Matching and migration: lessons from a resettlement programme in Indonesia

The success of rural relocation and resettlement programmes may be dependent on the transferability of migrants’ skills and experiences to their destinations. New findings from an Indonesian study suggest that relocation programmes should consider providing agricultural extension services to ensure migrants adapt and cope in new environments

Improving Educational Quality Through Enhancing Community Participation: Results From a Randomized Field Experiment in Indonesia

Education ministries worldwide have promoted community engagement through school committees. This paper presents results from a large field experiment testing alternative approaches to strengthen school committees in public schools in Indonesia. Two novel treatments focus on institutional reforms. First, some schools were randomly assigned to implement elections of school committee members. Another treatment facilitated joint planning meetings between the school committee and the village council (linkage). Two more common treatments, grants and training, provided resources to existing school committees. We find that institutional reforms, in particular linkage and elections combined with linkage, are most cost-effective at improving learning

Reforming Policies for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in Indonesia

Including micro firms, SMEs are responsible for more than 97 percent of total employment in Indonesia and represent 99 percent of all firms. The Indonesian government has tried to assist SMEs through programmes, such as subsidised credit, one-stop shops to lower business registration costs and government-sponsored trade fairs. However, there is little evidence on how effective these programmes are or on ways to improve government policies aimed at helping SMEs. We conducted structured interviews with 192 firms across five provinces in Indonesia to investigate the constraints that firms face and how existing programmes do – or do not – help reduce these constraints. We conclude the report with policy recommendations targeted at the Indonesian government and other stakeholders, focusing on the importance of credit and on the need to remove information barriers

Tiered housing allocation with pre-announced rankings: an experimental analysis *

Abstract We study in the laboratory a variant of the house allocation with existing tenants problem where subjects are partitioned into tiers with hierarchical privileges, and they know their position in the priority queue before making their decision. We evaluate the performance of the modified versions of three well-known mechanisms: Top Trading Cycle, Gale-Shapley and Random Serial Dictatorship with Squatting Rights. For all three mechanisms, we find low rates of participation (around 40%), high rates of truth-telling conditional on participation (around 90%), high proportions of fair allocations (above 90%) and significant efficiency losses. We also observe differences across mechanisms: Random Serial Dictatorship is ranked highest in efficiency and Top Trading Cycle is ranked lowest in fairness. We then show that position in the queue has a positive and significant impact on participation whereas tier has lit- * Address for correspondence: Juan D. Carrillo, Department of Economics, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, emails: <[email protected]> and <[email protected]>. We thank Ricardo Alonso, Manuel Castro, Arya Gaduh, Brijesh Pinto, Smriti Sharma and the audience at various seminars for helpful comments, and Chris Crabbe for developing the software. We also thank the LUSK center for Real Estate and the Microsoft Corporation for financial support. All remaining errors are our own. tle effect on behavior. Finally, the individual analysis reveals that the majority of subjects who do not play according to the theory still follow discernible patterns of participation and preference revelation

Integration and Trade Specialization in East Asia

The 1990s saw East Asia becoming more integrated as trade barriers fell, trade intensity and intra-industry trade increased, and production networks formed. This greater integration has resulted in changing patterns of trade specialization in the region, as different economies adjust. Some economies (especially resource-rich economies) maintain their top trade-specialty products, while others move towards higher-productivity manufacturing goods. Nonetheless, we observe in all East Asian countries in our study a trend towards specializing in products with higher sophistication and technological intensity. Meanwhile, our examination of the product specialization mobility and our empirical analysis suggest no indication of East Asian countries being in a "low-productivity specialization trap" which would disable them from shifting their specialization towards higher-productivity and higher-value goods.trade specialization, regional integration, East Asia

Replication Data for: Remittances, Child Labor, and Schooling: Evidence from Colombia

The replication files for Remittances, Child Labor, and Schooling: Evidence from Colombia

Integration and Trade Specialization in East Asia

The 1990s saw East Asia becoming more integrated as trade barriers fell, trade intensity and intra-industry trade increased, and production networks formed. This greater integration has resulted in changing patterns of trade specialization in the region, as different economies adjust. Some economies (especially resource-rich economies) maintain their top trade-specialty products, while others move towards higher-productivity manufacturing goods. Nonetheless, we observe in all East Asian countries in our study a trend towards specializing in products with higher sophistication and technological intensity. Meanwhile, our examination of the product specialization mobility and our empirical analysis suggest no indication of East Asian countries being in a "low-productivity specialization trap" which would disable them from shifting their specialization towards higher-productivity and higher-value goods.trade specialization, Regional Integration, East Asia

Skill Transferability, Migration, and Development: Evidence From Population Resettlement in Indonesia

We use a natural experiment in Indonesia to provide causal evidence on the role of location-specific human capital and skill transferability in shaping the spatial distribution of productivity. From 1979–1988, the Transmigration Program relocated two million migrants from rural Java and Bali to new rural settlements in the Outer Islands. Villages assigned migrants from regions with more similar agroclimatic endowments exhibit higher rice productivity and nighttime light intensity one to two decades later. We find some evidence of migrants’ adaptation to agroclimatic change. Overall, our results suggest that regional productivity differences may overstate the potential gains from migration. (JEL J24, J43, J61, O13, O15, Q13, R23

Are Consumers Willing to Pay for Conservation Agriculture in Low-Income Countries? The Case of White Maize in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Dear Friends, The year 2015 was exciting and productive for the UMass Amherst Libraries. We hope you enjoy this unique progress report, a customized deck of playing cards. Each card illustrates one of the many ways the Libraries fulfill our mission to support teaching, learning, and research. Many of these accomplishments would not have been possible without financial support from Friends like you. With most sincere thanks, Jay Schafer Director of UMass Amherst Librarie