Rodrigo Ito , Diego Chavarro , Tommaso Ciarli , Robin Cowan , Fabiana Visentin
{"title":"From drains to bridges: The role of internationally mobile PhD students in linking non-mobile with foreign scientists","authors":"Rodrigo Ito , Diego Chavarro , Tommaso Ciarli , Robin Cowan , Fabiana Visentin","doi":"10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103577","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103577","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Internationally mobile scientists, by engaging with foreign counterparts during their time abroad, often become conduits for knowledge and access to international networks. While the direct benefits of such mobility to the individuals are well-documented, this paper investigates how these benefits may extend to their non-mobile colleagues in the country of origin who collaborate with them. We investigate the internationalization of a scientific system by analyzing the role that Colombian scientists who pursue a PhD abroad play in connecting non-mobiles with foreign scientists. Combining data from CVs, scholarship programs, and OpenAlex publications, we reconstruct the mobility path of 19,158 Colombian scientists and their co-authorship networks from 1990 to 2021. We show that co-authoring with mobile scientists is a way for non-mobile scientists to establish co-authorship links with foreign scientists. While the diaspora has traditionally been viewed as a “brain drain”, we find that not only returnees but also diaspora scientists connect local with foreign scientists. However, foreign collaborations appear largely dependent on the continued mediation of mobile scientists.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48418,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Development Economics","volume":"177 ","pages":"Article 103577"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2025-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144472175","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Rafael Araujo , Juliano Assunção , Arthur Bragança
{"title":"Transportation infrastructure and deforestation in the Amazon","authors":"Rafael Araujo , Juliano Assunção , Arthur Bragança","doi":"10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103559","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103559","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We examine the effects of transportation infrastructure on deforestation in the Amazon. We build an inter-regional trade model in which agricultural commodities can be produced either in cleared lands or in forest lands. The model delivers a closed-form expression connecting deforestation and market access. Using panel data on the evolution of the transportation network and land use we estimate sizable effects of infrastructure on deforestation. Model simulations indicate that ignoring transportation infrastructure’s effects beyond the projects surroundings underestimates deforestation impacts by one quarter. We also show how our framework can be used to evaluate the deforestation induced by individual projects, an essential input for public policies.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48418,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Development Economics","volume":"177 ","pages":"Article 103559"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2025-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144297152","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Health, wealth, or equity? Trade-offs from households’ allocative decisions","authors":"Helen Harris-Fry , Mario Cortina-Borja","doi":"10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103560","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103560","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Households’ allocative decisions have potentially large implications for the health and welfare of their members. We analyze a dataset of rural Bangladeshi households to estimate: (i) a benchmark level of nutritional adequacy that households could afford by selecting different foods and reallocating them among members, and (ii) the associated trade-offs in terms of income and equity preferences. Using a novel set of non-linear health production functions, we show that households can afford adequate diets that meet the clinical needs of nearly all nutrients. Micronutrient adequacy is primarily achieved by changing household-level food choices, while caloric adequacy depends more on intra-household food allocation. We further show that households do not face a clear health-income trade-off. Instead, we find a degree of inequality aversion (for energy) and inequality preference (for micronutrients) that leads to intra-household allocations that are not fully efficient from the perspective of the production of health.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48418,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Development Economics","volume":"177 ","pages":"Article 103560"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2025-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144313188","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The colonial legacy in India: How persistent are the effects of historical institutions?","authors":"Lakshmi Iyer, Coleson Weir","doi":"10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103576","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103576","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Using updated data, we analyze the long-run effects of two British colonial institutions established in India. Iyer (2010) showed that areas under direct colonial rule had fewer schools, health centers, and roads than areas under indirect colonial rule. Two decades later, we find that these differences have been eliminated, and that the gaps in poverty, health and educational attainment are also smaller. Banerjee and Iyer (2005) found lower agricultural investments and productivity in areas with landlord-based colonial land tenure systems. Our updated data finds that only some of these differences have been eliminated, while others have remained constant and even widened. Consistent with this lack of convergence, we find that non-landlord areas continue to have higher educational attainment and lower poverty rates six decades after the end of colonial rule. We conclude that the impact of colonial institutions can eventually fade away under the influence of targeted policies.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48418,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Development Economics","volume":"177 ","pages":"Article 103576"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2025-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144313185","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Violent conflict and parochial trust: Lab-in-the-field and survey evidence","authors":"Katharina Werner , Ahmed Skali","doi":"10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103550","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103550","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>How does conflict exposure affect trust? We hypothesize that direct (first-hand) experience with conflict induces <em>parochialism</em>: trust towards out-groups worsens, but trust towards in-groups, owing to positive experiences of kin solidarity, may improve. Indirect exposure to conflict through third-party accounts, on the other hand, reduces trust toward everyone, arguably owing to negativity bias. We find consistent support for our hypotheses in a lab-in-the-field experiment in Maluku, Indonesia, which witnessed a salient Christian-Muslim conflict during 1999–2002, as well as in three cross-country datasets exploiting temporal and spatial variation in exposure to violence. Our results help resolve a seeming contradiction in the literature and inform policies on resolving conflicts.