THE BERLIN OFFICE OF RWI

Location: Hybrid – Berlin Office and Teams Link

Time: 10:30 - 11:30 am

Title: Effects of economic and social incentives on bureaucratic quality - Experimental Evidence from Sierra Leone

Location: Hybrid – Berlin Office and Teams Link

Time: 11:00 am - 12:00 pm

Title: tba

Location: Hybrid – Berlin Office and Teams Link

Time: 10:15–11:45 am

Title: Green transition – An opportunity or a trap for Africa?

Location: Hybrid – Berlin Office and Teams Link

Time: 10:30 am - 11:30 pm

Title: (Don't) Take it Easy: Which Job Offers Get Rejected and Why?

Location: Hybrid – Berlin Office and Teams Link

Time: 14 – 15 pm

Title: „Warming Attitudes towards Refugees: How Networks Shape Attitude Change in Rural Uganda”

Abstract:

Interventions aimed at changing attitudes are often focused on individual responses.  However, attitudes do not shift in isolation; individuals are embedded in rich social networks that can reinforce, push against, or emulate changes. We conducted a field experiment in 16 villages in northwestern Uganda which randomly assigns a perspective-taking treatment aimed at reducing prejudice towards refugees to 40% of the households in each village. Our design includes a measure of full household social networks as well as measures of individual attitudes at baseline, immediately after treatment, and at endline after a two week interim in which people were free to discuss the issue with others in their village. We find that the treatment does warm attitudes of the treated on average in the short-term, though with considerable variance. We also find that people's attitudes change in the longer-term based on informal conversations with others in the network after treatment. By the endline, the control attitudes warm on average too, consistent with classical spillovers. Inconsistent with classical spillovers, the treated attitudes warm even further, and the ultimate attitudes of the control are a function of not just the presence of treated network neighbors but these neighbors' individual reactions to the treatment. We argue that the results are consistent with a period of "social processing" in which revealed reactions ultimately shape the attitudes of both the treated and the control. We stipulate a simple model of such a process and show that it can generate non-classical spillovers like those we observe. Taken together, these findings show the importance of understanding the social process that can reinforce or unravel individual-level attitude change; it appears essential to designing interventions with a lasting effect on attitudes.

Location: Hybrid – Berlin Office and Teams Link

Time: 13 - 14 pm

Title: „The spatial distribution of developmet RCTs"

Location: Hybrid – Berlin Office and Teams Link

Time: 11:00 am - 12:00 pm

Title: „Minimum wages, wage dispersion and financial constraints in firms“

Abstract: This paper studies how minimum wages affect the wage distribution if firms face financial constraints. Using German employer-employee data and firm balance sheets, we document that the within-firm wage dispersion decreases more with higher minimum wages when firms are financially constrained. We introduce financial frictions into a search and matching labor market model with stochastic job matching, imperfect information, and endogenous effort. In line with the empirical literature, the model predicts that a higher minimum wage reduces hirings and separations. Firms become more selective such that their employment and wage dispersion fall. If effort increases strongly, firms may increase employment at the expense of higher wage dispersion. Financially constrained firms are more selective and reward effort less. As a result, within-firm wage dispersion and employment in these firms fall more with the minimum wage.

Location: Hybrid – Berlin Office and Teams Link

Time: 10:30 - 11:30 am

Title: The long-run Effects of Immigration: Evidence Across a Barrier to Refugee Settlement

Abstract: We identify the causal effect of immigration on productivity, wages, incomes, and rents in the long run using a spatial regression discontinuity design (RDD). Our spatial RDD builds on a short-lived barrier to refugee settlement within West Germany after WWII. Comparing municipalities in a narrow band around this barrier, we find no socio-economic differences before WWII. In particular, population density had always been identical. But when the barrier to refugee settlement was removed, population density was about 20 percentage points higher where refugees had been allowed to settle. In 2020, 70 years later, the higher population density still persists. Today’s higher density coincides with higher productivity, wages, and rents. We argue that these economic differences are the result of agglomeration economies driven by the higher population density where refugees had been allowed settle. We present three findings on the nature of these agglomeration economies.

