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Essays on Development Economics
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Islam, Mahnaz. 2015. Essays on Development Economics. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard
University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.
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http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:17465323
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Essays on Development Economics
A dissertation presented
by
Mahnaz Islam
to
The Committee on Higher Degrees in Public Policy
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in the subject of
Public Policy
Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts
April 2015
(cid:13)c 2015 Mahnaz Islam
All rights reserved.
Dissertation Advisors: Author:
Professor Rohini Pande Mahnaz Islam
Professor Rema Hanna
Essays on Development Economics
Abstract
This dissertation studies agricultural technology adoption, child labor and development.
Although adoption of fertilizers has been high in South Asia, farmers may fail to use it
efficiently. Besides higher costs incurred by households engaged in agriculture, inefficient
useoffertilizersmayalsohavenegativeconsequencesfortheenvironment. Thefirstchapter
of this dissertation uses a field experiment in Bangladesh to study whether providing
farmers access to a simple rule-of-thumb tool (leaf color chart) to manage the timing of
fertilizer applications can improve efficiency of fertilizer use and lead to productivity gains.
Thesecondchapterexploreswhethercharacteristicsofagriculturaltrainers, whointroduced
the leaf color charts to the farmers in the treatment group, play an important role in the
adoption and use of leaf color charts by farmers. The final chapter of this dissertation
studies the impact of a large public workfare program targeting rural households in India
on children. In particular, we study the impact of time use by the youngest and oldest
children in a household as adult time use changes in response to new work opportunities.
iii
Contents
Abstract. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Introduction 1
1 Can a Rule-of-Thumb Tool Improve Fertilizer Management? Experimental Evi-
dence from Bangladesh 3
1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2 Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.2.1 Rice Farming and Urea Use in Bangladesh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.2.2 Importance of Timing for Urea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.2.3 Leaf Color Charts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.3 Experimental Design, Data & Empirical Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.3.1 Study Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.3.2 Data & Intervention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.3.3 Randomization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.3.4 Empirical Stratgey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
1.4 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1.4.1 Take-up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1.4.2 LCC Instructions & Expected Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
1.4.3 Timing of Urea Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
1.4.4 Treatment Effects on Urea Use and Yield . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
1.5 Who Benefits from the Intervention? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
1.5.1 Estimates from Quantile Regressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
1.5.2 Treatment Effects by Patience, Cognition & Income . . . . . . . . . . . 29
1.6 Cost-Effectiveness of Intervention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
1.7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2 Trainer Quality and Adoption of Leaf Color Charts 38
2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
2.2 Background and Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
iv
2.3 Context and Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
2.4 Empirical Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
2.5 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
2.5.1 Trainer Fixed Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
2.5.2 Trainer Characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
2.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
3 How does Child Labor respond to changes in Adult Work Opportunities? Evi-
dence from NREGA 57
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
3.2 Background on NREGA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
3.3 Conceptual Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
3.4 Data & Estimation Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
3.5 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
3.5.1 Changes to the Rural Economy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
3.5.2 Effect on Time Use by Children. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
3.6 Robustness Checks: Further Evidence from Panel Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
3.6.1 Data & Estimation Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
3.6.2 Results: Changes within Household . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
3.7 Alternative Mechanisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
3.7.1 Existence of Surplus Labor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
3.7.2 Changes in Household Enterprise work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
3.8 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
References 79
Appendix A Appendix to Chapter 1 85
A.1 Sample Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
A.2 Supplementary Figures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
A.3 Supplementary Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Appendix B Appendix to Chapter 2 98
B.1 Supplementary Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Appendix C Appendix to Chapter 3 100
C.1 Supplementary Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
v
List of Tables
1.1 Farmer Characteristics at Baseline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.2 Take-up & Stated use of LCCs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
