G²LM|LIC

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IZA/FCDO Online Development Economics Course for Sub-Saharan Africa

G2LM|LIC proudly announces the launch of IZA/FCDO Online Development Economics Course for Sub-Saharan Africa. On 17th September, the course began with 1440 participants from 43 countries. Over a period of two months, the participants will be guided through a combination of recorded lectures and live sessions every week. The course is taught by Professors Oriana Bandiera and Robin Burgess of the London School of Economics and aims at helping students explore the microeconomic foundations of economic development. The course will follow the arc of Development starting with the analysis of small subsistence entrepreneurs (normally in agriculture) and ending with large complex multinational enterprises. It will analyze how man-made organizations trade with one another, how they affect the environment in which they are located in and how the environment affects them in return. Finally the course will address the role of the state in representing citizen’s interests and their will, regulating markets, coordinating economic activities and containing externalities.

The course is a step towards making economics a more accessible discipline, focusing on the regions which have been traditionally underrepresented in this domain.

Syllabus

The Impact of COVID-19 on the Ability of Households to Meet Their Basic Needs in Sudan: Compounding Vulnerabilities in a Challenging Environment

The COVID-19 pandemic poses a particular challenge for low-income and fragile countries, such as Sudan. A G2LM|LIC project assesses the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on Sudanese households by means of a rapid phone survey administered to 2,400 randomly selected mobile phone users. This policy brief presents new findings from the Economic Research Forum’s COVID-19 MENA Monitor mobile phone survey to assess how households have fared in Sudan in these highly turbulent times. The Investigators find that poverty and inequality have risen since the onset of COVID-19. Not only have COVID-19 and concurrent challenges reduced the ability of Sudanese households to meet their needs and worsened poverty overall, they have also exacerbated inequality. For instance, 62% of households in the first (poorest) quartile and 69% in the second quartile reported their spending power was “much worse” in early 2021 compared to February 2020.

Only 11% of households reported they received regular social assistance (primarily Zakat bureau, 5%, and World Food Program, 4%). Only 9% of households had received emergency assistance in the past month (primarily the Selaaty commodity support program, 6%). The limited social safety net means that job and income losses translate directly into negative outcomes, such as food insecurity. The findings suggest that an expansion of Sudan’s social safety net is sorely needed to cushion the impact of COVID-19 on household. Read the detailed policy brief here.

Occupational Health and Safety: The Role of Information and Financial Linkage

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) play an important role in income and employment generation in local economies, and SMEs account for a large share of businesses in low and middle-income countries (LMICs). A field experiment in Bangladesh provides informal firms information on occupational health and safety (OHS). A sub-treatment arm provides firms with financial linkages to address credit constraint. Two years after the intervention, treated firms are more likely to invest in health and safety measures and firm owners and workers have increased health and safety knowledge. Treated firms are also more likely to hire new apprentices and more experienced skilled workers and foremen. However, there is no effect on profit. The authors find no additional effect due to financial linkages, suggesting that addressing the information gap is key to improving OHS.
The findings suggest that policies to improve work environment in the informal sector should center on information on OHS. Read the working paper here.

A small selection of our Projects

Our newest publications

The Impact of Seasonal Credit on Agricultural Production and Remittances

Globally, hundreds of millions of people suffer not just from chronic poverty, but also acute hardships during particular times of the year. These “lean seasons” commonly occur in rural communities in between the planting and harvest seasons, when stores from the last harvest run out and there is little agricultural work locally. Lean-season migration can help households cope with seasonal poverty by providing an additional income source when labor demand in agriculture is low. All-else equal, migration will be most effective at reducing seasonal poverty when migrants can easily remit their earnings during the lean season, either digitally or by hand.
This policy brief highlights the effect of a seasonal loan program that offered small loans timed to the lean season to households engaged in agriculture and circular labor migration in Nepal. In the sample, the researchers find evidence to remittance constraints: roughly two thirds of households engage in circular migration, over half of remittances are brought back by hand, and remittances rise sharply after the lean season when most migrants return. They designed an intervention to let households access future harvest and remittance income during the lean season when it is more valuable. They find that seasonal loans improve measures of lean season welfare and increase agricultural investment. The agricultural investments result in increased harvest revenue, and households offered the loan receive more remittances throughout the study period.

Cash Transfers and Shocks: Long-term Effects During a Pandemic in Uganda

In the past decade, cash transfer programs have become a popular tool to combat poverty in low- and middle-income countries among governments and donors alike. Since March 2020 alone, over 300 new cash transfer programs have been implemented across 156 countries in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The vast evidence on cash transfers (CT) suggests substantial positive benefits for beneficiaries after one to four years. Yet, to date, the long-term effects of such programs have rarely been studied and remain unclear. One of the few exceptions is Blattman, Fiala, and Martinez (2020), henceforward BFM (2020), who conducted a 9-year follow-up of a cash transfer program in Uganda and, unlike the short-term evaluation (BFM 2014), found only minor sustained effects. The present study pushes even further by adding a 12 year follow-up to the CT intervention examined in BFM (2020), now to look at how CT recipients handle the COVID-19 shock.

The Impact of COVID-19 on the Ability of Households to Meet Their Basic Needs in Sudan

The project aims to assess the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on Sudanese households by means of a rapid phone survey administered to 2,400 randomly selected mobile phone users. This first wave of the survey was carried out from March 4 to May 1, 2021 and inquired about changes in the ability of households to pay for goods and services, in their employment situation since February 2020, and in income and operations for household enterprises and farms. Prior to the pandemic Sudan had already been going through a great deal of economic and political turmoil associated with the overthrow of the Bashir regime in 2019, after months of protests, and the institution of a fragile transition government. Sudan has been experiencing very high inflation rates throughout this turmoil and recently introduced a major devaluation of its currency. While the project is not able to separate the effects of the pandemic from that of the ongoing political and economic turmoil, it does constitute one of the few sources on information on how households are coping through these challenging times.

Labour Market Effects of COVID-19 in Developing Countries and Policy Response

This synthesis report provides a summary on the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on different aspects related to labour markets in low- and middle-income countries, with a particular focus on the differential effect on the two genders. The report also discusses the policy actions taken by developing countries to mitigate the negative effects of the pandemic.

The Jobs of the World Database: A New Dataset on Labour Markets of Developing Countries

Researchers in development economics have made great progress towards understanding the link between gender, jobs and poverty by rigorous evaluation of policies at a very micro level. However, the main challenge facing researchers today is to aggregate this knowledge and to gauge the external validity of each specific evaluation. In its sphere, the Jobs of the World Database tries to account for this lack of resources. The dataset harmonises available micro datasets that contain information on labour market activities and poverty to create a multi-country macro data-set that contains information about labour force participation, occupational choice (sector, casual vs regular, wage vs self-employment) split by gender, age, geographic region (urban vs rural), education levels, and wealth quintiles. This dataset covers the time period 1990-2019 and serves two purposes: (1) It would allow researchers to compare their particular setting to averages in other contexts to get a sense of how widespread patterns are and therefore the extent to which their research can be informative for other settings, and (2) It would help to identify unexplained patterns and gaps in research.

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