Mobile Money and School Participation: Evidence from Africa

AbstractThis paper shows that mobile money technology—an electronic wallet service that allows users to deposit, transfer, and receive money using their mobile phones—is positively correlated with increased school participation of children in school age. By using data from 4 African countries, we argue that, by reducing transaction costs, and by making it easier and less expensive to receive remittances, mobile money reduces the need for coping strategies that are detrimental to child development, such as withdrawing children from school and sending them to work. We find that mobile money increases the chances of children attending school. This finding is robust to different empirical models. In a nutshell, our results show that 1 million children could start attending school in low-income countries if mobile money was available to all

US foreign aid restrictions and maternal and children’s health: evidence from the “Mexico City Policy”

Although family planning services are crucial for global health and achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, their funding remains controversial. We document the health consequences of the “Mexico City Policy” (MCP), which restricts US funding for abortion-related activities worldwide. Since its enactment in 1985, the MCP has been enforced only under Republican administrations and quickly rescinded when a Democrat wins the presidency. Our analysis shows that the MCP makes it harder for women to get information on and support for reproductive health and is associated with higher maternal and child mortality rates and HIV rates worldwide. We estimate that reinstating the MCP between 2017 and 2021 resulted in approximately 108,000 maternal and child deaths and 360,000 new HIV infections

Reliance on scientists and experts during an epidemic: Evidence from the COVID-19 outbreak in Italy

Research suggests trust in experts and authorities are important correlates of compliance with public health measures during infectious disease outbreaks. Empirical evidence on the dynamics of reliance on scientists and public health authorities during the early phases of an epidemic outbreak is limited. We examine these processes during the COVID-19 outbreak in Italy by leveraging data from Twitter and two online surveys, including a survey experiment. We find that reliance on experts followed a curvilinear path. Both Twitter and survey data showed initial increases in information-seeking from expert sources in the three weeks after the detection of the first case. Consistent with these increases, knowledge about health information linked to COVID-19 and support for containment measures was widespread, and better knowledge was associated with stronger support for containment policies. Both knowledge and containment support were positively associated with trust in science and public health authorities. However, in the third week after the outbreak, we detected a slowdown in responsiveness to experts. These processes were corroborated with a survey experiment, which showed that those holding incorrect beliefs about COVID-19 gave no greater – or even lower – importance to information when its source was stated as coming from experts than when the source was unstated. Our results suggest weakened trust in public health authorities with prolonged exposure to the epidemic as a potential mechanism for this effect. Weakened responsiveness to expert sources may increase susceptibility to misinformation and our results call for efforts to sustain trust in adapting public health response

Mobile phones, digital inequality, and fertility: Longitudinal evidence from Malawi

We focus on the relationship between mobile phone ownership and childbearing in south- ern Malawi, showing that mobile phone acquisition is associated with reductions in ideal family size and lower overall parity among phone-owning women compared to their phone-less counterparts

Essays on Development Economics

Questa tesi utilizza metodologie differenti al fine di esplorare argomenti generalmente ascritti all'economia dello sviluppo. Il primo capitolo discute la letteratura sul capitale sociale scomponendolo nel suo componente strutturale, le reti, e cognitivo, la fiducia. Ogni componente è a sua volta scomposto in diverse sotto-dimensioni una delle quali, il particolarismo, è utilizzato nel secondo capitolo, sia a livello teorico che empirico, come determinante di forme di corruzione collusiva. Come previsto dalla teoria, il particolarismo ha un effetto positivo e causale sulla probabilità di offrire una tangente. Il terzo capitolo valuta l'impatto di un progetto di estensione agricola realizzato in Etiopia, volto ad introdurre la coltivazione di nuovi prodotti ortofrutticoli insieme ad alcune tecniche e strumenti innovativi. Empiricamente si utilizzano gli strumenti della valutazione d’impatto combinando confronti tra villaggi, attraverso una stima difference-in-differences, con una comparazione all'interno del villaggio usando uno studio controllato randomizzato. I risultati indicano che il progetto ha contribuito alla diversificazione produttiva ma non ha influenzato i ricavi ottenuti dalla vendita dei prodotti ortofrutticoli e, di conseguenza, il benessere delle famiglie. Il quarto capitolo mostra come meccanismi incentivati sufficientemente simili elicitino decisioni correlate in termini di avversione al rischio solo quando si tengono in considerazione altri atteggiamenti relativi al rischio. Inoltre si studia la correlazione tra l'avversione al rischio riportata e l'avversione al rischio ottenuta tramite lotterie. I risultati suggeriscono una misurata validità esterna dei due metodi studiati.This dissertation makes use of several methodologies to explore topics ascribed to the field of development economics. Chapter 1 reviews the literature on social capital by presenting a decomposition of trust and networks -- the cognitive and the structural component of social capital, respectively--, in several sub-dimensions. One of this dimension is used in chapter 2 where we investigate, both theoretically and empirically, the role played by the cultural norm of particularism, as opposed to universalism, for collusive bribery. Consistent with the theory, particularism is found to have a positive causal effect on the probability of offering a bribe. Chapter 3 assesses the impact of a small-scale agricultural extension project implemented in rural Ethiopia aimed at introducing the cultivation of horticultural gardens. Empirically, a mixed impact evaluation design is used combining across-villages comparisons, through difference-in-differences estimations, with a within village randomized control trial. The findings indicate that the project contributes to production diversification while it does not influence total revenues from sales, household welfare and diet. Chapter 4 shows that similar incentivized mechanisms elicit similar decisions in terms of monetary risk aversion only if other risk-related attitudes are accounted for. Furthermore, it examines whether individuals' characteristics and a self-assessed measure of risk aversion relate to individuals' choices in lotteries. The findings suggest that there is some external validity of the two studied tasks as predictors of self-reported risk attitudes

