Distinguished Professor of Economics, Oxfam Professor in Environmental and Resource Economics, & Faculty co-Director of the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA)
In a study of the effect of civil war exposure on local collective action outcomes in Sierra Leone, Bellows and Miguel (2009) employ a coefï¬cient stability approach to assess the importance of omitted variable bias building on Altonji et al. (2005a). Here we clarify the econometric assumptions underlying Bellows and Miguel (2009), and extend their analysis using data on dependent variable reliability ratios and the method developed in Oster (2015).
A comment by Buhaug et al. attributes disagreement between our recent analyses and their review articles to biased decisions in our meta-analysis and a difference of opinion regarding statistical approaches. The claim is false. Buhaug et al.’s alteration of our metaanalysis misrepresents findings in the literature, makes statistical errors, misclassifies multiple studies, makes coding errors, and suppresses the display of results that are consistent with our original analysis. We correct these mistakes and obtain findings in line with our original results, even when we use the study selection criteria proposed by Buhaug et al. We conclude that there is no evidence in the data supporting the claims raised in Buhaug et al.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, 600 million people live without electricity. Despite ambitions of governments and donors to invest in rural electrification, decisions about how to extend electricity access are being made in the absence of rigorous evidence. Using a novel dataset of 20,000 geo-tagged structures in rural Western Kenya, we provide descriptive evidence that electrification rates remain very low despite significant investments in grid infrastructure. This pattern holds across time and for both poor and relatively well-off households and businesses. We argue that if governments wish to leverage existing infrastructure and economies of scale, subsidies and new approaches to financing connections are necessary.
E. Miguel, C. Camerer, K. Casey, J. Cohen, K. M. Esterling, A. Gerber, R. Glennerster, D. P. Green, M. Humphreys, G. Imbens, D. Laitin, T. Madon, L. Nelson, B. A. Nosek, M. Petersen, R. Sedlmayr, J. P. Simmons, U. Simonsohn, M. Van der Laan
We survey recent progress toward research transparency in the social sciences and make the case for standards and practices that help realign scholarly incentives with scholarly values. There is growing appreciation for the advantages of experimentation in the social sciences, but accompanying these changes is a growing sense that incentives, norms, and institutions under which social science operates undermine gains from improved research design. We describe promising, bottom-up innovations in the social sciences, including the three core practices of: disclosure; registration and preanalysis plans; and open data and materials. We also assess common objections to the move toward greater transparency, and argue that new practices need to be implemented in a way that does not stifle creativity or create excess burden.
Brooker, Simon, Edward A. Miguel, Polycarp Waswa, Robert Namunyu, Sylvie Moulin, Helen Guyatt, and Donald A.P. Bundy. 2001. "The Potential of Rapid Screening Methods for Intestinal Schistosomiasis in Western Kenya." Annals of Tropical Medicine & Parasitology 95(4): 343-351.
Data from 46 schools in western Kenya were used to investigate the performance of school-based questionnaires, on reported blood in stool and water-contact patterns, as indicators of the prevalence of human infection with Schistosoma mansoni. Prevalence of infection was associated with the prevalence of self-reported blood in stool, recent history of swimming and recent history of fishing. It was shown that use of a threshold of 30% of subjects reporting blood in stool would identify 42.9% of the `high-prevalence’ schools (i.e. prevalence ≥ 50%) and 87.5% of the `low-prevalence’ schools (i.e. prevalence < 50%). A threshold of 25% reporting swimming would identify 57.1% and 93.7% of the high- and low-prevalence schools, respectively. Blood in stool appears to be too coarse an indicator to identify schools for mass treatment correctly. Although the use of multiple questions improved the diagnostic performance of the questionnaire in identifying the high-prevalence schools, it was unclear how questions can best be combined in other settings. However, there is a direct relationship between prevalence of S. mansoni infection and distance of the school from the lakeshore; analysis indicated that use of a threshold of 5 km from the lakeshore would correctly identify most (90%) of both the low- and high-prevalence schools. Distance to the lakeshore may therefore be used to screen schools in much of East Africa (i.e. those areas close to the Great Lakes where the infection is known to be prevalent and where much of the region’ s population is concentrated). In other areas of transmission , such as irrigation areas, further studies are still required.
OBJECTIVE: To describe the patterns of single and multiple helminth infection in school children from Busia District, Kenya.
DESIGN: A cross-sectional school survey using a randomly selected sample, forming part of an evaluation study of an ongoing deworming project.
SETTING: Budalangi and Funyula divisions of Busia District, Western Province, Kenya.
SUBJECTS: One thousand seven hundred and thirty eight school children aged 8-20 years randomly selected from those enrolled in standards 3-8 in 25 randomly selected primary schools.
