Essays in development economics

This thesis contains three chapters that fall under the broad banner of development economics, with a particular focus on the study of mechanisms and strategies that improve public goods delivery. The first chapter studies the role of financial incentives as signals of job attributes when these are unknown to potential applicants. I create experimental variation in expected earnings and use it to estimate the effect of financial incentives on candidates’ perception of a newly created health worker position in Uganda and, through this, on the size and composition of the applicant pool. I find that more lucrative positions are perceived as entailing a lower positive externality for the community, and discourage agents with strong prosocial preferences from applying. While higher financial incentives attract more applicants and increase the probability of filling a vacancy, they hamper retention and performance. This is because the signal they convey reduces the ability to recruit the most socially motivated agents, who are found to stay longer on the job and to perform better. The second chapter analyzes the role of social connections on the targeting choices of delivery agents. During the expansion of an agriculture extension program in Uganda, we randomly selected one delivery agent out of two eligible candidates per community. We find that social connections matter: relative to farmers connected only to the non-selected candidate, those connected only to the selected delivery agent benefit more from the program. They are indeed more likely to receive advice, training and more likely to adopt improved seeds, a new beneficial technology. We show that these results are consistent with delivery agents (a) putting positive weight on the utility of farmers connected to them (altruism) and (b) putting a negative weight on the utility of farmers connected to the rival candidate (spite). This sheds light on the importance of both positive and negative social preferences in shaping program delivery. The third chapter studies the effect of movement restrictions on education. The evidence is based on the construction of the West Bank Separation Barrier in 2003. The exposure of an individual to the Barrier is determined both by her locality of residence and by whether she was in school or about to start school when the Barrier was built. Using a difference-indifferences approach, I find that movement restrictions increase the probability of dropping out from elementary and preparatory school by 3.7 and 6 percentage points respectively, i.e. a 50% increase relative to localities with no movement restrictions, while the proportion of children who have never attended school increased by 3.6 percentage points. Among all households, the poorest ones are the most affected, indicating that movement restrictions not only deteriorate the average education level but also increase income inequality

Social incentives, delivery agents, and the effectiveness of development interventions

There has been a rise in the use of the local delivery model for development interventions, where local agents are hired as intermediaries to target benefits to potential beneficiaries. We study this model in the context of a standard agricultural extension intervention in Uganda. We document a trade-off between coverage and targeting: delivery agents treat more farmers when they have a greater number of social ties, but they are significantly more likely to target their nonpoor ties. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for the design of the local delivery model for antipoverty interventions

Targeted haplotyping in pharmacogenomics using Oxford Nanopore Technologies’ adaptive sampling

Pharmacogenomics (PGx) studies the impact of interindividual genomic variation on drug response, allowing the opportunity to tailor the dosing regimen for each patient. Current targeted PGx testing platforms are mainly based on microarray, polymerase chain reaction, or short-read sequencing. Despite demonstrating great value for the identification of single nucleotide variants (SNVs) and insertion/deletions (INDELs), these assays do not permit identification of large structural variants, nor do they allow unambiguous haplotype phasing for star-allele assignment. Here, we used Oxford Nanopore Technologies’ adaptive sampling to enrich a panel of 1,036 genes with well-documented PGx relevance extracted from the Pharmacogenomics Knowledge Base (PharmGKB). By evaluating concordance with existing truth sets, we demonstrate accurate variant and star-allele calling for five Genome in a Bottle reference samples. We show that up to three samples can be multiplexed on one PromethION flow cell without a significant drop in variant calling performance, resulting in 99.35% and 99.84% recall and precision for the targeted variants, respectively. This work advances the use of nanopore sequencing in clinical PGx settings

Nouveau concept de carter de boite de vitesses allégé en aluminium et plastique en utilisant l'optimisation topologique multimatériau

Lightweight materials and innovative designs have always been an important topic in industrial product development. Among others, constraints on energy consumption and CO2 emissions, efforts to improve resource efficiency as well the continuous search for increasing the range of EVs and their dynamic behavior have greatly stressed the importance of this topic over the last years in automotive. A dedicated Interreg project entitled LightVehicle 2025 (LV2025) has been launched in the Euregio Meuse Rhine (EMR) region since 2018 to develop four demonstrators exhibiting the best technologies mastered in the Region in this field. The project partners have selected four demonstrators revisiting typical vehicle components to highlight lightweight technologies. A consortium of industrial partners has been built around each demonstrator to support all steps of the component redesign from preliminary design, virtual prototyping and simulation, pre series prototyping and testing, virtual manufacturing and mass production. The present work focuses on the redesign of an electric vehicle gearbox rear cover. Traditionally produced by aluminum and die casting, the gearbox cover offers a good opportunity to showcase the lightweighting potential in powertrain components. A two materials design (aluminum and plastic) is explored to take advantage of the complementary properties of the several materials. A multi-material topology optimization (TO) is used to exhibit innovative designs. Several TO results, with different combinations of volume fractions of each material, with or without stiffeners, give a valuable insight on how the new part should be redesigned. Several alternative layouts are also proposed. The metallic material is used to act as stiffness skeleton while plastic material offers skin functions as oil containment. The plastic material used in this study belongs in the family of styrene maleic anhydride (SMA) copolymers and is glass fiber filled. In a second step, injection insert molding is chosen to produce the new concepts based on the TO results. Given the fabrication process, a concurrent work between designers and fabrication experts is carried out to adapt the topology optimized layout to cope with the limitations of plastic injection process. Appropriate mechanical interlocks are added to ensure the impeccable connection of the two materials. The injection insert molding is simulated while the filling and warpage behavior is investigated. Subsequently, a final structural analysis on the resulting part is performed as a final assessment stage, taking into consideration the simulation findings such as the real fiber orientations. Finally, the weight reduction achieved with this new concept is well within the -25% as requested by the target of the project. In addition, a LCA analysis is also performed showing that the new multi material design falls well over the expected 25% reduction of the CO2 emissions too.Lightvehicle 202

