Essays in Labor and Development Economics: Albania, Senegal, and Ethiopia
Open AccessThis dissertation consists of three separate studies focusing on labor and development economics. The first chapter "Do remittances compensate for the negative impact of migration on children's schooling?" assesses the causal impact of remittances on school attendance for children ages 14-18. Drawing data from the 2008-09 Albania Demographic and Health Survey, the main objective is to understand the schooling choices of migrant households when faced with an abrupt shock to remittance inflows. Identification relies on the unexpected onset of the 2008 global financial crisis and the heterogeneous unemployment shocks which ensued across countries where Albanian migrants were living at the time. The findings show that parental absence where there are no remittances results in lower upper-secondary school attendance (ages 14 to 18). But where there is a transfer from the migrant, there is a positive effect on school attendance, with older children and those in more liquidity constrained (higher discount rate) households (poorer and rural households) gaining the most from the remittances. This study underscores the importance of disentangling the impacts of migration and remittances, and contributes to the literature by identifying the causal effect of remittances on schooling while exploiting a novel instrumental variable for receipt of remittances.The second chapter "Rainfall anomalies and children's health outcomes in semi-arid Senegal" examines the complexity of linkages between weather shocks and children's health outcomes. It contributes to the literature by examining primary source data from a large sample of farming households in semi-arid regions of Senegal. The analysis relies on the drought experienced across Senegal in 2014 and the variation in shock severity over the study sites. It assesses how crop production, crop diversity, and groundwater irrigation relate to food insecurity post shock. Estimates indicate that children are more likely to meet the threshold of a minimally diverse diet if the household uses groundwater irrigation to cultivate various vegetables and fruits. The underlying mechanisms between rainfall deviations from long-run normal and child health are production diversity, production value, and the disease environment. Children's dietary diversity is significantly and negatively associated with anemia.The third chapter "Bureaucrat time-use: Evidence from a survey experiment" is co-authored with Daniel Rogger (World Bank) and Ravi Somani (World Bank). The tasks public officials choose to spend their time on determines how their human capital impacts national development. Yet empirical evidence on the measurement and allocation of public officials’ time use is scarce. The study provides empirical evidence in this domain through a survey experiment with Ethiopian bureaucrats. It randomly tests alternative measures of bureaucratic time use by varying recall period, enumeration methodology and the degree of task detail in recall surveys. Relative to time-use diaries, it finds that the best performing survey modules differ by roughly a third of working time and that requesting more detailed breakdowns of time use significantly increases this disparity. It explores empirically how the allocation of time use correlates with individual characteristics, management practices, and service delivery outcomes.
- All rights reserved
Notice to Authors
If you are the author of this work and you have any questions about the information on this page, please use the Contact form to get in touch with us.