IRCPPS in the Links: Does Increased Education Enhance Women's Rights?

Chris Blattman looks at some evidence from Kenya:

...the program increased objective political knowledge, and reduced both acceptance of political authorities and satisfaction with politics. However, in our Kenyan context, this rejection of the status quo did not translate into greater perceived political efficacy, community participation or voting intentions. Instead, the program increased the perceived legitimacy of political violence...

IRCPPS in the Links: More on Money in Elections

Chris Blattman notes a paper by Leonard Wantchekon that indicates that spending money isn't always the most effective way to gain votes:

...The experiment took place during the March 2011 elections in Benin and involved 150 randomly selected villages. The treatment group had town hall meetings where voters deliberated over their candidate’s electoral platforms with no cash distribution. The control group had the standard campaign, i.e. one-way communication of the candidate’s platform by himself or his local broker, followed (most of the time) by cash distribution. 

We find that the treatment has a positive effect on turnout. In addition, using village level election returns, we find no significant difference in electoral support for the experimental candidate between treatment and control villages. 

…the positive treatment effect is driven in large part by active information sharing by those who attended the meetings...

Research Notes: How to Pick a Research Project

Chris Blattman passes on some advice on picking topics from Don Davis, a Columbia Economic Professor.

IRCPPS in the Links: The Unintended Consequences of Campaign Promises

Chris Blattman's blog offers an analysis of the Liberian elections, and an interesting vignette from Rob Blair about the unintended consequences of unfulfilled campaign promises:

In one community I visited, I asked the town chief how he adjudicated among the dozens of candidates on the ballot. He pointed to the village’s dilapidated school. During the previous congressional campaign, the district’s current representative had promised that he would repair the building, but never did. Now an opposition candidate has promised that he’ll do the job instead. That was enough to convince the town chief, who rallied the village in the opposition’s favor.

IRCPPS in the Links: Resource Conflicts

Chris Blattman highlights a selection from a new paper by Morelli and Rohner:

...historical examples suggest that natural resource location matters indeed in reality. When the presence of a local ethnic group coincides with large natural resource abundance concentrated in its region, this local ethnic group could be financially better off if it were independent and may under some conditions have incentives to start secessionist rebellion.

Abstracting: The Side Effects of Food Aid

via Chris Blattman:

The Price Effects of Cash Versus In-Kind Transfers 

Jesse M. Cunha, Giacomo De Giorgi, Seema Jayachandran
NBER Working Paper No. 17456
Issued in September 2011
NBER Program(s):   PE  

This paper compares how cash and in-kind transfers affect local prices. Both types of transfers increase the demand for normal goods, but only in-kind transfers also increase supply. Hence, in-kind transfers should lead to lower prices than cash transfers, which helps consumers at the expense of local producers. We test and confirm this prediction using a program in Mexico that randomly assigned villages to receive boxes of food (trucked into the village), equivalently-valued cash transfers, or no transfers. The pecuniary benefit to consumers of in-kind transfers, relative to cash transfers, equals 11% of the direct transfer.