Moved to Poverty? A Legacy of the Apartheid Experiment in South Africa

By Bladimir Carrillo, Carlos Charris, and Wilman Iglesias

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2023

During the South African apartheid, Black people were forced to move to homelands during the 1960s and 1970s, resulting in one of history's largest segregation policy experiments. We examine how and why relocation to the homelands affected human capital a...

The Impact of Host Language Proficiency on Migrants' Employment Outcomes

By Lukas Schmid

American Economic Review: Insights, December 2023

This paper estimates the economic gains from proficiency in the host country's language on migrants' employment outcomes by exploiting the exogenous placement of refugees to Swiss cantons and a sharp language border dividing German- and French-speaking re...

How Do You Say Your Name? Difficult-To-Pronounce Names and Labor Market Outcomes

By Qi Ge and Stephen Wu

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy

We test for labor market discrimination based on an understudied characteristic: name fluency. Analysis of recent economics PhD job candidates indicates that name difficulty is negatively related to the probability of landing an academic or tenure trac...

Reversing the Resource Curse: Foreign Corruption Regulation and the Local Economic Benefits of Resource Extraction

By Hans B. Christensen, Mark Maffett, and Thomas Rauter

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2024

We examine how foreign corruption regulation affects the economic benefits communities receive from extraction activities in the resource-rich areas of Africa. After a mid-2000s increase in enforcement of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), night...

Does Exposure to Other Ethnic Regions Promote National Integration? Evidence from Nigeria

By Oyebola Okunogbe

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2024

This paper examines how temporary exposure to a different ethnic region affects national integration, using original survey data from participants in Africa's largest national youth service program. Seven years later, participants randomly assigned to ser...

The Employment Effects of Ethnic Politics

By Francesco Amodio, Giorgio Chiovelli, and Sebastian Hohmann

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2024

We study the labor market consequences of ethnic politics in African democracies. Using subnational georeferenced data from 15 countries from 1996 to 2017, we compare individuals from ethnicities linked to parties at the margin of electing a representativ...

Will Wealth Weaken Weather Wars?

By Marshall Burke, Joel Ferguson, Solomon Hsiang, and Edward Miguel

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2024

This study estimates the moderating impact of economic development on climate-conflict linkages during 1989–2019 in Africa, the world region that in recent decades has experienced the most armed conflict. We build a spatially disaggregated dataset that ...

Family Structure and Childcare in Sub-Saharan Africa

By Aletheia Donald, Sara Lowes, and Julia Vaillant

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2024

Extended family members can help women with childcare. Using data from 32 sub-Saharan African countries, we find that the prevalence of nuclear families relative to extended families is increasing over time. The overall share of nuclear families is 56 per...

The High and Falling Price of Cement in Africa

By Fabrizio Leone, Rocco Macchiavello, and Tristan Reed

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics

Prices for several intermediate inputs, including cement, are higher in developing economies—particularly in Africa. Combining recent data from the International Comparison Program with a global directory of cement firms we estimate an industry equil...

Age Set vs. Kin: Culture and Financial Ties in East Africa

By Jacob Moscona and Awa Ambra Seck

American Economic Review

We study how social organization shapes patterns of economic interaction and the effects of national policy, focusing on the distinction between age-based and kin-based groups in sub-Saharan Africa. Motivated by ethnographic accounts suggesting that thi...

Digital Information Provision and Behavior Change: Lessons from Six Experiments in East Africa

By Raissa Fabregas, Michael Kremer, Matthew Lowes, Robert On, and Giulia Zane

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics

While some studies suggest mobile phone-based information programs change behavior, others find no effect. We evaluate six text{message agricultural extension programs, collectively covering 128,000 farmers. A meta-analysis finds a 1.22-fold increase in...

Longer-Term Effects of Head Start

By Eliana Garces, Duncan Thomas, and Janet Currie

American Economic Review, September 2002

Specially collected data on adults in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics are used to provide evidence on the longer-term effects of Head Start, an early intervention program for poor preschool-age children. Whites who attended Head Start are, relative to ...

Racial Stigma: Toward a New Paradigm for Discrimination Theory

By Glenn C. Loury

American Economic Review, May 2003

This essay examines interconnections between "race" and economic inequality in the United States, focusing on the case of African-Americans. I will argue that it is crucially important to distinguish between racial discrimination and racial stigma in the ...

Upward Bias in the Estimated Returns to Education: Evidence from South Africa

By Thomas Hertz

American Economic Review, September 2003

Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination

By Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan

American Economic Review, September 2004

We study race in the labor market by sending fictitious resumes to help-wanted ads in Boston and Chicago newspapers. To manipulate perceived race, resumes are randomly assigned African-American- or White-sounding names. White names receive 50 percent more...

Federalism and the Democratic Transition: Lessons from South Africa

By Robert P. Inman and Daniel L. Rubinfeld

American Economic Review, May 2005

Health and Wealth among the Poor: India and South Africa Compared

By Anne Case and Angus Deaton

American Economic Review, May 2005

The Rise of Europe: Atlantic Trade, Institutional Change, and Economic Growth

By Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson

American Economic Review, June 2005

The rise of Western Europe after 1500 is due largely to growth in countries with access to the Atlantic Ocean and with substantial trade with the New World, Africa, and Asia via the Atlantic. This trade and the associated colonialism affected Europe not o...

Skin-Tone Effects among African Americans: Perceptions and Reality

By Joni Hersch

American Economic Review, May 2006

Marriage Laws and Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa

By Todd Schoellman and Michèle Tertilt

American Economic Review, May 2006