contradictory findings in the existing literature on competition and public goods.     

Impact of takeovers on profitability of target companies: Evidence from Croatian companies

It is possible to find scientific confirmation of positive, negative or neutral influence of takeovers on company's profitability. Therefore, this study aimed to highlight the sensitivity of research results on manipulation in terms of used methodology and indicators. Using t-test for paired samples and five selected profitability indicators for target and peer companies, it has been proven that it is possible to obtain significantly different results even when using the same sample and the same reference period. The research has been performed on the sample of Croatian companies, which were taken over in the period from year 2003–2008.     

The Impact of Microcredit on Child Education: Quasi-experimental Evidence from Rural China

Abstract

This article assesses causal effects of formal microcredit on children’s educational outcomes by using household panel data (2000 and 2004) in north-west rural China. The unobservables between borrowers and non-borrowers are controlled in static and dynamic regression-discontinuity designs. The static analysis reveals significant positive impact of microcredit on schooling years in 2000 only, and no influence on academic performance for either wave. The dynamic analysis shows progressive treatment effects on both longer schooling years and higher average scores. Formal microcredit improves education in the longer term compared to the short term, and hence may help relaxing the grip of educational poverty traps.     

The Impact of Cooking with Firewood on Respiratory Health: Evidence from Indonesia

The vast majority of households in low-income countries cook with firewood, which is known to produce various airborne toxins. We examine whether cooking with firewood results in poorer respiratory health by using a unique Indonesian household survey that collected direct measures of lung capacity. We find that individuals living in households that cook with firewood have 9.4 per cent lower lung capacity than those that cook with cleaner fuels. This impact is larger for women and children than for men. The results strongly support the international policy focus on facilitating households to switch to cooking with cleaner fuels.     

The Impact of School Meals on School Participation: Evidence from Rural India

This article assesses the effect of transition from monthly distribution of free food grains to the daily provision of free cooked meals to school children on enrolments and attendance in a rural area of India. School panel data allow a difference-in-differences estimation strategy to address possible endogeneity of programme placement. The results suggest that programme transition had a significant impact on improving the daily participation rates of children in lower grades. The average monthly attendance rate of girls in grade one was more than 12 percentage points higher while there was a positive but insignificant effect on grade one boys' attendance rate. The impact on enrolment levels was insignificant.     

The Impact of Political Leadership on Organisational Performance: Evidence from English Urban Government

Many commentators view the political management reforms of English local government with some scepticism, raising concerns about the desirability of stronger leadership and the efficacy of institutional reform in encouraging stronger leadership. Using data from a five-year evaluation of the impact of the Local Government Act 2000, this paper reports evidence suggesting that institutional variation does influence the way that organisations operate and can have a positive impact on their performance, though the results are mixed with the internal decision-making elements showing most difference, whilst there is less evidence of effects in relation to partnership working and engagement with the public. In hung and balanced authorities an internal focus on managing coalitions and party competitors is judged to impede the role of leaders in partnership working. In the concluding section, the paper develops the concept of facilitative leadership, which will continue to influence reform of local government and the practice of political leadership in local government. Policy-makers, by giving leaders the right mix of resources and incentives, can improve the effectiveness of urban political leadership and encourage the trend towards facilitative leadership.     

The Long Term Educational Cost of War: Evidence from Landmine Contamination in Cambodia

The economic impact of war may be visible in the long run and particularly through its impact on human capital. This paper uses unique district level data on landmine contamination intensity in Cambodia combined with survey data on individuals to evaluate the long-run impact of Cambodia's 30 years of war (1970–1998) on education levels and earnings. These effects are identified using difference-in-differences (DD) and instrumental variables (IV) estimators. In the DD framework I exploit two sources of variation in an individual's exposure to the conflict: age in 1970 and landmine contamination intensity in the district of residence. The IV specification uses the distance to the Thai border as an exogenous source of variation in landmine contamination intensity. The most conservative result indicates that individuals who were too young to have attended school before the start of the war received on average 0.5 less years of education. And, immediately after the war there was no visible effect on earnings. The effects are therefore overall weak. I argue that the destruction of physical capital may be what contributes to drive down the returns to education in Cambodia post-war. The estimates reported may be very conservative due to both error in our measure of conflict intensity and possible selection bias in the placement of prosperous regions.     

The Impact of Socio-Cultural Integration on Return Intentions: Evidence from a Survey on Romanian Migrants

Abstract

This article analyzes the impact of socio-cultural integration on migrants’ intention to return to their country of origin. It distinguishes between the potential effects of inter-ethnic relations, language proficiency and perception of discrimination as components of integration. It uses individual-level data collected through an original survey among Romanian migrants in January 2018. It aims to test the effects of socio-cultural integration against those of alternative explanations provided in the literature. The findings indicate that the perception of discrimination, assessment of public institutions’ performance and belonging feelings are important predictors for return intentions.     

The Impact of Mobile Phone Technology on Agricultural Extension Services Delivery: Evidence from India

This study examines the impact of mobile phone enhanced intervention in agricultural extension service delivery in India. Findings show that the amount, quality and speed of service delivery have improved significantly because of the intervention. There are also benefits in terms of greater knowledge and awareness of new agricultural practices, farmers’ aspiration to try new technology in the future and access to credit. The system does not discriminate against farmers from disadvantaged and low education backgrounds. Thus, a system of well-used technology, which is assisted by trained village youths, can serve as a tool for inclusive development.     

