Three essays on development economics

This dissertation presents three studies involving policy and impact evaluations and explores critical aspects of development economics. The main topics explored are food security, weather variability, agricultural trade, trade policy and education policy. Below are the abstracts of each chapter. Chapter 1 Abstract: In this chapter, I investigate the impact of marginal perturbations in weather patterns on rural household food security and diet quality in Bangladesh. I match nationally representative, longitudinal household data with geospatial data on precipitation and temperature. I exploit the exogenous temporal variations in subdistrict rainfall and temperature in a two-way fixed effects model. My findings show that small changes in rainfall amounts have a sizable effect on the diet diversity of rural households and food-related expenditures. I explore income and price channels as probable mechanisms that drive my findings. I find that the average marginal impacts of small weather fluctuations on diet quality are sizable for rural households whereas the impacts are attenuated for poorer households relative to non-poor households. My findings provide novel evidence on the effects of marginal variations in growing season weather conditions in rural South Asia, suggesting the increased need for interventions aimed at improving the nutritional status of rural, food-insecure, poor communities. Chapter 2 (co-authored with William Ridley) Abstract: Non-reciprocal trade preference (NRTP) programs have proliferated in recent decades as a means to facilitate export-led growth for beneficiary countries. However, evidence on the efficacy of NRTPs in promoting agricultural exports from preference beneficiaries to preference donors has been mixed. We investigate the impacts of NRTPs on such trade in a structural gravity setting for 23 major agricultural commodities prominent in the export baskets of developing countries. Based on estimates from a commodity-level gravity model and the structural foundation of the gravity framework, we quantify the trade impacts of NRTP programs in a counterfactual simulation analysis. Our results show that NRTPs were responsible for around $833 million in elevated annual exports (a 1.7% increase) from NRTP beneficiary countries to donor countries as of 2018, and we document considerable heterogeneity in the countries and commodities that undergo the largest impacts. Our findings thus highlight the evolving role of trade policy as a facilitator of export-driven growth and suggest that NRTP programs are often limited in their capacity to promote agricultural trade. Chapter 3 Abstract: Education policies in the developing world play a key role in facilitating a country’s economic growth through human capital formation, motivating governments and donors to spend hundreds of billions of dollars annually on education. In this paper, I study the associations between a national teacher salary support program known as the Monthly Payment Order (MPO) that provides 100% of the basic salary to teachers of secondary private schools in Bangladesh. I find dynamic treatment effects with the associations on three measures of student learning outcomes of the national secondary board exam, phasing in gradually following the reform. The mean test score and passing rate of the treated schools are positively associated with the salary support reform. In contrast, there is suggestive evidence of a decline in the percentage of students

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Agricultural & Applied Econ

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2024

Author dc:creator

• Shirin, Farzana

Contributors dc:contributor

• Ridley, William
• Herrera Almanza, Catalina
• Winter-Nelson, Alex
• McNamara, Paul E.
• Villa, Kira

• Impact Evaluation
• Weather Shocks
• Bangladesh
• Rainfall Variability, Economics Of Education
• Agricultural Trade
• Generalized System Of Preferences
• Gravity
• Non-reciprocal Trade Preferences

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2024 Farzana Shirin

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/125702

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F125702