1.3 Changes in Behavior in Using Urea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
1.4 Tobit Estimates of Time Use by Farmers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
1.5 Treatment Effects on Urea & Yield . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
1.6 Revenue, Cost & Profits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
1.7 Treatment Effects by Time Preferences, Cognition and Baseline Household
Income . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
1.8 Cost-Benefit Analysis of Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.1 Summary Statistics for Primary Trainers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
2.2 Regressions of Predicted Trainer FE on Trainer Characteristics (Take-up of
LCCs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
2.3 Regressions of Predicted Trainer FE on Trainer Characteristics (Change in
Urea Use and Yield) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
2.4 Regressions of Predicted Trainer FE on Trainer Characteristics (Urea Use and
Yield at Endline). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
3.1 Summary Statistics: NSS 60th Round . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
3.2 Number of Days Spent by Adults on Different Activities in the last 7 days . . 67
3.3 Log of Daily Casual Wages (Non-Public) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
3.4 Number of Days Spent by on Education in the last 7 days . . . . . . . . . . . 69
3.5 Number of Days Spent by Children on Different Activities in the last 7 days 70
3.6 Summary Statistics: Panel Data Household Composition . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
3.7 Number of Days Spent by Children on Different Activities in the last 7 days
during Adult NREG Work (Panel Data): Household Aggregates . . . . . . . 74
3.8 Number of Days Spent by Children on Different Activities in the last 7 days
during Adult HH Enterprise Work (Panel) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
A.1 Descriptive Statistics for Districts in Study Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
A.2 Instructions for Using LCCs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
vi
A.3 Randomization Checks after Attrition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
A.4 Changes in Urea Application Intervals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
A.5 OLS Estimates of Time Use by Farmers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
A.6 Treatment Effects on Urea & Yield (Logs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
A.7 Revenue, Cost & Profits: Price Data from Village Stores . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
A.8 Costs Breakdown (Long Survey Sample) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
B.1 Characteristics of University Graduates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
C.1 Number of Days Spent by the Household in different activities in the last 7 days101
C.2 Number of Days Spent by Boys on Different Activities in the last 7 days . . . 102
C.3 Number of Days Spent by Girls on Different Activities in the last 7 days . . . 103
vii
List of Figures
1.1 Urea Application Patterns for Control Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
1.2 Quantile Regressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.1 Histogram of Trainer Fixed Effects for Take-up (Used LCC) . . . . . . . . . . 49
2.2 Histogram of Trainer Fixed Effects for Take-up (Could Show LCC) . . . . . . 50
2.3 Histogram of Trainer Fixed Effects for Change in Urea Use. . . . . . . . . . . 51
2.4 Histogram of Trainer Fixed Effects for Change in Yields . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
A.1 Stylized Timeline for Rice Cultivation during Boro Season . . . . . . . . . . . 87
A.2 Timeline of Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
A.3 Study Areas (Districts) in Bangladesh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
viii
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I would like to thank my advisor Rohini Pande for her guidance and
generosity. Iamparticularlygratefulforherencouragementandsupportofmyfieldproject,
which had been the most incredible and defining experience of my doctoral studies. I am
also very grateful to my advisors Rema Hanna, Richard Hornbeck and Dan Levy for their
warm support, mentorship and guidance when I needed it the most. I would also like to
thank other faculty members at Harvard Kennedy School, the Department of Economics
and Harvard Business School, particularly Michael Kremer for their advice and helpful
comments.
Fieldwork for the dissertation would not have been possible without the participation
and help of various organizations. I am grateful to the Center for Development Innovation
and Practices (CDIP), particularly Muhammad Yahiya and Tarikul Islam for supporting
this project, as well as staff in their local offices for their participation and cooperation. I
would also like to thank other organizations in Bangladesh including the Department of
Agriculture Extension, mPower Social Enterprises and Pathways for their help. I would
like to acknowledge the staff at Evidence for Policy Design at Harvard University for their
continued support. I am thankful to Camila Alva, Max Bode, Smita Das, Kunal Mangal and
Syed Ishraque Osman, for providing research assistance at various stages of the project.
IamgratefulforfinancialsupportfromHarvardUniversityandWellesleyCollegeduring
my doctoral studies. I acknowledge the Vicki Norberg-Bohm Fellowship, Joseph Crump
Fellowship, research grants from the South Asia Initiative and external research grants from
USAID Development Innovation Ventures and Agricultural Technology Adoption Initiative.
I sincerely thank my classmates and peers for their support and help over the years.
They have been a key part of my experience and my dissertation benefitted a lot from
conversations with them. I would especially like to thank Anitha Sivasankaran, for being a
wonderful friend and co-author, and Alexandra Van Geen, Angela Fonseca Galvis, Maria
Cecilia Acevedo and Liz Walker for their immense support, particularly in the last year.
Finally, and most importantly, I would like to thank my parents, A.N.M. Serajul Islam
ix