The Distributional impact of dams: Evidence from cropland productivity in Africa

We examine the distributional impact of major dams on cropland productivity in Africa. As our unit of analysis we use a scientifically based spatial breakdown of the continent that allows one to exactly define regions in terms of their upstream/downstream relationship at a highly disaggregated level. We then use satellite data to derive measures of cropland productivity within these areas. Our econometric analysis shows that while regions downstream benefit from large dams, cropland within the vicinity tends to suffer productivity losses during droughts. Overall our results suggest that because of rainfall shortages dams in Africa caused a net loss of 0.96 per cent in productivity over our sample period (1981-2000). However, further dam construction in appropriate areas could potentially lead to large increases in productivity even if rainfall is not plenty.dams, agricultural productivity, Africa

The Economic Growth Impact of Hurricanes: Evidence from US Coastal counties

We estimate for the first time the impact of hurricane strikes on local economic growth rates and how this is reflected in more aggregate growth patterns. To this end we assemble a panel data set of US coastal counties' growth rates and construct a novel hurricane destruction index that is based on a monetary loss equation, local wind speed estimates derived from a physical wind field model, and local exposure characteristics. Our econometric results suggest that in response to a hurricane strike a county's annual economic growth rate will initially fall by 0.8, but then partially recover by 0.2 percentage points. While the pattern is qualitatively similar at the state level, the net effect over the long term is negligible. Hurricane strikes do not appear to be economically important enough to be reflected in national economic growth rates.hurricanes, economic growth, US coastal counties

The Effect of Women’s Bargaining Power on Child Nutrition in Rural Senegal

We examine how women’s bargaining power affects child nutritional status using data from rural Senegal. In order to correct for the potential endogeneity of women’s bargaining power we use information on a mother’s ethnicity relative to that of the community she resides in order to construct an arguably exogenous exclusion restriction. While standard OLS estimates suggest that if a mother has more bargaining power, her children will have a better nutritional status, our IV estimates indicate that the true impact is underestimated if the endogeneity of bargaining power is not taken into account

Changes in the Gender Wage Gap and The Returns to Firm Specific Human Capital

If employers believe females are more likely to separate from a job than males, efficient cost sharing of on-the-job-training implies that females will have higher returns to tenure. Becker and Lindsay (1994) argue that this is true empirically. (1994). Updating the analysis we find that that there is no longer a difference in the probability of leaving jobs or in returns to tenure by gender. Differences in contracts to finance on the job training can no longer explain any of the “discrimination” component in the gender wage gap.wage differentials, gender gap, tenure

Spillovers from Foreign Firms through Worker Mobility: An Empirical Investigation

While there has been a large empirical literature on productivity spillovers from multinationals this literature treats the channels through which these spillover effects work as a black box. The innovation of this paper is to investigate whether spillovers occur via worker mobility. We use data on whether or not the owner of a domestic firm has previous experience in a multinational, and relate this information to firm level productivity. Our results suggest that firms which are run by owners that worked for multinationals in the same industry immediately prior to opening up their own firm are more productive than other domestic firms.Foreign direct investment; Spillovers; Worker mobility; Training

The Impact of Aid on Growth an aid disaggregation approach

This paper investigates the impact of aid on growth. A clear departure from the vast majority of the existing literature is that we a disaggregate aid by functional classification. Using the GMM SYS approach to dynamic panel estimator we test the three main competing specifications in the aid and growth literature for a sample of aid recipient countries over the 1974-2001 period. Our results clearly show that the different categories of aid exert different effects on growth. Indeed, we find that project aid exerts a positive and significant impact on growth whilst financial programme aid generally impacts on growth negatively. Our results also show that the impact of non-financial aid, technical assistance grants and food aid, is statistically insignificant. We found, however, no evidence to suggest that policy enhances the growth effect of the aid categories. Our non-linearity tests suggest that only project aid is associated with diminishing returns. Finally, our results confirm the finding that climate related conditions affect the working of aid (project). --Aid,Growth,Dynamic Panel Methods

The dynamics of regional inequalities

This paper analyses empirically the dynamics of regional inequalities in GDP per capita. Our starting hypothesis is that the evolution of regional inequalities should follow a bell-shaped curve depending on the level of national economic development. A number of authors going from Kuznets (1955) to Lucas (2000) have provided extensive theoretical arguments along this line suggesting that growth, because of its very nature, is unlikely to appear everywhere at the same time. Regional inequalities should then rise when countries start developing and then fall once a certain level of national economic development is reached as long as spillovers are strong enough to transmit growth and technological progress across regions. We test empirically these predictions by using regional data for a panel of European countries and by making use of semi-parametric estimation techniques. Our results provide strong support for a bell-shaped curve in the relationship between the national GDP per capita level and the extent of regional inequalities independently of the time period and regional administrative units considered. The nature of this non-monotonic relationship is not altered by the inclusion of other possible determinants of regional inequalities. A number of policy implications are derived from our results.Kuznets curve, economic development, regional inequalities, Europe, Barrios, Strobl

The Role of Educational Choice in Occupational Gender Segregation: Evidence from Trinidad and Tobago

We analyse the role of educational choice on the degree of occupational segregation in Trinidad and Tobago during a period in which educational policies intent on equating gender opportunities in education were implemented. To this end we utilise waves of the Trinidad and Tobago labour force survey over the period 1991-2004. Our results show that while educational segregation has fallen substantially over our sample period, this has not translated into less occupational segregation. This suggests that the educational policy has not been sufficient to combat occupational segregation. However, results at a more disaggregated level show that experiences have been heterogeneous across educational and occupational groups.gender, occupational segregation, educational choice

The Ambiguous Effect of Minimum Wages on Workers and Total Hours

We model a standard competitive labour market where firms choose combinations of workers and hours per worker to produce output. If one assumes that the scale of production has no impact on hours per worker, then the change in the number of workers and hours per worker resulting from a minimum wage are inversely related. We also demonstrate that total hours worked at the firm may rise if there are small fixed costs to hiring workers.Minimum wages, hours, employment