Harnessing the Potential of Google Searches for Understanding Dynamics of Intimate Partner Violence Before and After COVID-19 Outbreak

Most social phenomena are inherently complex and hard to measure, often due to under-reporting, stigma, social desirability bias, and rapidly changing external circumstances. This is for instance the case of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), a highly-prevalent social phenomenon which has drastically risen in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper explores whether big data — an increasingly common tool to track, nowcast, and forecast social phenomena in close-to-real time — might help track and understand IPV dynamics. We leverage online data from Google Trends to explore whether online searches might help reach “hard-to-reach” populations such as victims of IPV using Italy as a case-study. We ask the following questions: Can digital traces help predict instances of IPV — both potential threat and actual violent cases — in Italy? Is their predictive power weaker or stronger in the aftermath of crises such as COVID-19? Our results suggest that online searches using selected keywords measuring different facets of IPV are a powerful tool to track potential threats of IPV before and during global-level crises such as the current COVID-19 pandemic, with stronger predictive power post outbreaks. Conversely, online searches help predict actual violence only in post-outbreak scenarios. Our findings, validated by a Facebook survey, also highlight the important role that socioeconomic status (SES) plays in shaping online search behavior, thus shedding new light on the role played by third-level digital divides in determining the forecasting power of digital traces. More specifically, they suggest that forecasting might be more reliable among high-SES population strata

Harnessing the Potential of Online Searches for Understanding the Impact of COVID-19 on Intimate Partner Violence in Italy

Despite the volume of studies leveraging big data to explore socio-demographic phenomena, we still know little about the intersection of digital information and the social problem of intimate partner violence (IPV). This is an important knowledge gap, as IPV remains a pressing public-health concern worldwide, with 35% of women having experienced it over their lifetime and cases rising dramatically in the wake of global crises such as the current COVID-19 pandemic. This study addresses the question of whether online data from Google Trends might help to reach “hard-to-reach” populations such as victims of IPV using Italy as a case-study. We ask the following questions: Can digital traces help predict instances of IPV — both potential threat and actual violent cases — in Italy? Is their predictive power weaker or stronger in the aftermath of crises such as COVID-19? Our results combined suggest that online Google searches using selected keywords measuring different aspects of IPV are a powerful tool to track potential threats of IPV before and after global-level crises such as the current COVID-19 pandemic — with stronger predictive power post-crisis — while online searches help to predict actual violence only in post-crises scenarios

Autoimmune thyroid diseases in patients treated with alemtuzumab for multiple sclerosis: An example of selective anti-TSH-receptor immune response

Alemtuzumab, a humanized anti-CD52 monoclonal antibody, is approved for the treatment of active relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (MS). Alemtuzumab induces a rapid and prolonged depletion of lymphocytes from the circulation, which results in a profound immuno-suppression status followed by an immune reconstitution phase. Secondary to reconstitution autoimmune diseases represent the most common side effect of Alemtuzumab treatment. Among them, Graves' disease (GD) is the most frequent one with an estimated prevalence ranging from 16.7 to 41.0% of MS patients receiving Alemtuzumab. Thyrotropin (TSH) receptor (R)-reactive B cells are typically observed in GD and eventually present this autoantigen to T-cells, which, in turn, secrete several pro-inflammatory cytokines and chemokines. Given that reconstitution autoimmunity is more frequently characterized by autoantibody-mediated diseases rather than by destructive Th1-mediated disorders, it is not surprising that GD is the most commonly reported side effect of Alemtuzumab treatment in patients with MS. On the other hand, immune reconstitution GD was not observed in a large series of patients with rheumatoid arthritis treated with Alemtuzumab. This negative finding supports the view that patients with MS are intrinsically more at risk for developing Alemtuzumab-related thyroid dysfunctions and in particular of GD. From a clinical point of view, Alemtuzumab-induced GD is characterized by a surprisingly high rate of remission, both spontaneous and after antithyroid drugs, as well as by a spontaneous shift to hypothyroidism, which is supposed to result from a change from stimulating to blocking TSH-receptor antibodies. These immune and clinical peculiarities support the concept that antithyroid drugs should be the first-line treatment in Alemtuzumab-induced Graves' hyperthyroidism