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Transhumant Pastoralism, Climate Change, and Conflict in Africa

Eoin McGuirk and Nathan Nunn

We consider the effects of climate change on seasonally migrant populations that herd livestock—i.e., transhumant pastoralists—in Africa. Traditionally, transhumant pastoralists benefit from a cooperative relationship with sedentary agriculturalists whereby arable land is used for crop farming in the wet season and animal grazing in the dry season. Rainfall scarcity can disrupt this arrangement by inducing pastoral groups to migrate to agricultural lands before the harvest, causing conflict to emerge. We examine this hypothesis by combining ethnographic information on the traditional locations of transhumant pastoralists and sedentary agriculturalists with high-resolution data on the location and timing of rainfall and violent conflict events in Africa from 1989–2018.

Too Domestic To Fail: Liquidity Provision And National Champions

Emmanuel Farhi and Jean Tirole

Authorities’ support policies shape the location and continuation of industrial and banking activity on their soil. Firms’ locus of activity depends on their prospect of receiving financial assistance in distress and therefore on factors such as countries’ relative resilience. We predict that global firms are global in life and national in death; and that they become less global when competition is more intense, times are turbulent, and international risk sharing (say, through swap lines) weak.

Good Politicians: Experimental Evidence on Motivations for Political Candidacy and Government Performance

Saad Gulzar and Muhammad Yasir Khan

How can we motivate good politicians – those that will carry out policy that is responsive to citizens’ preferences – to enter politics? In a field experiment in Pakistan, we vary how political office is portrayed to ordinary citizens. Emphasizing prosocial motives for holding political office instead of personal returns – such as the ability to help others versus enhancing one’s own respect and status – raises the likelihood that individuals run for office and that voters elect them.

Adaptive Estimation and Uniform Confidence Bands for Nonparametric Structural Functions and Elasticities

Xiaohong Chen, Timothy Christensen, and Sid Kankanala

We introduce two data-driven procedures for optimal estimation and inference in nonparametric models using instrumental variables. The first is a data-driven choice of sieve dimension for a popular class of sieve two-stage least squares estimators. When implemented with this choice, estimators of both the structural function h0 and its derivatives (such as elasticities) converge at the fastest possible (i.e., minimax) rates in sup-norm. The second is for constructing uniform confidence bands (UCBs) for h0 and its derivatives.

Private Sector Provision as an Escape Valve: The Mexico Diabetes Experiment

Ari Bronsoler, Jonathan Gruber, and Enrique Seira

Public health systems are dominant in much of the world, but often face fiscal constraints that lead to rationing of care. As a result, private sector healthcare providers could in theory beneficially supplement public systems, but evaluating the benefits of private alternatives has been challenging. We evaluate a private supplement to the free public health system for one of the world’s deadliest health problems, diabetes. We estimate enormous impacts of the private supplement, increasing the share of those treated who are under control by 69%.

Surviving Competition: Neighborhood Shops vs. Convenience Chains

Miguel Angel Talamas Marcos

Hundreds of millions of microenterprises in emerging economies face increased competition from the entry and expansion of large firms that offer similar products. This paper examines the impacts of the opening of chain-run convenience stores on one of the world’s most ubiquitous microenterprises: owner-operated shops. To address endogeneity in time and location of chains’ opening, I pair two-way fixed effects with a novel instrument that shifts the profitability of chains but not of shops at the neighborhood level. Expanding the number of chain outlets from zero to the neighborhood average of 6.7 stores reduces the number of shops by 15%, a decline driven not by increased shop exits but by decreased shop entries.

Partially Linear Models under Data Combination

Xavier D'Haultfoeuille, Christophe Gaillac, and Arnaud Maurel

We study partially linear models when the outcome of interest and some of the covariates are observed in two different datasets that cannot be linked. This type of data combination problem arises very frequently in empirical microeconomics. Using recent tools from optimal transport theory, we derive a constructive characterization of the sharp identified set. We then build on this result and develop a novel inference method that exploits the specific geometric properties of the identified set.

Reservation Raises: The Aggregate Labor Supply Curve at the Extensive Margin

Preston Mui and Benjamin Schoefer

We measure desired labor supply at the extensive (employment) margin in two representative surveys of the U.S. and German populations. We elicit reservation raises: the percent wage change that renders a given individual indifferent between employment and nonemployment. It is equal to her reservation wage divided by her actual, or potential, wage. The reservation raise distribution is the nonparametric aggregate labor supply curve.

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Why/how should multiple hypothesis testing be done differently in empirical work? We give an economic foundation trading off research costs and incentives with implications for empirical practice.

New paper by @VivianoDavide, Wüthrich, and Niehaus:

https://www.restud.com/a-model-of-multiple-hypothesis-testing/

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New paper by Liski & Salanié:

https://www.restud.com/catastrophes-delays-and-learning/

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Supply-side climate policies in the oil market: Higher taxes reduce exploration and discoveries. If only OECD countries adopt this policy, 47–73% is offset by non-OECD countries.

New paper by @AhlvikLassi, @jorgenja, Hamang, & @tfharding:

https://www.restud.com/quantifying-supply-side-climate-policies/

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"We prove a CLT for strategic network formation with homophilous agents. This enables inference on statistics derived from a single large network. We discuss practical procedures."

New Paper by Leung & Moon:

https://www.restud.com/normal-approximation-in-large-network-models/

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