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48418,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Development Economics","volume":"177 ","pages":"Article 103550"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2025-06-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144490836","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Promoting Innovative Startups: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Tunisia","authors":"Nadia Ali , Massimiliano Cali , Bob Rijkers","doi":"10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103539","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103539","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper evaluates Tunisia’s “Startup Act,” a policy initiative to foster innovative firms through a “start-up” label and a bundle of incentives including reduced social security contributions, corporate tax exemptions, easier access to foreign exchange, and simplified customs procedures. Detailed data on the program’s selection process allow us to identify marginal entrants and rejects, and hence limit selection on unobservables. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, the program is shown to increase survival and promote job creation. A back of the envelope cost–benefit calculation suggests that the program is cost effective.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48418,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Development Economics","volume":"177 ","pages":"Article 103539"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2025-06-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144481803","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"This business is mine! Intra-household effects of property rights in micro-enterprises","authors":"Victor Pouliquen","doi":"10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103530","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103530","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper studies the intra-household impact of property rights in micro-enterprises. A randomized field experiment on firm formalization in Benin provides exogenous variation in individual property rights. The results reveal significant gender differences. Women entrepreneurs who formalize invest more in their businesses and are more likely to pay to conceal a large windfall transfer from their husbands—a measure of intra-household inefficiency. These findings suggest that while stronger property rights secure and incentivize investment, they may also reduce household cooperation, leading to efficiency losses. Despite this trade-off, women report higher overall well-being when granted formal property rights. In contrast, formalization improves intra-household efficiency for men, likely by reinforcing their authority over household decision-making. Consistently, male entrepreneurs who formalize are more likely to separate business and household finances and to resist pressure to share resources.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48418,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Development Economics","volume":"178 ","pages":"Article 103530"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2025-06-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144696518","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Internal migration and labor market adjustments in the presence of non-wage compensation","authors":"Raphael Corbi , Tiago Ferraz , Renata Narita","doi":"10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103534","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103534","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In this paper, we argue that adjustments in non-wage compensation are empirically relevant and have important implications for understanding the effects of labor supply shocks. We examine the labor market impacts of internal migration in Brazil through a shift-share approach, which combines weather-induced migration with historical settlement patterns at each destination. Our findings indicate that increasing migration inflows lead to a reduction in formal employment while simultaneously increasing informality by a similar magnitude. Like previous studies, we observe a significant negative impact on earnings in the informal sector. Additionally, we provide evidence that the proportion of formal workers receiving non-wage benefits declines, underscoring that substantial adjustments take place in the formal sector, even in a context of high informality. We interpret our results within a framework that incorporates both formal and informal labor inputs, as well as non-wage benefits, and generates predictions closely aligned with our empirical findings.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48418,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Development Economics","volume":"177 ","pages":"Article 103534"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2025-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144338578","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Holi crimes: The impact of a public festivity on violence against women","authors":"Rubén Poblete-Cazenave , Claudia Martínez V.","doi":"10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103543","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103543","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Many women experience physical or sexual violence, often in public spaces. We study the role of gender norms in perpetuating this violence by analyzing Holi, a festivity in India, where the phrase “Bura na mano Holi Hai” (Don’t feel offended, it’s Holi) is misused to justify inappropriate behavior. We document a 170% increase in assaults against women during Holi. Analysis reveals (1) higher violence in districts where men justify violence, and (2) a male backlash effect where women oppose it. Underreporting and reduced mobility during Holi do not appear to be the main drivers. To date, nobody has been convicted.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48418,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Development Economics","volume":"177 ","pages":"Article 103543"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2025-06-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144313187","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Francisco Campos , Maria Hernandez-de-Benito , Julian C. Jamison , Abla Safir , Bilal Zia
{"title":"Persistent yet ameliorable shocks to female entrepreneurship: Experimental evidence from Kenya","authors":"Francisco Campos , Maria Hernandez-de-Benito , Julian C. Jamison , Abla Safir , Bilal Zia","doi":"10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103546","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jdeveco.2025.103546","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>While female entrepreneurs face multiple obstacles, it is unclear whether gender gaps worsen during economic crises: women, especially married women, may be more affected than men due to these obstacles, but could also be less exposed due to their specialized sectors, or if a crisis flattens everyone together. Leveraging on a unique timing of collecting baseline data just before COVID-19, we examine the impact of randomized grants and business training of partnered female and male microentrepreneurs two years after the crisis. We find that women were more severely impacted by the pandemic, but that the grants significantly helped mitigate the crisis impacts on business ownership, sales, profits, income, and well-being. In terms of channels of impact, the grants increased women's labor supply, at the expense of domestic work, leisure time, and childcare hours, while, for men, time is reallocated from wage employment to their business.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48418,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Development Economics","volume":"177 ","pages":"Article 103546"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2025-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144313186","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}