For decades the question regarding foreign aid’s effectiveness has been disputed. The ongoing debate concerning whether foreign aid yields or prevents economic growth has been discussed by different scholars, though with dissimilar outcomes. Foreign aid is often criticized for creating destruction rather than stimulating developing countries economic growth, though the fundamentals for aid is to create opportunities for developing countries to evolve and gain better socio-economic structures. Different forms of aid are supposed to create different outcomes, i.e. short- and medium-term aid ought to stimulate the country while long-term aid such as infrastructure and education should create growth for the recipient country. The problem of aid is mostly corruption, corrupted regimes hinders the natural development for aid that is to say it hampers the positive outcome aid can produce. So, does foreign aid have a positive impact on recipient countries growth? The aim of this study is to acknowledge the importance of foreign aid. In order to analyse whether foreign aid results in economic growth for developing countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, a crosssection regression analysis has been conducted. To sum up the results of this study foreign aid doesn’t have a significant effect on economic growth in the region Sub-Saharan Africa although other variables such as education and foreign direct investment has a significant effect on growth.

This thesis consists of four independent chapters each of which addresses the relationship between clientelism and social policy in relation to welfare state development from different perspectives. The overarching research question examines whether the adoption of such policies leads to de-clientelisation, and, if so, to what extent. The research extensively draws upon both cross-national data and that from Thailand between 2000-2012 during which populist welfare policies have gained significant influence on political development. Chapter 1 employs a global dataset of developing countries to offer a comparative perspective on the subject and shows that political parties generally trade-off between social policy and their engagement in clientelism. The latter three chapters take Thailand as a case study empirically investigate clientelist mechanisms at different geographic levels. Focusing on the household level, Chapter 2 evaluates the role of patron-client relations in determining access to the Thailand Village Fund based on the Socio-Economic Household Surveys. The provincial level is examined in Chapter 3 which studies economic and political determinants of two types of provincial-level distributive transfers: social policy spending and discretionary spending. Chapter 4 examines the clientelist mechanism at the national level through an assessment of the electoral linkage dynamics by measuring changes in personal votes. The findings show some degree of resilience of clientelist relations as they intervene with social policy allocation, particularly at local level. The global trend contrasts with the case of Thailand where, as in-depth analyses of the latter three chapters have shown, clientelist relations often persist and convert into a new form, for example the southern model of welfare regimes.

Informal sectors in developing countries provide a substantial pool of jobs for some of the world's poorest people. Self-employment comprises a large portion of the job opportunities available to individuals working in these sectors. This thesis is concerned with the factors that drive people to become self-employed and determine their welfare as an entrepreneur, with a special emphasis on differences between women and men. In Chapter 1, we explain the Ghanaian context to which this thesis relates and outline the contribution of each main chapter and the common themes. In Chapters 2 and 3, we examine the trade-off between domestic work, such as caring for children and household chores, and market work. In Chapter 2, we consider the extent to which individuals are able to substitute between these two tasks to adjust to short-run variation in domestic productivity brought about by outages in electricity. We find that self-employed workers adjust non-monotonically to changes in domestic productivity, initially increasing their levels of domestic work to preserve consumption levels, but then substituting towards market work when power outages become more severe. We show that this relationship is heterogeneous by sex, and build a model of time allocation to demonstrate the theoretical mechanisms behind these results. In Chapter 3 we examine whether the factors that drive occupational selection differ by sex. It is often argued that women choose jobs in self-employment because this allows them to balance income-generation with childcare and other domestic work. We test the plausibility of this claim and its implications for labour market outcomes. First, we use a simple model of occupational choice to clarify our ideas about which notions of 'job flexibility' are important for the Ghanaian context. Second, we examine whether differential selection forces between women and men may explain the raw sex earnings gaps that appear to persist in various sectors, using a multinomial logit model to adjust for non-random occupational selection. We find that controlling for selection substantially widens the earnings gap amongst the self-employed, but shrinks it for the wage-employed. Third, we interrogate our selection equations and show that domestic obligations increase women's likelihood of entering low-input self-employment jobs more than men. We assess the importance of endogeneity using a maximum simulated likelihood estimator to couch the idea that selection on observables can be used as a guide for selection on unobservables, focussing on the discrete choice made over occupation. In Chapter 4, we turn to theory to try and resolve some of the empirical puzzles that remain from Chapter 3. In particular, we attempt to reconcile the fact that female participation in self-employment is so high even when the average differences in potential earnings are large. To do this, we construct a search model, which allows for individual heterogeneity and participation in both self- and wage-employment, as well as discrimination against female workers in the wage sector. We numerically solve and simulate this model, using calibrations from the existing literature, to explain a set of stylised facts generated from a longitudinal dataset of workers in urban Ghana. We show that wage sector discrimination leads to average earnings gaps in \emph{all} sectors of the economy, even if the underlying ability distribution is the same for both sexes. We also conduct a series of experiments to examine how women and men may be affected differently by government policy. Finally, in Chapter 5 we connect our main findings to policy and make some suggestions for future work.

