Behavioral development economics

Kremer, Michael; Rao, Gautam; Schilbach, Frank

doi:10.1016/bs.hesbe.2018.12.002

Cited by 137 publications

(123 citation statements)

References 308 publications

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“…Middleincome countries are also less productive relative to high-income countries based on hours worked compared to based on employment alone. 14 Our findings imply that development accounting rests even more on the residual TFP term once cross-country differences in hours are taken into consideration. This casts doubt on theories of development that operate through lower labor input in poorer countries.…”

Section: A Development Accountingmentioning

confidence: 73%

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How Do Hours Worked Vary with Income? Cross-Country Evidence and Implications

Bick

Fuchs‐Schündeln

Lagakos

2018

American Economic Review

139

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This paper builds a new internationally comparable database of hours worked to measure how hours vary with income across and within countries. We document that average hours worked per adult are substantially higher in low-income countries than in high-income countries. The pattern of decreasing hours with aggregate income holds for both men and women, for adults of all ages and education levels, and along both the extensive and intensive margin. Within countries, hours worked per worker are also decreasing in the individual wage for most countries, though in the richest countries, hours worked are flat or increasing in the wage. One implication of our findings is that aggregate productivity and welfare differences across countries are larger than currently thought. (JEL E23, E24, J22, J31, O11, O15)

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Section: A Development Accountingmentioning

confidence: 73%

“…1+ϕ . 14 Feenstra, Inklaar, and Timmer (2015) recommend using rgdpo rather than rgdpe for productivity comparisons across countries. Online Appendix Table C.5 shows that using rgdpo does not alter our conclusions.…”

Section: B Welfare Differences Across Countriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Do Hours Worked Vary with Income? Cross-Country Evidence and Implications

Bick

Fuchs‐Schündeln

Lagakos

2018

American Economic Review

139

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“…Another limitation is that we do not include all possible determinants of productivity, either as broad categories or specific indicators. For instance, we do not directly include geographic conditions, workforce demographics, income and wealth inequality, or firm-specific entrepreneurship, and managerial ability (Feyrer, 2007;Mastromarco and Zago, 2012;Kremer et al, 2019). We attenuate the potential problem by including country-specific effects, a reasonable strategy to control for productivity determinants that are persistent over time.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Productivity Growth: Patterns and Determinants “Across” the World

Kim

Loayza

2019

ECONOMIA

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This is the background paper for the productivity extension of the World Bank's Long-Term Growth Model (LTGM). Based on an extensive literature review, the paper identifies the main determinants of economic productivity as innovation, education, market efficiency, infrastructure, and institutions. Based on underlying proxies, the paper constructs indexes representing each of the main categories of productivity determinants and, combining them through principal component analysis, obtains an overall determinant index. This is done for every year in the three decades spanning 1985-2015 and for more than 100 countries. In parallel, the paper presents a measure of total factor productivity (TFP), largely obtained from the Penn World Table, and assesses the pattern of productivity growth across regions and income groups over the same sample. The paper then examines the relationship between the measures of TFP and its determinants. The variance of productivity growth is decomposed into the share explained by each of its main determinants, and the relationship between productivity growth and the overall determinant index is identified. The variance decomposition results show that the highest contributor among the determinants to the variance in TFP growth is market efficiency for Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries and education for developing countries in the most recent decade. The regression results indicate that, controlling for country-and time-specific effects, TFP growth has a positive and significant relationship with the proposed TFP determinant index and a negative relationship with initial TFP. This relationship is then used to provide a set of simulations on the potential path of TFP growth if certain improvements on TFP determinants are achieved. The paper presents and discusses some of these simulations for groups of countries by geographic region and income level. In addition, as a country-specific illustration, the paper presents simulations on the potential path of TFP growth for Peru under various scenarios. An accompanying Excelbased toolkit, linked to the LTGM, provides a larger set of simulations and scenario analysis at the country level for the next few decades.

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“…In each week, about one-half of the individuals chose sobriety incentives over receiving Rs 120 unconditionally. Strikingly, about one-third of individuals in the Choice Group preferred sobriety incentives over receiving Rs 150 13 Among the six individuals with total savings above Rs 200,000 in the baseline survey, four were in the Choice Group, and two were in the Incentive Group. Only two of them, both in the Choice Group, saved more than the average study participant over the course of the study.…”

Section: Demand For Commitment To Sobrietymentioning

confidence: 96%

“…Third, there is no apparent relationship between reported savings in the baseline survey and savings at the study office. 13…”

Section: Sample Characteristics and Randomization Checksmentioning

confidence: 99%

Alcohol and Self-Control: A Field Experiment in India

Schilbach

2019

American Economic Review

Self Cite

129

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This paper studies alcohol consumption among low-income workers in India. In a 3-week field experiment, the majority of 229 cycle-rickshaw drivers were willing to forgo substantial monetary payments in order to set incentives for themselves to remain sober, thus exhibiting demand for commitment to sobriety. Randomly receiving sobriety incentives significantly reduced daytime drinking while leaving overall drinking unchanged. I find no evidence of higher daytime sobriety significantly changing labor supply, productivity, or earnings. In contrast, increasing sobriety raised savings by 50 percent, an effect that does not appear to be solely explained by changes in income net of alcohol expenditures. (JEL C93, D14, I12, J22, J24, J31, O12)

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Behavioral development economics

Cited by 137 publications

References 308 publications

How Do Hours Worked Vary with Income? Cross-Country Evidence and Implications

How Do Hours Worked Vary with Income? Cross-Country Evidence and Implications

Productivity Growth: Patterns and Determinants “Across” the World

Alcohol and Self-Control: A Field Experiment in India

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