High Noon for Microfinance Impact Evaluations: Re-investigating the Evidence from Bangladesh

Recently, microfinance has come under increasing criticism raising questions of the validity of iconic studies which have justified it, such as Pitt and Khandker. Chemin applied propensity score matching to the Pitt and Khandker data, finding different impacts, but does not disaggregate by gender of borrower. We first replicate Chemin and extend his analysis in two ways. We test the robustness of propensity score matching results to selection on unobservables using sensitivity analysis, and we investigate propensity score matching estimates of impacts by gender of borrowers. The mainly insignificant impacts of microfinance differ greatly by gender of borrower, but are all vulnerable to selection on unobservables. We are therefore not convinced that the relationships between microfinance and outcomes are causal with these data.     

The Impact of the Housing Bubble on the Growth of Municipal Debt: Evidence from Spain

The aim of this paper is to analyse the impact of the recent Spanish housing boom and the subsequent burst on local public finances. Particularly, we investigate the effect of the rise and later fall in revenue from urban development on local government debt. Using a sample of the Spanish largest municipalities in the period 2003–2011, we find that debt was substituted by revenue from urban development during boom years and this substitution effect vanished after the burst of the boom. Our results also reveal that local public finances have worsened after the burst of the housing bubble since now they have larger current spending and smaller savings.     

The Impact of Trade Credit on Customer Switching Behaviour: Evidence from the Tanzanian Rice Market

We use primary survey data to analyse the relationship between trade credit and customer switching in the context of trade transactions between wholesalers and retailers in the Tanzanian rice market. Results reveal a negative relation of trade credit and customer switching, that is, trade credit acts as a switching barrier; retailers are reluctant to move to another supplier if they depend on trade credit as a source of external finance. This interpretation fits with the underdeveloped financial markets in Tanzania, in which access to external finance is poor among rice retailers.     

The Impact of Drinking Water Quality and Sanitation on Child Health: Evidence from Rural Ethiopia

This paper examines the association between stored drinking water quality and sanitation on diarrhoea incidence among under-five children in Ethiopia. Using primary household survey data and microbiological water quality testing for Escherichia coli, our results show that uncontaminated stored drinking water and safe child stool disposal are associated with decreased child diarrhoea incidences of 18 and 20 percentage points, respectively. In contrast, neighbourhood concentration of pit latrine shows an increased incidence of child diarrhoea of 16 percentage points. To protect rural children from the risk of contracting diarrhoea, improving household drinking water quality and changing people’s behaviour towards safe sanitation practices is needed.     

Short and Long Recall Errors in Retrospective Household Surveys: Evidence from a Developing Country

While recall errors in retrospective data from household surveys may generate estimation biases, the nature and the relative magnitude of the errors are still largely unknown, especially in the context of developing countries. To bridge this gap in the existing studies, we conduct a resurvey of respondents of the Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey (VHLS) 2006. The combined data set allows us to investigate a variety of short-term and long-term errors associated with recall surveys. First, our empirical results suggest that when we ask total expenditure rather than categorised expenditures, long recall errors are no worse than short recall errors. Second, we found mean-reversion only for long recall errors in the sum of categorised expenditures but not necessarily for total expenditure. Finally, the inclusion of household size, asset, income, and geographical dummy variables in regression analyses may mitigate the biases arising from measurement errors.     

Women's Wellbeing and the Sex Ratio at Birth: Some Suggestive Evidence from India

A declining sex ratio (SR) for a population has generally been diagnosed as an indicator of worsening female advantage, while a declining sex ratio at birth (SRB) – such as in the context of the Indian population over the recent past – has been diagnosed as being caused largely by the phenomenon of sex-selective foeticide. In this article, we examine the merits of a less sinister hypothesis in terms of which a secular improvement in women's wellbeing has led to a sex-neutral reduction in the rate of foetal wastage, and through that route, to a reduction in the SRB (and therefore in the overall SR of the population). We seek support for this hypothesis by examining evidence from India. We also discuss the implications of this line of reasoning for women's wellbeing, development and the significance of a declining sex ratio.     

Capability Failure and Group Disparities : Some Evidence from India for the 1980s

This paper advances a particular measure of deprivation - called the Capability Failure Ratio (CFR) - on the dimensions of longevity, knowledge and income, and suggests how an (inequality-) 'adjusted' version of the CFR may be derived. These measurement concerns are explored in the context of relevant State-wise data for the Indian Union. The paper thus makes an attempt to enrich the analysis of human predicament by sensitising 'measures of central tendency' to distributional concerns.     

Performance Review and Assessment of Public Managers: Some Evidence from Local Governments in Italy

Performance review and assessment (PRA) of public managers has been adopted in several countries, but we still lack detailed knowledge of what affects the effectiveness of PRA systems. Based on interview data and on a survey of Italian public managers, this article aims to investigate this issue by developing and testing a preliminary model of perceived effectiveness of PRA. The results suggest that PRA perceived effectiveness seems related to the clarity of the organizational design, the quality of the PRA process, the involvement of public managers in the PRA process, and the use of PRA results for tightening control.     

The Impact of Microcredit on the Poor in Bangladesh: Revisiting the Evidence

Abstract

We replicate and reanalyse the most influential study of microcredit impacts (M. M. Pitt & S. R. Khandker’s, ‘The impact of group-based credit on poor households in Bangladesh: Does the gender of participants matter?’, published in the Journal of Political Economy, 106, 1998). That study was celebrated for showing that microcredit reduces poverty, a much hoped for possibility (though one not confirmed by recent randomised controlled trials). We show that the original results on poverty reduction disappear after dropping outliers, or when using a robust linear estimator. Using a new program for estimation of mixed process maximum likelihood models, we show how assumptions critical for the original analysis, such as error normality, are contradicted by the data. We conclude that questions about impact cannot be answered in these data.