This thesis is about imperfections in urban labour markets of three developing countries. I study how physical living conditions place constraints on labour force participation, and increase risks associated with unemployment. In Chapter One I test for the impact of high search costs on labour market outcomes of job seekers. I use a randomized trial of transport subsidies among youth living far away from the centre of the city in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Lowering transport costs increases the intensity of job search and leads to better employment outcomes. Weekly phone call data shows that treatment works to stop job search activity from declining over time. I show that the results are consistent with a dynamic model of job search with cash constraints and monetary search costs. Income from temporary work is used to smooth consumption and pay for the costs of search. I find that subsidies reduce participation in temporary work. Chapter Two looks at the links between poor housing conditions in slums and market labour supply. I test for the effect of free government housing in South Africa on households, using four waves of panel data and a natural experiment due to the allocation of new housing according to proximity from housing projects. I then use planned but cancelled projects to control for non-random selection of housing project sites. I find that government housing leads to large increases in household incomes from wage work, and increases in the labour supply of female household members. I argue that these results are due to reduced burdens of work in the home of improved housing, especially for women. In Chapter Three we look at how labour markets respond to large but temporary economic shocks caused by typhoons in the Philippines. We use quarterly aggregate, repeated-cross sectional and panel data to demonstrate robust evidence of downward wage flexibility. Lay-offs do not occur when storms hits, but hours per worker fall. We explain these results with a model of implicit contracts under which risk is shared between workers and firms through wage cuts, but workers are insured against lay-offs so that adjustments in labour demand occur through reductions in hours per worker. Our results are particularly strong for workers in long term contractual relationships in the private sector.

My dissertation is an advocacy of the idea that if aid proved to be ineffective, it is partly because of the donor and not only the recipient as it is usually argued. The thesis contributes to the theoretical and empirical literature on aid effectiveness and explores the ability of aid to achieve its goals in the presence of both incentives and informational problems. <p>The thesis consists of three essays dealing with a particular aspect of donor policies that may impact the effectiveness of aid: i) the drivers of aid allocation among recipient countries, ii) ex-post conditionality and the role of reputation in inducing compliance with aid contracts; iii) and finally, the optimal choice of aid modalities.<p>The first chapter investigates the drivers of U.S. aid policy. <p><p>I find considerable evidence that the pattern of aid is dictated as much by political and strategic considerations, as by the economic needs and merit of the recipients. Most importantly, inertia seems to impact heavily the aid allocation process. Any of these motivations, when excessive, would lead to a time inconsistency situation where the donor is not credible in his conditionality. With such an impact on aid allocation, the question arises on the effectiveness of conditioning aid provision on political, social, or economic reforms. This is precisely the scope of chapter 2.<p><p>The second chapter investigates the conditions under which reputation can serve as commitment device in order to induce donors of development aid to enforce aid contracts and recipients to comply with such contracts. The idea is that the success of conditionality rests solely on the availability of a commitment technology that ties the hands of the donor. Reputation concerns could create the required incentives and overcome the altruism effect on the donor side.<p><p>Notwithstanding that incentive creation must not be driven by the volume of aid only, but also by the way it is channelled, i.e. aid modality. This is particularly relevant for recipients with certain characteristics. Depending on the preference alignment of the donor and the recipient, the information structure in place, the optimal aid modality can change. The characteristics of the optimal aid package are investigated in chapter 3. Optimality imposes a mix of fixed project and financial transfer to recipient countries. The transfer can be negative for countries exhibiting a high willingness or ability to redistribute to the poor. This is interpreted as a contribution to the financing of the infrastructure project. The extent of the project (large or small size) is determined by the interest of government for the poor in the recipient country.<p> / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Il cambiamento climatico è una sfida chiave dei nostri tempi, soprattutto per i paesi in via di sviluppo, che basano i loro processi di crescita sull'utilizzo delle risorse naturali e sul settore agricolo. Sebbene esistano varie strategie e piani, sia a livello pubblico che privato, per far fronte agli impatti dei cambiamenti climatici, l'implementazione delle misure di adattamento è ancora limitata. Questo è collegato alla presenza d'incertezza riguardo agli impatti dei cambiamenti climatici in futuro. Pertanto, nuovi strumenti e processi decisionali dovrebbero essere valutati e diffusi nel tentativo di aiutare i decisori pubblici e privati nella definizione e attuazione di misure concrete di adattamento. In questa tesi, la Portfolio Analysis viene applicata alla valutazione di investimenti agricoli in Ruanda / Climate change is a key challenge of our times, especially for developing countries, which significantly rely on natural resources and on the agriculture sector. Even though there are various strategies and plans to face climate change impacts, the implementation of adaptation measures is still uneven. This is connected to the presence of uncertainty about the impacts of climate change in the future. Therefore, new decision-making tools and decision processes should be assessed and disseminated in the attempt to help the decision makers in the definition and implementation of concrete adaptation measures. In this dissertation, the Portfolio Analysis methodology is applied in the evaluation of agricultural investments in Rwanda

