Related papers: Using Household Grants to Benchmark the Cost Effec…

We present results of an experiment benchmarking a workforce training program against cash transfers for underemployed young adults in Rwanda. 3.5 years after treatment, the training program enhances productive time use and asset…

We benchmark a multi-dimensional child nutrition intervention against an unconditional cash transfer of equal cost. Randomized variation in transfer amounts allows us to estimate impacts of cash transfers at expenditure levels equivalent to…

Despite the widespread implementation of conditional cash transfers in low- and middle-income countries, evidence on their long-term effects remains limited. This paper evaluates the impact of Ecuador's Human Development Grant on the formal…

This paper shows that the timing of monetary transfers to low-income families affects students' cognitive performance on high-stakes standardized tests. We combine administrative records from the world's largest conditional cash transfer…

Governments spend billions of dollars subsidizing the adoption of different goods. However, it is difficult to gauge whether those goods are resold, or are valued by their ultimate recipients. This project studies a program to subsidize the…

Many Stated Preference studies conducted in developing countries provide a low willingness to pay (WTP) for a wide range of goods and services. However, recent studies in these countries indicate that this may partly be a result of the…

This paper investigates the trade-off that households in agrarian economies face between immediate production needs and long-term human capital investment. We ask how exogenous agricultural productivity shocks affect primary and secondary…

This paper presents an out-of-sample prediction comparison between major machine learning models and the structural econometric model. Over the past decade, machine learning has established itself as a powerful tool in many prediction…

The question of how to best serve the student populations of our country is a complex topic. Since public funding is limited, we must explore the best ways to direct the money to improve student outcomes. Previous research has suggested…

Evidence on the effectiveness of retraining U.S. unemployed workers primarily comes from evaluations of training programs, which represent one narrow avenue for skill acquisition. We use high-quality records from Ohio and a matching method…

The primary goal of conditional cash transfers (CCTs) is to alleviate short-term poverty while preventing the intergenerational transmission of deprivation by promoting the accumulation of human capital among children. Although a…

This study examines the roles of government spending and money supply on alleviating poverty in Africa. The study used 48 Sub-Saharan Africa countries from 2001 to 2017. The study employed one step and two-step system GMM and found that…

Teens make life-changing decisions while constrained by the needs and resources of the households they grow up in. Household behavior models frequently delegate decision-making to the teen or their parents, ignoring joint decision-making in…

Lack of skills is arguably one of the most important determinants of high levels of unemployment and poverty. In response, policymakers often initiate vocational training programs in effort to enhance skill formation among the youth. Using…

Improving productivity among farm microenterprises is important, especially in low-income countries where market imperfections are pervasive and resources are scarce. Relaxing credit constraints can increase the productivity of farmers.…

A system of non-tradable credits that flow between individuals like karma, hence proposed under that name, is a mechanism for repeated resource allocation that comes with attractive efficiency and fairness properties, in theory. In this…

The introduction of new payment methods has resulted in one of the most significant changes in the way we consume goods and services. In this paper, I present results of a field and a laboratory experiment designed to determine the effect…

Direct cash transfer programs have shown success as poverty interventions in both the developing and developed world, yet little research exists examining the society-wide outcomes of an unconditional cash transfer program disbursed without…

In this paper, I conduct a policy exercise about how much the introduction of a cash transfer program as large as a Norwegian-sized lottery sector to the United States would affect startups. The key results are that public cash transfer…

This paper uses instrumental causal forests, a novel machine learning method, to explore the treatment effect heterogeneity of Indonesia's conditional cash transfer scheme on maternal health care utilisation. Using randomised programme…