Financial incentives as signals: experimental evidence from the recruitment of village promoters in Uganda

I study the role of financial incentives as signals of job characteristics when these are unknown to potential applicants. To this end, I create experimental variation in expected earnings and use that to estimate the effect of financial incentives on candidates’ perception of a brand-new health-promoter position in Uganda and on the resulting size and composition of the applicant pool. I find that more lucrative positions are perceived as entailing a lower positive externality for the commu- nity and discourage agents with strong prosocial preferences from applying. While higher financial incentives attract more applicants and increase the probability of filling a vacancy, the signal they convey reduces the ability to recruit the most socially motivated agents, who are found to stay longer on the job and to perform better

L'errance féminine: discours et parcours de femmes en situation précaire

L’errance est un phénomène auquel nous sommes tous régulièrement confrontés. Il suffit de marcher dans la rue ou de se rendre dans une gare pour être confrontés à la pauvreté de certaines personnes. Ce fléau ne cesse d’augmenter au sein de nos sociétés occidentales. Comment un si grand nombre de personnes se sont-elles retrouvées dans une situation de précarité financière et sociale ? Comment comprendre qu’elles ne se sortent pas d’une situation de désaffiliation sociale ? Et si l’errance touchait différemment les personnes en fonction de leur sexe : les hommes et les femmes vivent-ils de la même façon une même situation ? A travers le discours de personnes en situation précaire, nous tenterons de mettre en évidence les éléments spécifiques à l’errance au féminin. Les femmes présentent-elles des particularités dans leur trajectoire de vie qui seraient spécifiques ou l’errance touche-t-elle pareillement hommes et femmes, indifféremment du sexe ?Master [120] en criminologie, Université catholique de Louvain, 201

Enhancing the Internet of Things Architecture with Flow Semantics

Internet of Things (‘IoT’) systems are complex, asynchronous solutions often comprised of various software and hardware components developed in isolation of each other. These components function with different degrees of reliability and performance over an inherently unreliable network, the Internet. Many IoT systems are developed within silos that do not provide the ability to communicate or be interoperable with other systems and platforms. Literature exists on how these systems should be designed, how they should interoperate, and how they could be improved, but practice does not always consult literature. The work brings together a proposed reference architecture for the IoT and engineering practices for flow semantics found in existing literature with a commercial implementation of an IoT platform. It demonstrates that the proposed IoT reference architecture and flow-service-quality engineering practices when integrated together can produce a more robust system with increased functionality and interoperability. It shows how such practices can be implemented into a commercial solution, and explores the value provided to the system when implemented. This work contributes to the current understanding of how complex IoT systems can be developed to be more reliable and interoperable using reference architectures and flow semantics. The work highlights the value of integration of academic solutions with commercial implementations of complex systems

Analisi Mutazionale dei geni KRas e BRAF su prelievi istologici differenti di carcinoma del colon provenienti dallo stesso paziente

