RESEARCH TOPIC AND PAPERS

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  AFFIRMATIVE ACTION AND APPLICATION STRATEGIES: EVIDENCE FROM FIELD EXPERIMENTS IN COLOMBIA
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  Ritwik Banerjee, Marcela Ibanez, Gerhard Riener, Soham Sahoo
  
  

  Affirmative action changes incentives at all stages of the employment process. In this paper, we study the effects of affirmative action statements in job ads on i) the effort expended on the application process and ii) the manifestation of emotions, as measured by the textual analysis content of the motivation letter. To this end, we use data from two field experiments conducted in Colombia. We find that women spend less time in the application process in the Control condition than men. Besides, female motivation letters exhibit lower levels of emotion, as measured by valence, arousal, and dominance. However, those differences vanish in the affirmative action treatment when we announced to job-seekers that half of the positions were reserved for women. In the Affirmative Action condition, the time dedicated by women significantly increased. Besides, the motivation letters written by the female candidates showed a significant increase in the expression of positive emotions. The results indicate that affirmative action policies can have significant encouraging effects on both effort and appeal of job applications of women, thereby reducing the gender gap in these outcomes.

  
  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  






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  HIDDEN MORAL COSTS OF CONTROL: FIELD EVIDENCE FROM PERFORMANCE APPRAISALS IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  Marcela Ibanez, Jan Priebe, Gerhard Riener, Dewi Susanti
  
  

  We test the impact of introducing performance appraisals in a field experiment with 2,409 teachers from 270 public primary schools in Indonesia. Employing three distinct treatment arms that vary the appraisal scheme and its financial consequences, we find that performance appraisals reduce generosity at the workplace and increase dishonest behavior. While the effects exist across all treatment arms, they are particularly pronounced in treatment arms in which performance appraisals are linked to explicit financial sanctions. Our study sheds light on underlying mechanisms and real-world consequences. In particular, we show that teacher effort did not change due to the monthly performance evaluations, while teachers appear to retaliate against its evaluators (community members).

  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  





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  ALL THAT GLITTERS IS NOT GOLD? APPROACHING THE SUB-NATIONAL AND SPATIAL IMPACT OF A GOLD RUSH AND POLICY CHANGES
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  Carlos Adrián Saldarriaga Isaza, Sergio Alonso Orrego Suaza, Marcela Ibáñez Diaz, Juan Carlos Muñoz Mora, María Natalia Cantet
  
  

  Over the last 20 years, there has been a rapid expansion of gold mining in Colombia. This proposal aims to investigate the impacts of this boom on local socioeconomic and environmental conditions (deforestation). In particular, we study the impact of the change in the mining royalties regime on the regional development path. The proposed analysis is based on secondary data over 1122 Colombia municipalities using spatial econometric and qualitative techniques. Our identification strategy considers exogenous variation in gold mining potential given by geographical and environmental factors. The use of spatial correlation allows estimating the spillover effects on neighboring units. The research generates a novel data set that integrates panel data on the Colombian municipalities' geographical, socioeconomic, and environmental characteristics over 20 years. We contribute to the international discussion on the relationship between mining and development and provide insights into mining policy.

  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  





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  INCOME RISK, PRECAUTIONARY SAVING, AND LOSS AVERSION - AN EMPIRICAL TEST
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  Marcela Ibanez and Sebastian Schneider
  
  

  This paper empirically examines the behavioral precautionary saving hypothesis by Kőszegi and Rabin (2009), stating that uncertainty about future income triggers saving because of loss aversion. We extend their theoretical analysis to consider the internal margin, i.e., the strength, of loss aversion. We empirically study the relationship between income risk, experimentally elicited loss aversion, and precautionary savings. We do so using a sample of 640 individuals from the low-income population of Bogotá, characterized by limited financial education and subject to substantial income risk. In line with the theoretical predictions, we find that an increase in income risk is associated with higher savings for loss-averse individuals. This increase in savings grows with the degree of loss aversion. Thus, as suggested by Kőszegi and Rabin (2009), but contrarily to common assumptions, our findings establish that loss aversion is not necessarily an obstacle to saving and thus identify new approaches of increasing saving among individuals with low financial education.

