Who are Russia’s Entrepreneurs?

Simeon Djankov, Edward Miguel, Yingyi Qian, Gerard Roland, and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya
2005
Other
Paper Who are Russias Entrepreneurs.pdf

Social scientists studying entrepreneurship have emphasized three distinct sets of variables: the institutional environment, sociological variables, and personal and psychological characteristics. We are conducting surveys in five large developing and transition economies to better understand entrepreneurship. In this short paper, using over 2,000 interviews from a pilot study in Russia, we find evidence that the three sets of variables matter: perceptions of the local institutional environment, social network effects, and individual characteristics are all important in determining entrepreneurial behavior.

Does Industrialization Build or Destroy Social Networks?

Edward Miguel, Paul Gertler, and David I. Levine
2006
Other
Paper Does Industrialization Build or Destroy Social Networks.pdf

This article estimates the relationship between changes in industrialization and changes in social networks measures in Indonesia during 1985-97 using repeated cross sections of nationally representative surveys. We analyze a rich set of social interaction measures, including various measures of voluntary associational activity, levels of trust, and informal cooperation. Districts that experienced rapid industrialization showed significant increases in most measures of social interaction. However, districts that neighbor rapidly industrializing areas exhibited high rates of out?migration, significantly fewer community credit cooperatives, and a reduction in "mutual cooperation" as assessed by village elders. Manufacturing growth can be thought of as a proxy for income growth here. The findings are contrary to several recent claims regarding the role of social capital in economic development.

Deworming and Development: Asking the Right Questions, Asking the Questions Right

Donald A. P. Bundy, Michael Kremer, Hoyt Bleakley, Matthew C. H. Jukes, and Edward Miguel
2009
African DevelopmentHealthEducation and Human CapitalResearch Methodology
Paper Deworming and Development.pdf

Two billion people are infected with intestinal worms. In many areas, the majority of schoolchildren are infected, and the World Health Organization (WHO) has called for school-based mass deworming. The key area for debate is not whether deworming medicine works–in fact, the medical literature finds that treatment is highly effective, and thus the standard of care calls for treating any patient known to harbor an infection. As the authors of the Cochrane systematic review point out, a critical issue in evaluating current soil-transmitted helminth policies is whether the benefits of deworming exceed the costs or whether it would be more prudent to use the money for other purposes. While in general we think the Cochrane approach is very valuable, we argue below that many of the underlying studies of deworming suffer from three critical methodological problems: treatment externalities in dynamic infection systems, inadequate measurement of cognitive outcomes and school attendance, and sample attrition. We then argue that the currently available evidence from studies that address these issues is consistent with the consensus view expressed by other reviews and by policymakers that deworming is a very cost-effective way to increase school participation and has a high benefit to cost ratio.

Anemia and School Participation

Gustavo J. Bobonis, Edward Miguel, and Charu Puri-Sharma
2006
HealthEducation and Human Capital
Paper Anemia and School Participation.pdf

Anemia is among the most widespread health problems for children in developing countries. This paper evaluates the impact of a randomized health intervention delivering iron supplementation and deworming drugs to Indian preschool children. At baseline, 69 percent were anemic and 30 percent had intestinal worm infections. Weight increased among assisted children, and preschool-participation rates rose by 5.8 percentage points, reducing absenteeism by one-fifth. Gains were especially pronounced for those most likely to be anemic at baseline. Results contribute to a growing view that school-based health programs are an effective way of promoting school attendance in less developed countries.

War and Institutions: New Evidence from Sierra Leone

John Bellows and Edward Miguel
2006
African DevelopmentPolitical Economy and Conflict
Paper War and Instititions.pdf
Scholars of economic development have argued that war can have adverse impacts on later economic performance: war destroys physical capital and infrastructure and disrupts human capital accumulation, and it may also damage institutions by creating political instability, destroying the social fabric and endangering civil liberties (World Bank, 2003).
Understanding war’s impact on development is particularly important for Sub-Saharan Africa, where two-thirds of all nations suffered from armed conflict during the 1980s and 1990s. The proliferation of armed conflict in the world’s poorest region begs the question of what role conflict may be playing in Africa’s disappointing economic performance.
Yet the net long-run effects of war are ambiguous from the point of view of economic theory. To the extent that war impacts are limited to the destruction of capital, the neoclassical model predicts rapid economic growth postwar, converging back to steady-state growth. Several recent papers that study war impacts—including in Japan (Donald R. Davis and David E. Weinstein, 2002) and Vietnam (Miguel and Gerard Roland, 2005)—find few persistent local impacts of U.S. bombing, with heavily bombed areas experiencing rapid recovery to prewar population and economic trends.This is consistent with the neoclassical model if war’s main consequence is to destroy capital.
War could also affect long-run growth— either positively or negatively—by modifying the scale parameter in the neoclassical growth model. For example, while the World Bank (2003) argues that war has adverse institutional consequences, Charles H. Tilly shows how war promoted state formation and nation building in Europe historically, ultimately strengthening institutions (Tilly, 1975).
We study the aftermath of the recent civil conflict in Sierra Leone. One notable aspect of this project is the extensive household data for Sierra Leone on conflict experiences and on local institutions. Our results are complementary to the other recent studies mentioned above, none of which examines institutional impacts.

