Collective risks threaten development at the global and local level. This study presents empirical evidence on investment decisions that protect the group from future losses. We focus on community decisions to prevent potential losses associated with the breakdown of rural water infrastructure by paying for maintenance services. We conduct a novel, incentivised framed field experiment in Kenya, with 864 participants in 144 communities. Using a one-shot threshold public goods game, we estimate the causal effect of risk on investments to prevent collective losses by introducing exogenous variation in the probability of pump failure. Subsequently, we investigate whether exposure to collective risks in a game setting affects intentions to counteract these risks in the real world. Experimental results show that group contributions to collective maintenance increase with risk. This result holds when evaluating real world intentions to sign up to professional services for rural water infrastructure several months after the experiment.

We differentiate the impact of extreme weather shocks on the welfare of the formal and informal sectors by utilizing nationally representative household survey data from the Philippines. We deviated from the typical measure of extreme tails of normalized rainfall values using normal distribution and instead used a novel measure of extreme rainfall from satellite-derived data. We estimate the vulnerability of households using an endogenous switching regression model to account for the heterogeneity in the decision to be in either sector. We find evidence that households’ welfare is adversely affected by extreme rainfall days, but the negative impact is bigger on the welfare of the formal sector. Households in the formal sector have higher incomes and thus have more to lose. However, the adverse impact on informal households may be irreversible given their weak capability to recover and their limited ability to smooth out consumption even during years considered normal. The negative effects of experiencing extreme rainfall three years ago linger. Thus, vulnerable households in the formal sector can potentially slide down to poverty, and those in the informal sector go deeper into poverty when hit by extreme weather events.

Improving access to drinking water and sanitation is a goal with profound implications for the achievement of various sustainable development goals, including health outcomes, education, and food security. This study examines the effects of women policymakers on progress in access to safe water and sanitation in developing countries. We find that increases in the proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments is positively associated with access to drinking water and sanitation services for both the total population, urban, and rural populations. Specifically, a 10-percentage point increase in the seats held by women in national parliaments is associated with an increase in the percentage of the total population with access to drinking water and sanitation of 1 per cent and 2.49 per cent, respectively. Furthermore, women parliamentarians are negatively associated with the gap in access to these basic services between urban and rural populations. Education emerges as the main channel through which women parliamentarians improve access to drinking water and sanitation services, while control of corruption and female labour force participation play secondary roles in this process.

On the face of various agro-climatic shocks, farmers often resort to non-farm activities as a coping mechanism for attaining sustainable livelihood. While the impact of non-farm income on farm productivity is well documented in the literature, we contribute to the literature by exploring the possibility of a non-linear impact of non-farm income on farm productivity - differential impact across different types of farmers (small, medium and large) based on their landholding size. We first develop a small theoretical model and establish various channels which could result in non-linearity. For empirical estimation, we use household-level information from eight Indian states based on Village Dynamics in South Asia panel dataset for a period of five years (2010–2014). We adopt an Instrumental Variable Tobit Model to correct for endogeneity of non-farm income arising from unobserved heterogeneity and simultaneity between non-farm income and farm productivity. Our empirical results unveil a U-shaped relationship between non-farm income and farm productivity. This confirms our hypothesis about non-linear impact of non-farm income on farm productivity. Our heterogeneity analysis shows that the impact of non-farm earnings on farm productivity varies with size of landholdings. Policy implications of our empirical results are also discussed.

This study investigates whether childhood education has a lasting causal effect on health using data from the China Family Panel Studies and assesses the Compulsory Education Law, implemented by the Chinese government in 1986 to provide free compulsory education for 9 years for children aged 6–15 years in primary and junior high schools, as a quasi-natural experiment. Employing a fuzzy regression discontinuity design, we find that people who received free compulsory education had better health status in adulthood, and this effect was more significant among urban and male groups. Further analysis shows that the free compulsory education policy has a significant positive impact on adult education level, social class, lifestyle, medical service utilization and healthcare expenditure, and living environment, which function as underlying mechanisms. In addition, we find that free compulsory education policy can reduce health inequality among adults.

ABstract The performance of industrial policies in Nigeria’s cement and textile industries has shown puzzling divergence. While the Backward Integration Policy (BIP) transitioned Nigeria from a net cement importer to a self-sufficient producer, the textile industrial policies have failed to revive the ailing Nigerian textile industry. To understand this divergence in policy outcomes, this paper combines political settlement (PS) analysis with technological capability (TC) theory and the concept of rents space (RS). It finds that while political leadership support is vital for policy performance, differing industrial policy outcomes between the case-study industries are attributable to differences in: (i) the requirements, adoption, and implementation of learning, capabilities, and routines in particular industries, (ii) the relative capabilities of entrepreneurs, and (iii) the relative importance of respective industry entrepreneurs to ruling elites for political financing. Apart from contributing to the scant literature exploring the puzzle of divergent policy outcomes among sectors of the same economy, the paper also contributes to theory by applying a dimension of Khan’s original PS theory that existing literature underemphasises—that is, the dimension on how the relative power and capabilities of productive entrepreneurs in particular sectors affect the performance of policy institutions.

This article adopts a narrative analysis to explore contrasting approaches to ‘localisation’, and links with power struggles in an unequal aid industry. Drawing on qualitative research with aid workers in Myanmar, we analyse how ‘crises’ provide opportunities to challenge dominant narratives, but can also be instrumentalised to reinforce existing power inequalities. We show that the humanitarian ‘crisis’ precipitated by Myanmar’s 2021 coup sharpened differences in localisation narratives, generating increased critique by local actors of unequal international aid systems. Whilst seemingly working towards the same goals, local and international actors in Myanmar often had different definitions of the localisation ‘story’—of challenges with contemporary aid systems, strategies required, and the roles of different characters. In reaction to dominant narratives that tended to depoliticise and disguise systemic inequalities and injustices, an emerging network of Local Intermediary Actors (LIAs) tried to reshape localisation narratives, highlighting deep lines of colonial continuity in international aid systems. While some international actors utilised the ‘crisis’ in Myanmar to legitimise more ‘technical’ and conservative localisation narratives, LIAs engaged in a subtle form of epistemic resistance. This showcased civil society agency in challenging dominant localisation narratives, and revealed opportunities for and barriers to much-needed power shifts in international aid.