Three quarters of the worlds’ poor live in rural areas. It is therefore imperative to understand how the COVID-19 Pandemic and the corresponding economic recession affects them. As a long research line has already investigated, seasonality is a preponderant economic feature in the life in rural communities. Today, many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and South…
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Poor and Rational: Decision-Making under Scarcity
Individual decision-making is prone to behavioral biases and deviations, especially among the poor. To get a grip on the extent of this, multiple approaches have been developed and investigated, however, evidence on how and why the availability of financial resources affects decision-making is largely missing. In this paper, researchers use multiple resources of variation in…
COVID-19 vs. the Ultra-Poor Graduation Approach: Evidence from Bangladesh
Hybrid Event The poorest and the most vulnerable households in low-income countries have been hit hardest by COVID-19. In Bangladesh, an additional 22.9% of the population fell below the poverty line. Against this backdrop, BIGD, BRAC, G²LM|LIC, LSE, and STICERD are jointly organizing a hybrid event in which Oriana Bandiera and Imran Matin discuss the impact…
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…
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…
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…
The Kenya Life Panel Survey – COVID 19 Sample
The Kenya Life Panel Survey – COVID 19 Sample (KLPS) data visualization portal gives answers to queries relating to income, consumption, labor supply, food security, COVID-19 and mental health parameters. One can easily switch between viewing the entire sample characteristics, or navigate gender wise as well as between rural and urban sectors. This data visualization…
Matching Frictions and Distorted Beliefs: Evidence from a Job Fair Experiment
Job fairs have been one of the most explored paths to gain entry into the labor market by young entrants. Frictions are likely to be more prevalent in a rapidly growing urban center in a low-income setting. Our new Working Paper No. 49 reports its findings from Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. In this…
Thank you to all the mentors!
The special mentoring sessions of the IZA/FCDO Online Short Course on Research Skills for Sub-Saharan Africa received an overwhelming response! Out of 208 applicants, 40 researchers based in Sub-Saharan Africa were matched with mentors who are experienced researchers in their own field. We are happy with the extremely positive feedback: 95% of the mentees wish…
The Global Job Database to be launched soon
A new G2LM|LIC dataset is in preparation. The Global Jobs Database harmonises all available micro datasets that contain information on labour market activities and poverty to create a multi-country macro data-set that contains: LFP, occupational choices (sector, casual vs regular, wage vs self-employment), earnings, hours worked, seasonality all by gender, education, age groups and wealth….