Location: Hybrid – Berlin Office and Teams Link

Time: 12:00 - 13:00 pm

Title: Learning to see the world’s opportunities: memory, mental experiencing and the economic lives of the vulnerable

Abstract: Work in neuroscience and psychology has underscored the role of mental experiencing for decision making. Using the same senses that we use to perceive the world, mental experiencing enables us to compare the consequences of our actions across different decisions. Trauma affects our memory and thus may impede our ability to use mental experiencing effectively. We measure the quality of mental experiencing and evaluate how it impacts economic outcomes through two randomized controlled trials with vulnerable populations that have suffered trauma and violence. In a sample of refugees in Ethiopia, learning to generate "positive" mental experiences related to the host economy leads to increased intentions to stay, more economic activity, and improved wellbeing. In Colombia, we embed controlled mental experiencing within an entrepreneurship program to explore whether it may enhance its effectiveness. We compare outcomes of standard business training, business training with mental experiencing, and no training. Participants in the standard business training see declines in both mental experiencing and earnings. These negative effects disappear in the mental experiencing arm. The highest gains from improved mental experiencing accrue to the most vulnerable and traumatized participants inthe sample, highlighting the need for trauma-informed programs.

Upon the invitation of Cara Ebert, Prof. Dr. Margherita Comola (University Paris-Saclay, Paris School of Economics) will give a talk in the RWI Policy Lab Invites Seminar on March 5, 2024. The topic of the presentation will be “Heterogeneous peer effects and gender-based interventions for teenage obesity”. Please find a draft of the paper, including an abstract, here. You can participate either in-person (Berlin Office) or virtually. Margherita Comola will be presenting in-person in Berlin.

Please note that it is not permitted to record the seminar and please do not forward the invitation link. If you know someone who is interested in attending the seminar, please email me so that I can send them a separate invitation.

Location: Hybrid – Berlin Office and Teams Link

Time: 10:30 - 11:30 am

Title: Effects of economic and social incentives on bureaucratic quality - Experimental Evidence from Sierra Leone

Location: Hybrid – Berlin Office and Teams Link

Time: 13–14 pm

Title: „Volume, risk, complexity: what makes development”

Location: Hybrid – Berlin Office and Teams Link

Time: 10:30 - 11:30 am

Title: Industrialization, returns, inequality (co-authored with Thilo Albers and Timo Stieglitz)

Abstract: How do technological revolutions impact wealth inequality? To answer this question, we turn to the industrial revolution and analyze its role for wealth concentration both empirically and theoretically. Based on a novel dataset on regional top wealth shares and industrialization in Prussia, we provide causal evidence that industrialization can explain the shift in the top 1 share observed over the 19th century and also led to a fattening of the wealth distribution's tail. We rationalize these effects by introducing a dynamic 2-sector structure featuring scale and dynastic type dependence into an overlapping generations model with heterogeneous returns to capital. The simulations suggest that the combination of these two features explains about half of the total increase of the top 1 share, while the other half resulted from the general increase in capital returns. 

Location: Hybrid – Berlin Office and Teams Link

Time: 10:30 - 11:30 am

Title: Long-term effects of equal sharing: Evidence from inheritance rules for land

Location: Hybrid – Berlin Office and Teams Link

Time: 10:30 - 11:30 am

Title: Strategic Bureaucratic Opacity: Evidence from Death Investigation Laws and Police Killings

Abstract: Police accountability is essential in upholding the social contract. Monitoring the monitors is, however, not without difficulty. This paper reveals how police departments exploit specific laws surrounding death investigations to facilitate the under-reporting of police killings. Our results show that US counties in which law enforcement can certify the cause of death, including counties which appoint the sheriff as the lead death investigator, display $46 percent more under-reported police killings than their comparable adjacent counties. Drawing on a novel adapted-LATE potential outcomes' framework, we demonstrate that under-reported police killings are most often reclassified as `circumstances undetermined' homicides. We also show that counties with permissive death certification laws withhold more homicide reports from the public. The main under-reporting results are primarily driven by under-reporting of White and Hispanic deaths in our analysis sample, with the effect on Hispanic people particularly pronounced along the US-Mexico border region. We do not find evidence of moderating effects due to body-worn cameras, nor that excess under-reported killings are associated with more violence directed towards police. We do, however, note a nationwide positive correlation between the permissiveness of gun-laws and under-reported police killings. Our results do not indicate that other differences in death investigation systems – coroner vs. medical examiner, appointed vs. elected, or physician vs. non-physician – affect the under-reporting of police killings.

Location: Hybrid – Berlin Office and Teams Link

Time: 10:30 - 11:30 am

Title: Does Co-Residence with Parents-in-law Reduce Women’s Employment in India?

Abstract: We examine the effect of co-residence with fathers- and mothers-in-law on married women’s employment in India. Instrumental variable fixed effects estimates using two different household panel datasets indicate that co-residence with a father-in-law reduces married women’s employment by 11-13%, while co-residence with a mother-in-law has no effect. Difference-in-difference estimates show that married women’s employment increases following the death of a co-residing father-in-law, but not mother-in-law. We investigate three classes of explanations for this: income effects, increased domestic responsibilities, and social norms. Our evidence is consistent with gender- and generational norms intersecting to constrain married women’s employment when parents-in-law co-reside.