No abstract available / Development Studies / M.A. (Development Studies)

Diese Arbeit untersucht den Einfluss verhaltensökonomischer Aspekte und Bildung für die finanzielle Entwicklung. Sie besteht aus vier Kapiteln, welche jeweils ein separates Forschungspapier darstellen. Die Kapitel decken folgende Themen ab: Determinanten einer impulsiven Kreditaufnahme, Hindernisse bei finanzieller Inklusion, die Auswirkungen von finanzieller Bildung und die finanziellen Folgen eines Schocks. Alle Kapitel nutzen Umfragedaten. Außerdem nutzen einige Kapitel experimentelle (Labor-)Ergebnisse. Nach einer Einleitung untersucht Kapitel zwei die Rolle von Selbstkontrolle und finanzieller Bildung bei einer impulsiven Kreditaufnahme und analysiert experimentelle Daten, die in einem Labor in Berlin erhoben wurden, sowie Umfragedaten aus der Innovations-Stichprobe des Sozio-oekonomischen Panels. Kapitel drei trägt zu einem besseren Verständnis der Determinanten und Hindernisse für die Nutzung von Mobile Money in einem einkommensschwachen Land bei, wobei es auch den Beitrag von Mobile Money zur finanziellen Inklusion betrachtet. Da Bildung die Wahrscheinlichkeit erhöht, dass neue Technologien genutzt werden, könnte finanzielle Bildung weitere Bemühungen zur finanziellen Inklusion und zum Verbraucherschutz für die finanzielle Entwicklung sinnvoll ergänzen. Daher ist es wichtig, die Auswirkungen von Programmen zu bewerten, die auf finanzielle Bildung abzielen. Dafür werden in Kapitel vier die Auswirkungen eines Finanzbildungsprogramms und seine Spillover-Effekte anhand einer randomisierten kontrollierten Studie analysiert. Kapitel fünf beleuchtet die Auswirkungen der COVID-19-Pandemie auf das finanzielle Wohlergehen und die Technologienutzung von Kleinstunternehmern. Die in Kapitel drei bis fünf verwenden Daten wurden in zwei groß angelegten Erhebungswellen im ländlichen Uganda erhoben. / This thesis focuses on the role of behavioral characteristics and education for financial development. It consists of four chapters, each being a separate research paper, covering related areas: determinants of impulsive borrowing, barriers to financial inclusion, the impact of financial education, and the financial consequences due to a shock. All chapters use survey evidence, and some include (lab) experimental findings. After the introduction, Chapter two investigates the role of self-control and financial literacy for impulsive borrowing, analyzing experimental data collected in a laboratory in Berlin and survey data provided by the German Socio-Economic Panel's Innovation Sample. Chapter three contributes to a better understanding of the determinants and barriers to mobile money adoption in a low-income country, and the contribution of mobile money services to financial inclusion. As education makes it more likely to adopt new technologies, financial education could complement other financial inclusion and consumer protection efforts for financial development. Thus, it is relevant to assess the consequences of programs targeting financial education. Therefore, chapter four analyzes the impact of a financial education program and its spillover effects via a randomized controlled trial. Chapter five sheds light on the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on the financial well-being and technology adoption of micro-entrepreneurs. Chapter three to five use data collected in two large-scale survey waves in rural Uganda.