1. RIASSUNTO Introduzione Nei paesi occidentali il tumore del colon-retto è uno dei più diffusi e rappresenta la terza causa di morte dovuta a neoplasie maligne. Sebbene negli ultimi anni si è assistito ad un aumento dell’incidenza dei tumori del colon-retto, è stata comunque riscontrata una concomitante diminuzione della mortalità ad esso dovuta, attribuibile soprattutto ad una adeguata prevenzione, ad una diagnosi precoce e all’utilizzo di terapie farmacologiche mirate, il cui sviluppo è stato possibile grazie ad una conoscenza più approfondita della biologia di tali tumori. In particolare, negli ultimi anni, per il trattamento dei tumori del colon-retto, è stata messa a punto una strategia terapeutica basata sulla somministrazione di anticorpi monoclonali (mAb) rivolti verso il recettore per il fattore di crescita epiteliale (EGFR). Tale recettore controlla la cascata di trasduzione del segnale Ras-RAF-MAPKasi e mediante l’attivazione di diversi effettori molecolari, tra cui KRas e BRAF, regola numerosi processi cellulari quali la crescita, la differenziazione, la migrazione cellulare e l’apoptosi. Numerose evidenze sperimentali hanno dimostrato che alterazioni a carico del recettore EGFR e/o degli effettori da esso attivati sono coinvolte nell’iniziazione e nella progressione tumorale promuovendo meccanismi di resistenza all’apoptosi, proliferazione cellulare, angiogenesi e processi di metastatizzazione. In recenti studi è stato osservato che il trattamento con mAb anti-EGFR è efficace soltanto nel 10-20% dei casi e la resistenza a tale trattamento è stata associata alla presenza di mutazioni a carico dei geni KRas e BRAF che determinano l’attivazione costitutiva delle proteine da essi codificate, con conseguente induzione della cascata Ras-RAF-MAP-Kasi indipendente dalla stimolazione del recettore EGFR. In particolare le mutazioni di KRas e BRAF sono state descritte con una percentuale pari al 30-40% e 5-15% rispettivamente. La determinazione dello stato mutazionale di tali geni ha, dunque, assunto un ruolo essenziale nell’identificazione dei pazienti affetti da carcinoma al colon-retto che possono essere trattati. Obiettivo Per la diagnosi istologica dei tumori del colon il campionamento del pezzo operatorio viene eseguito effettuando 3 prelievi in diverse aree stabilite della massa tumorale. Lo scopo del mio lavoro è stato, dunque, quello di verificare se l’analisi mutazionale effettuata su un unico prelievo possa essere sufficiente a definire lo stato mutazionale del tumore nel suo complesso. Materiali e metodi L’analisi mutazionale dei codoni 12 e 13 del gene KRas e dell’esone 15 del gene BRAF è stata eseguita su prelievi effettuati in tre regioni differenti dello stesso tumore. Tale analisi è stata eseguita su DNA estratto mediante microdissezione manuale da tessuto tumorale del colon fissato in formalina e incluso in paraffina (FFPE) mediante le tecniche di PCR, SSCP e sequenziamento genomico diretto. Risultati L’analisi mutazionale dei codoni 12 e 13 dell’esone 2 del gene KRas e dell’esone 15 del gene BRAF è stata eseguita su 20 casi, per ciascuno dei quali sono stati analizzati tre prelievi. Dall’analisi mutazionale di KRas, dei 20 casi di carcinoma colorettale analizzati, 14 (70%; 14/20) sono risultati essere wild-type nei tre prelievi esaminati, mentre 5 casi (25%; 5/20) sono risultati essere mutati, in tutti e tre i prelievi. In particolare, di questi ultimi, 4 (80%; 4/5) sono risultati essere mutati a carico del codone 12 per il quale sono state riscontrate le mutazioni G12V e G12D in uno (25%; 1/4) e tre casi (75%; 3/4), rispettivamente; mentre un caso (20%; 1/5) presentava la mutazione G13D a carico del codone 13. In uno di questi 20 casi (5%; 1/20) per ciascun prelievo è stato osservato uno stato mutazionale differente e nello specifico un prelievo è risultato essere wild-type, uno mutato G12V, mentre il terzo è risultato essere mutato per il codone 13 (G13D). Dall’analisi mutazionale dell’esone 15 del gene BRAF per ciascun caso è stata osservata la concordanza dello stato mutazionale nei tre prelievi, in particolare 19 casi dei 20 analizzati sono risultati essere wild-type, mentre in un caso è stata riscontrata la mutazione V600E. Conclusioni Mentre i dati ottenuti dall’analisi mutazionale del gene BRAF hanno dimostrato che l’analisi eseguita su un unico prelievo è sufficiente a definire lo stato mutazionale di tale gene nell’intero tumore, dai risultati ottenuti dall’analisi mutazionale del gene KRas sembrerebbe, invece, che l’analisi molecolare eseguita su un unico prelievo non sia sufficiente a definire lo stato mutazionale del tumore nel suo complesso

Leader selection and service delivery in community groups: experimental evidence from Uganda

In developing countries, NGOs and Governments often rely on local community-based groups for the delivery of financial and public services. This paper provides causal evidence of how the design of rules used for group leader selection affects leader identity and shapes group service delivery. In collaboration with the NGO BRAC, we randomly assigned newly-formed Savings and Loan Groups to select their leaders using either (i) a procedure in which final outcomes are decided in a public discussion or (ii) a procedure in which final outcomes are decided in a private vote. Leaders selected with a private vote are found to be less positively selected on socioeconomic characteristics than those elected in the public procedure, and at the same time more representative of regular group members. Furthermore, selecting more representative leaders—through a private vote—results in groups that are more inclusive towards poor members by giving them more credit and retaining them longer. Three years after their creation, private vote groups are more inclusive than public discussion groups, without being less economically efficient