This paper estimates the hidden cost of informal redistribution in urban Senegal. It is based on a lab-in-the-field experiment combined with a small-scale randomized controlled trial. We show that two-thirds of the experiment participants are ready to forgo up to 14% of their lab gains to keep them private. When they are given the opportunity to hide, they decrease by 27% the share of gains they transfer to kin and increase health and personal expenses. This is the first paper to identify the individual cost of informal redistribution and to relate it to real-life resource-allocation decisions in a controlled setting.
We conducted an experiment in which we hired workers under different types of contracts to evaluate how flexible working time affects on-the-job productivity in a routine job. Our approach breaks down the global impact on productivity into sorting and behavioral effects. We find that all forms of working-time flexibility reduce the length of workers' breaks. For part-time work, these positive effects are globally counterbalanced. Yet arrangements that allow workers to decide when to start and stop working increase global productivity by as much as 50 percent, 40 percent of which is induced by sorting.
The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.
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