The Illusion of Sustainability

Michael Kremer and Edward Miguel
2007
African DevelopmentHealthEducation and Human Capital
Paper Illusion of Sustainability.pdf

We use a randomized evaluation of a Kenyan deworming program to estimate peer effects in technology adoption and to shed light on foreign aid donors' movement towards sustainable community provision of public goods. Deworming is a public good since much of its social benefit comes through reduced disease transmission. People were less likely to take deworming if their direct first-order or indirect second-order social contacts were exposed to deworming. Efforts to replace subsidies with sustainable worm control measures were ineffective: a drug cost-recovery program reduced take-up 80 percent; health education did not affect behavior, and a mobilization intervention failed. At least in this context, it appears unrealistic for a one-time intervention to generate sustainable voluntary local public goods provision.

The Electoral Cost of War: Iraq Casualties and the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election

David Karol and Edward Miguel
2007
OtherPolitical Economy and Conflict
Paper Electoral Cost of War.pdf

Many contend that President Bush's reelection and increased vote share in 2004 prove that the Iraq War was either electorally irrelevant or aided him. We present contrary evidence. Focusing on the change in Bush's 2004 showing compared to 2000, we discover that Iraq casualties from a state significantly depressed the President's vote share there. We infer that were it not for the approximately 10,000 U.S. dead and wounded by Election Day, Bush would have won nearly 2% more of the national popular vote, carrying several additional states and winning decisively. Such a result would have been close to forecasts based on models that did not include war impacts. Casualty effects are largest in "blue" states. In contrast, National Guard/Reservist call-ups had no impact beyond the main casualty effect. We discuss implications for both the election modeling enterprise and the debate over the "casualty sensitivity" of the U.S. public.

Corruption, Norms and Legal Enforcement: Evidence from Diplomatic Parking Tickets

Raymond Fisman and Edward Miguel
2007
OtherPolitical Economy and Conflict
Paper Corruption Norms and Legal Enforcement.pdf

We study cultural norms and legal enforcement in controlling corruption by analyzing the parking behavior of United Nations officials in Manhattan. Until 2002, diplomatic immunity protected UN diplomats from parking enforcement actions, so diplomats' actions were constrained by cultural norms alone. We find a strong effect of corruption norms: diplomats from high-corruption countries (on the basis of existing survey-based indices) accumulated significantly more unpaid parking violations. In 2002, enforcement authorities acquired the right to confiscate diplomatic license plates of violators. Unpaid violations dropped sharply in response. Cultural norms and (particularly in this context) legal enforcement are both important determinants of corruption.

Orphans and Schooling in Africa: A Longitudinal Analysis

David K. Evans and Edward Miguel
2007
African DevelopmentHealthEducation and Human Capital
Paper Orphans and Schooling.pdf

AIDS deaths could have a major impact on economic development by affecting the human capital accumulation of the next generation. We estimate the impact of parent death on primary school participation using an unusual five-year panel data set of over 20,000 Kenyan children. There is a substantial decrease in school participation following a parent death and a smaller drop before the death (presumably due to pre-death morbidity). Estimated impacts are smaller in specifications without individual fixed effects, suggesting that estimates based on cross-sectional data are biased toward zero. Effects are largest for children whose mothers died and, in a novel finding, for those with low baseline academic performance.

Incentives to Learn

Michael Kremer, Edward Miguel, and Rebecca Thorton
2009
African DevelopmentHealthEducation and Human Capital
Paper Incentives to Learn.pdf

We study a randomized evaluation of a merit scholarship program in which Kenyan girls who scored well on academic exams had school fees paid and received a grant. Girls showed substantial exam score gains, and teacher attendance improved in program schools. There were positive externalities for girls with low pretest scores, who were unlikely to win a scholarship. We see no evidence for weakened intrinsic motivation. There were heterogeneous program effects. In one of the two districts, there were large exam gains and positive spillovers to boys. In the other, attrition complicates estimation, but we cannot reject the hypothesis of no program effect.

Warming Increases the Risk of Civil War in Africa

Marshall B. Burke, Edward Miguel, Shanker Satyanath, John A. Dykema, and David B. Lobell
2009
African DevelopmentEnvironment and ClimatePolitical Economy and Conflict
Paper Warming Increases the Risk of Civil Conflict in Africa.pdf

Armed conflict within nations has had disastrous humanitarian consequences throughout much of the world. Here we undertake the first comprehensive examination of the potential impact of global climate change on armed conflict in sub-Saharan Africa. We find strong historical linkages between civil war and temperature in Africa, with warmer years leading to significant increases in the likelihood of war. When combined with climate model projections of future temperature trends, this historical response to temperature suggests a roughly 54% increase in armed conflict incidence by 2030, or an additional 393,000 battle deaths if future wars are as deadly as recent wars. Our results suggest an urgent need to reform African governments' and foreign aid donors' policies to deal with rising temperatures.