Location: Hybrid – Berlin Office and Teams Event

Title: "An Estimation and Decomposition of the Government Investment Multiplier"

Location: Hybrid – Berliner Büro und Teams-Veranstaltung

Time: 10:30 - 11:30 am

Title: Workplace Connections and Migration: Evidence from German Reunification

Location: Hybrid – Berlin Office and Teams Event

Location: virtual with Zoom Link

Time: 12:00 - 13:00 am

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Location: Hybrid – Berlin Office and Teams Link

Time: 10:00 - 11:00 am

Title: "What a difference a day makes: Mortality effects of the school starting age"

Location: Hybrid – Berlin Office and Teams Event

Title: "Poland's Special Economic Zones: Effects on Regional Economic Development"

Location: Virtual with Zoom Link

Time: 12:00 - 13:00 pm

Link to event page

Title: Expanding Access to Schooling in Nigeria: Impact on Marital Outcomes

Abstract: The paper uses the Universal Primary Education Program (UPE) implemented in Nigeria in 1976 to investigate the effect of wife and husband’s education on women’s empowerment. We combine regional disparities in baseline levels of enrollment with the timing of the pro- gram and the traditionally high age difference between partners to disentangle the impact of wife’s education from husband’s education. We find that the UPE had heterogeneous effects in the South compared to the North of Nigeria. In the South, women achieve more gender-equal marriages by delaying marriage by 1.23 years, and by reducing the age gap with their husband by 2 years. These women also maintain a stable education gap with their husband. In the North, unions’ characteristics remain unchanged except for the probability to marry a polygamous partner that increases when husbands are treated. In both regions, women are better off as the UPE decreases women’s tolerance of domestic violence and increases their say in decision-making (in the South only) but the mechanics of the effects differ: Northern women are made better off by the education of their husband’s whereas Southern women are better off thanks to the combined effects of their own education and their husband’s.

Location: Hybrid – Berlin Office and Teams Link

Time: 10:00 - 11:00 am

Title: "Is Migration Reducing Labor Scarcity? Evidence From Long-Term Care"

Location: Hybrid in Berlin office or with Zoom Link

Time: 13:00 - 14:00 pm

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Location: Virtual with Zoom Link

Time: 13:00 - 14:00 pm

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Location: Hybrid in Berlin office or with Zoom Link

Time: 13:00 - 14:00 pm

Title:"Intergroup Avoidance: Observational and Experimental Evidence from Israel"

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Location: Hybrid – Berlin Office and Teams-Event

Title: "Decarbonisation and the Role of Nuclear Energy: Evidence from France"

Time: 11:00 - 12:00 Uhr

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Location: Hybrid – Berlin Office and Teams-Event

Time: 10:15–11:45 am

Title: „Does Identity Affect Labor Supply?“

Abstract: How does identity influence economic behavior in the labor market? I investigate this question in rural India, focusing on the effect of caste identity on job-specific labor supply. In a field experiment, laborers choose whether to take up various job offers, which differ in associations with specific castes. Workers are less willing to accept offers that are linked to castes other than their own, especially when those castes rank lower in the social hierarchy. Workers forego large payments to avoid job offers that conflict with their caste identity, even when these decisions are made in private.

Location: Hybrid – Berlin Office and Teams-Event

Title: "The Cost of Air Pollution for Workers and Firms: Evidence from Sickness Leave Episodes"

Time: 10:15 - 11:45 Uhr

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Location: Berlin

Background
Young people out of work are a population at risk in developed and developing economies alike: first, the average share of jobless youths is typically twice as high as the corresponding share among adults. Second, youth unemployment shows excess cyclical volatility, i.e. youths’ probability of job loss during recessions exceeds that of adult workers. “Scarring effects” exacerbate the consequences of youth unemployment, as time out-of-work early in the lifecycle negatively impacts long-term labor market outcomes. Fourth, in low- and middle income countries, youths struggle to enter a quality job, due to lack of skills, lack of access to education, or lack of information. Finally, all these patterns may lead to discouraging youths entirely, leaving them outside of employment, education, and training.

The Conference
The conference brings together policy makers and government officials, practitioners from NGOs, experts from international organizations, and researchers working on aspects of helping disadvantaged youths find quality employment. The focus of the conference is to learn about effective youth policies. We expect and will encourage a lively and open discussion among all conference attendees.