[pt] Esta tese é composta por 3 capítulos em Economia do Desenvolvimento, relacionando desastres naturais e a qualidade do ambiente com engajamento político e capital social. No primeiro capítulo, mostramos que desastres naturais podem levar à punição de incumbentes. De forma interessante, tal punição é consequência da heterogeneidade na participação política. Em eleições locais, eleitores em regiões onde o incumbente era do partido no poder a nível nacional (DPJ) compareceram menos às urnas, enquanto eleitores em regiões onde o incumbente era do principal partido concorrente (LDP) compareceram mais. Como consequência, o partido no poder perdeu mais assentos. A potencial razão para a heterogeneidade observada está na decepção na população em relação ao DPJ. Ainda, é também mostrada a heterogeneidade em relação ao nível de capital social. Enquanto é mais associado à maior participação política, a maior resiliência potencialmente levou a uma diferença no padrão de votos. O segundo capítulo sugere um arcabouço teórico para conectar as literaturas empírica e teórica sobre a influência da qualidade e dos riscos ambientais na formação de comportamento cooperativo. Em linha com a literatura empírica, mostra que, a depender das relações entre o ambiente e um bem público e das crenças dos indivíduos sobre o comportamento cooperativo dos demais, quanto maior for a probabilidade de ocorrência de tempos ruins, maior será a propensão de indivíduos em uma comunidade de agirem coletivamente. Finalmente, o terceiro capítulo investiga os efeitos de desastres naturais na formação de capital social e em sua persistência no longo prazo. Se valendo se dados em terremotos passados no Japão, mostra que indivíduos vivendo em cidades rurais Japonesas que foram atingidas no passado exibem hoje em dia níveis mais altos de confiança e engajamento político. / [en] This thesis consists of 3 chapters in development economics that relate natural disasters and environmental quality to political engagement and social capital. In the first chapter, we show that natural disasters can lead to punishment of incumbents. Interestingly, such punishment is the result of some heterogeneity in political participation. In local elections, turnout was lower in regions where the incumbent belonged to the party in power at the country level (DPJ), while turnout was higher in regions where the incumbent belonged to the main rival (LDP). As a result, the ruling party suffered a loss in these elections. The possible reason for this heterogeneity lies in the population s disappointment with the DPJ. In addition, it shows a further heterogeneity in regards to the level of social capital. Whereas it is related to higher political participation, the associated higher community resilience possibly led to different voting behavior. The second chapter proposes a theoretical framework to link the empirical and theoretical literatures on the influence of environmental quality and risk on the emergence of cooperative behavior. Consistent with the empirical literature, it is shown that depending on the relationship between the environment and the club good and individuals beliefs about the cooperative behavior of others, the higher the probability of bad times, the greater the propensity of individuals to engage in collective action within a community. Finally, the third chapter examines the impact of natural disasters on the formation of social capital and its long-term persistence. Using data on ancient earthquakes in Japan, it is shown that people living in rural Japanese cities that were strongly hit in the past currently exhibit higher levels of trust and political engagement.

[pt] Esta tese é composta por 3 capítulos em Economia do Desenvolvimento, todos eles relacionados com o papel das políticas públicas, quer na promoção de políticas sustentáveis para a preservação de recursos naturais no longo prazo, quer na prestação de serviços públicos eficientes ou no questionamento do accountability das atuais instituições democráticas. O primeiro artigo mostra que, ao adotar uma tecnologia que incorpora práticas agrícolas sustentáveis, os agricultores têm efeitos dinâmicos positivos na produtividade e na resiliência climática. Apresentamos evidências do mecanismo dessas externalidades: melhorias no solo. O segundo artigo apresenta os resultados de um RCT desenvolvido para testar se uma intervenção gerencial em centros de saúde em Moçambique pode reduzir falhas de coordenação, aumentando a retenção de pacientes com HIV ao tratamento e a qualidade do atendimento prestado. Por fim, o terceiro analisa os grandes protestos de rua ocorridos no Brasil em 2013 para analisar se os protestos podem funcionar como mecanismo de accountability de políticos eleitos. Usando dados históricos do Twitter, criamos uma medida da intensidade dos protestos e quão ruidosas foram as demandas dos manifestantes em cada município. Apresentamos evidências de que os protestos podem funcionar como mecanismo de responsabilização apenas se as mensagens enviadas pelos manifestantes são nítidas e claras e os políticos enfrentam incentivos à reeleição. / [en] This thesis is composed of 3 chapters in development economics, all of which relate to the role of public policy either in promoting sustainable policies for long-run maintenance of natural resources, or meeting citizens needs through efficient service delivery or questioning the accountability of current political institutions. The first paper shows that, by adopting a technology that incorporates sustainable agricultural practices, farmers have positive dynamic effects on productivity and climate resilience.We provide evidence of the mechanism of these dynamic effects: soil improvement. The second one presents the results of an RCT designed to test whether a managerial intervention in health centers in Mozambique can reduce coordination failures, increasing HIV patients retention in care and quality of care provided. Finally, the third one look at the large street protests that took place in Brazil in 2013 to analyze whether protests can work as an accountability mechanism for elected politicians. Using Twitter historical data, we create a measure of protest intensity and how noisy protesters demands were in each municipality. We present evidence that protests may work as accountability mechanism only if messages sent by protesters are sharp and clear, and politicians face reelection incentives.