Essays in Empirical Development Economics

This thesis consists of three empirical chapters that examine issues in development economics. Chapter 1 focuses on the effects of civil wars on the welfare of individuals. I use a unique data set that contains information on war casualties of the 1992-1995 Bosnian War, and exploit the variation in war intensity and birth cohorts of children, to identify the effects of the war on schooling attainment. I find that cohorts affected by war are less likely to complete secondary schooling, if they resided in municipalities that endured higher levels of war intensity. Ancillary evidence suggests that my estimates are most likely picking up immediate, rather than long-term effects. Furthermore, direct mechanisms such as the destruction of infrastructure and the out-migration of teachers do not seem to matter; instead, the ancillary evidence suggests that youth soldiering may be more important. Chapter 2 studies the impact of the partition which ended the Bosnian War on the post-war provision of public goods at the municipality-level. Comparing trends in the provision of public schooling across partitioned and unpartitioned municipalities during the 1986-2006 period, I find that partitioned municipalities provide 58 percent more primary schools and 37 percent more teachers (per capita). I also find evidence which suggests that convergent preferences - operating via ethnic politics - for ethnically oriented schools may be an important driver of the results, although I cannot rule out the possibility of mechanical explanations. In addition, as the increase in public goods provision may be ethnically oriented, only the ethnic majority profits from this arrangement. Chapter 3 provides an estimation of network effects among rural-urban migrants from Nang Rong, Thailand, by using heterogeneous migration responses to regional rainfall shocks among villagers as exogenous variation affecting network size. I find that social networks significantly reduce the duration of job search, and surprisingly, draw new migrants into the agricultural sector. I argue that this is not because agricultural jobs are more attractive than non-agricultural ones, but rather that my estimates are essentially local average treatment effects that are estimated off agricultural workers who are most affected by rainfall shocks.

Department dc:contributor.department

Economics

Year dc:date.issued

2011

Author dc:creator

• Swee, Eik Leong

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Benjamin, Dwayne

• development economics
• economic development
• education
• civil wars
• partition
• Bosnia
• social networks
• migration

Language dc:language.iso

en_ca

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1807/26243

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:utoronto.scholaris.ca:1807/26243