  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  





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  UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES OF HEALTH INFORMATION CAMPAIGNS: A FIELD EXPERIMENT IN CAIRO
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  Marcela Ibanez, Ghida Karbala
  
  

  Can health information campaigns unintentionally generate cognitive load and affect the behavioral preferences of beneficiaries? We study this question by implementing a field experiment with a representative sample of adult individuals residing in Cairo, Egypt. Participants in a door-to-door survey watched videos about a commonly spread and highly contagious disease affecting children or a placebo video. Consistent with dual-process theories, we find that the health awareness video impaired cognition of the targeted population in terms of lower scores on cognitive ability and fluid intelligence tests than the control group. The results show that participants who experienced financial and health stress in their daily life were mostly affected by the treatment. The findings emphasize the need to consider cognitive taxation when designing informational campaigns and to determine target beneficiaries.

  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  





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  FORFEITING AGENCY: EVIDENCE FROM A HOUSEHOLD EXPERIMENT IN EGYPT
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  Ghida Karbala, Marcela Ibanez, Gerhard Riener
  
  

  Freedom of choice is a fundamental aspect of individuals’ social, economic, and political lives. Despite the significant value attached to the freedom of choice, some societies de facto restrict the right to decide to men while women assume a subordinate role. We investigate whether men and women attach different intrinsic values to decision rights and test whether preferences for forfeiting agency depend on social norms. The results show that married women paired with their spouse have significantly lower willingness to retain the right to decide on resource allocation over a joint income than when paired with strangers. Elicited beliefs regarding the partner’s desire to maintain decision rights show that married women behave in a way consistent with the expectations of the spouse and the general cultural setting persisting in Egypt. Results suggest that in the presence of prescribed social identities and well-defined gender roles, outcomes, as expected by the standard bargaining models, fail to prevail. These models are incomplete without considering internal constraints to agency that are largely shaped by the existing cultural setting.

  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  





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  THE ORIGINS OF GENDER GAPS IN NORM ENFORCEMENT: EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE FROM MATRILINEAL AND PATRILINEAL SOCIETIES IN INDIA
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  Debosree Banerjee, Marcela Ibanez, Gerhard Riener and Meike Wollni
  
  

  Societies where individuals are willing to sanction anti-social behavior, can escape the tragedy of the commons and sustain cooperation. Free-riding in the enforcement of social norms is a reason for decay cooperation within society. Therefore, it is crucial to understand how to mobilize participation in norm enforcement and what impedes certain groups from participating in norm enforcement. This paper investigates the supply-side factors that affect the willingness to act as a "third-party punisher." We trace the origin of gender gaps in norm enforcement comparing societies that differ in women's economic empowerment. We find that nurture as opposed to nature can explain the gender gap in selection as third party punisher. In the matrilineal Khasi tribes, where women have higher economic empowerment (enjoy inheritance rights), women are more willing to act as third-party punishers than men. In contrast, the opposite is true in the patrilineal Santal Tribes in India, where women have restricted economic freedom. Our results indicate that changes in the institutional environment can promote gender equity. In particular, anonymity and reduced retaliation possibilities close the gender gap in the willingness to act as a third-party punisher.

  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  





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  DOES WOMEN'S ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT HAVE AN IMPACT ON HUMAN DEVELOPMENT IN LOW- AND MIDDLE-INCOME COUNTRIES? A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  Pooja Balasubramanian, Marcela Ibanez Diaz, Sarah Khan and Soham Sahoo
  
  

  This paper investigates how women's economic empowerment interventions have affected human development in low- and middle-income countries. We use a meta-regression analysis to consider the following dimensions of human development: income and wealth, education, health, and community development. After an extensive search of academic and policy-focused databases and screening of 2998 titles and abstracts of published studies and working papers, 48 studies on female economic empowerment were selected and included in the analysis. We find programs that promote female economic empowerment lead to a modest but significant positive effect on employment, income, assets, school attendance, and expenditures in health but have no significant impact on community development. Regarding the pathways by which women's economic empowerment leads to human development, there are positive effects on income security (i.e., beneficiaries are more likely insured) and consumption expenditures. However, there are no significant effects on intra-household bargaining power or fertility. Our findings show economic empowerment to be associated with worse outcomes for women in terms of health compared with other household members, providing evidence of a triple burden of work for women.