RESULTS: Overall, 91.7% of children were infected with either hookworm, Ascaris lumbricoides, Trichuris trichiura or Schistosoma mansoni. Infection prevalence of each species varied considerably among schools, being most marked for S. mansoni, where prevalence was highest in lakeshore schools. Children were typically infected with two or more species of helminth. Infection intensity of each geohelminth species was higher in school children infected with multiple species than in school children with single species infections, and intensity increased with the number of concurrent infections.
CONCLUSION: Helminth infections are exceptionally common among school children in Busia district, thus confirming the good sense of the school-based approach adopted by the control programme. The study also shows that there is an association between concurrent infection and the intensity of infection, which may have consequences for nutritional and educational status.
Andrew Hall, Emily Bobrow, Simon Brooker, Matthew Jukes, Kate Nokes, Jane Lambo, Helen Guyatt, Don Bundy, Sam Adjei, Su-Tung Wen, Satoto, Hertanto Subagio, Mohammed Zen Rafiluddin, Ted Miguel, Sylvie Moulin, Joseph de Graft Johnson, Mary Mukaka, Nathalie Roschnik, Moussa Sacko, Anna Zacher, Bonifacio Mahumane, Charles Kihamia, Lillian Mwanri, Simon Tatala, Nicholas Lwambo, Julius Siza, Le Nguyen Bao Khanh, Ha Huy Khoi, and Nguyen Duy Toan
OBJECTIVE: To report on the haemoglobin concentrations and prevalence of anaemia in schoolchildren in eight countries in Africa and Asia.
DESIGN: Blood samples were collected during surveys of the health of schoolchildren as a part of programmes to develop school-based health services.
SETTING: Rural schools in Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Tanzania and Vietnam.
SUBJECTS: Nearly 14 000 children enrolled in basic education in three age ranges (7±11 years, 12±14 years and ≥15 years) which reflect the new UNICEF/WHO thresholds to define anaemia.
RESULTS: Anaemia was found to be a severe public health problem (defined as .40% anaemic) in five African countries for children aged 7±11 years and in four of the same countries for children aged 12±14 years. Anaemia was not a public health problem in the children studied in the two Asian countries. More boys than girls were anaemic, and children who enrolled late in school were more likely to be anaemic than children who enrolled closer to the correct age. The implications of the four new thresholds defining anaemia for school-age children are examined.
CONCLUSIONS: Anaemia is a significant problem in schoolchildren in sub-Saharan Africa. School-based health services which provide treatments for simple conditions that cause blood loss, such as worms, followed by multiple micronutrient supplements including iron, have the potential to provide relief from a large burden of anaemia.
The literature on the determinants of democratization was long dominated by a view that claimed a central role for economic development (“modernization”). Acemoglu et al. (2008, 2009) have recently challenged the robustness of empirical support for the modernization hypothesis. As an alternative they claim that democratization is likely to occur in moments of economic crisis. An article in a leading economics journal by Bruckner and Ciccone (2011) appears to offer strong support for this latter view; it claims that lagged adverse GDP shocks generated by poor rainfall generate “windows of opportunity” for democratization in contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa. In this paper, we present evidence that this provocative finding does not survive several sensible robustness checks, leading us to doubt if the paper offers new insights into the process of democratization.
This article draws on data from over 35,000 respondents in 22 public opinion surveys in 10 countries and finds strong evidence that ethnic identities in Africa are strengthened by exposure to political competition. In particular, for every month closer their country is to a competitive presidential election, survey respondents are 1.8 percentage points more likely to identify in ethnic terms. Using an innovative multinomial logit empirical methodology, we find that these shifts are accompanied by a corresponding reduction in the salience of occupational and class identities. Our findings lend support to situational theories of social identification and are consistent with the view that ethnic identities matter in Africa for instrumental reasons: because they are useful in the competition for political power.
We study the brutal 1991-2002 Sierra Leone civil war using nationally representative household data on conflict experiences, postwar economic outcomes, local politics and collective action. Individuals whose households directly experienced more intense war violence are robustly more likely to attend community meetings, more likely to join local political and community groups, and more likely to vote. Tests using prewar controls and alternative samples suggest that selection into victimization is unlikely to be driving the results. More speculatively, the findings could help partially explain the rapid postwar political and economic recoveries observed in Sierra Leone and after several other recent African civil wars.
Scholars have identified ethnic divisions as a leading cause of underdevelopment, due partially to their adverse effects on public goods. We investigate this issue in post-war Sierra Leone, one of the world's poorest and most ethnically diverse countries. To address concerns over endogenous local ethnic composition, we use an instrumental variables strategy using earlier census data on ethnicity and include several historical and geographic covariates. Perhaps surprisingly, we find that local diversity is not associated with worse public goods provision across multiple outcomes and specifications, with precisely estimated zeros. We investigate the role of historical factors in generating the findings.
