Lahore School 5th International Conference on Applied Development Economics
August 24, 2023
23-25 August 2023
Centre for Research in Economics and Business (CREB) and the Innovation and Technology Centre (ITC) at Lahore School of Economics opened its 5th International Conference on Applied Development Economics (ADE), as an in-person event in Lahore in collaboration with the International Growth Center and Consortium for Development Policy Research. The conference is spread over three days from 23 – 25 August 2023 and includes presentations from international and local researchers working on issues related to economic development and sustainable growth in the developing world. It broadly focuses on the following thematic areas: Labour Markets, Industry and Trade, Political Economy and Institutions, Education and Health, and Climate Change with a crosscutting emphasis on gender.
The aim of the conference is to (i) highlight recent research that can have lasting policy impact for sustainable growth in the developing world; (ii) provide early career researchers the opportunity to obtain feedback on their ongoing work; and (iii) to start a mutually beneficial exchange of ideas and discussions among researchers on potential collaborations.
Dr. Shahid Chaudhry, rector of the Lahore School of Economics, in his inaugural remarks, talked about the peculiarity of Pakistan’s current situation in terms of losing macroeconomic sovereignty in order to induce the rollover of external debt. This debt is 85 billion dollars which is small compared to the size of Pakistan’s trillion-dollar economy (in Purchasing Power Parity terms). Lastly, Dr. Shahid thanked the international community gathered in the conference for helping the Lahore School of Economics push forward its vision of sustainable and equitable solutions to common challenges facing the world.
The first day of the conference opened with a plenary address by Dr. David K. Evans (Senior Fellow, Center for Global Development; Professor, Pardee RAND Graduate School) on getting the best teachers and helping teachers be their best. Dr. Evans stated that teachers’ salary makes up 80% of public sector budgets in education and human capital development and improvement in the quality of teachers has more impact on students’ learning outcomes compared to school-based management, computer-assisted learning and community-based monitoring interventions. He also added that it is possible to improve the quality of these teachers dramatically through better preparation, selection, and motivation.
The plenary address was followed by a session on trade policy and skills, chaired by Dr. David K. Evans. The first speaker of the session Anri Sakakibara (DPhil candidate, Department of Political Economy, King’s College London) discussed how the disproportionate expansion of the female-intensive-wearing apparel sector can trigger the structural transformation of the female labor force in a way that promotes gender equality at the household level. She finds that women residing in provinces that are more exposed to the US-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA) are more likely to work in the wearing apparel sector and increase their income relative to their husbands. The second paper by Dr. Hamna Ahmad (Assistant Professor, Lahore School of Economics; Research Fellow, Centre for Research in Economics and Business (CREB)) aimed at studying household decisions to invest in young women’s digital skills through a short-term online training program in urban Pakistan. While rejecting the unitary model of household decision-making between parents and young adult daughters in Pakistan, the authors find that inefficiencies in household negotiation on incentive payments come through information asymmetry and not through payment targeting.
The second session on economic behavior was chaired by Dr. Farah Said (Assistant Professor, Lahore University of Management Sciences). The first speaker of the session Dr. Christian Johannes Meyer (Director, Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Development, University of Oxford) investigated the effectiveness of a psychological program designed to build “positive imagery” among a sample of Eritrean refugees in Addis Ababa. The authors' preliminary results indicate that the intervention led to significantly more optimistic views of economic lives in the host economy. In the short run, they find that treated participants work more hours, have higher food security, and report improved well-being. The most likely mechanism seems to be a change in expectations about the future. The second paper by Dr. Uzma Afzal ((Assistant Professor, Lahore University of Management and Sciences (LUMS); Associate Fellow, Institute of Development Alternatives (IDEAs), and Fellow (Center for Behavioral Institutional Design (CBID), NYUAD)) explored the systematic heterogeneity in cooperative decision-making across spouses in arranged and love matched marriages in Pakistan through a lab-in-the-field experiment. The authors find that in villages close to the city self-selected marriages are significantly more likely to be unconditionally cooperative and as the distance from the city increases, the love-matched effect declines.
The session after lunch was chaired by Dr. David K. Evans and it focused on the theme of poverty and social protection. The first speaker of the session Rocco Zizzamia (DPhil candidate at Oxford Department of International Development) presented her work on the role that coaching plays within ultra-poor graduation programs- specifically, how sensitive the welfare benefits of graduation interventions are to the intensity and the type of coaching inputs in Bangladesh. Timothy Köhler (Junior Research Fellow, Development Policy Research Unit (DPRU); DPhil Candidate, University of Cape Town (UCT)) closed the session with a talk on how a COVID-19 Social Relief of Distress grant (cash transfers) to the unemployed can support economic activity in South Africa. The authors find that the grant increased average employment probabilities by approximately 3 percentage points, an effect largely driven by wage and formal sector employment. Employment effects varied by duration of receipt, with larger effects estimated for the short-term which reduced to zero with additional periods of receipt.
Dr. Theresa Thompson Chaudhry (Professor, Lahore School of Economics; Research Affiliate, International Growth Centre; Co-Director; Lahore School of Economics Innovation and Technology Center) chaired the final session of the day on household behavior and also discussed the two papers. The first speaker of the session Muhammad Bin Khalid (Predoctoral Fellow, National University of Singapore) examined the effect of government support in the form of village-level cash transfers (Pakistan's flood relief program) on adaptation behaviors. He finds that while cash transfer recipients are 20 percent more likely to invest in personal adaptation, they are 22 percent less likely to work with other villagers to invest in community adaptation. The last paper of the session by Abdullah Mehta (Institute of Business Administration) examined the impact of female bargaining power on household expenditure patterns. He finds that using Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement data, in lower-income households, female bargaining power positively affects the expenditure shares of education and transport, and negatively affects those of tobacco, food, and health.
Day 2
The second day of the conference opened with a plenary address by Dr. Danila Serra (Associate Professor, Texas A&M University) on the impacts of war violence mainly focusing on education and health outcomes, economic outcomes, mental health and individual preferences especially for girls in Northern Uganda. This is especially pertinent considering that the year 2022 was the deadliest year since the Rwandan genocide in 1994 with 100% increase in war related fatalities mainly due to the wars in Ukraine and Ethiopia. Dr Serra found that long term impacts of war victimization persisted in terms of poverty, education, pro-sociality and risk aversion.
The plenary address was followed by a session on women and labor markets, chaired by Dr. Danila Serra. The first speaker of the session Dr. Mahreen Mahmud (Assistant Professor University of Exeter) conducted a randomized control trial with 1200 firms in Pakistan that have a job opening for a technical/professional role advertised on the country’s largest online job search portal and offered a 6-month wage subsidy to a randomly selected half of the sample if they hired a women for the advertised role. The authors find that a wage subsidy led to an increase in the likelihood of a female being hired and the effect is particularly large for firms that only had male employees at baseline. The second paper by Dr. Zunia Tirmazee (Assistant Professor, Lahore School of Economics) discussed whether supply or demand side constraints play a larger role in determining gender gaps in labor market outcomes in Pakistan. She finds that firm-side gender criteria are more likely to be binding for women than men driven by pre-existent gender segregation in firms; however, as education level rises, this female penalty disappears. Saniya Jillani (PhD student, Colorado State University) discussed the intricate relationship between women’s involvement in informal collective action and their empowerment in Pakistan. She finds that in areas where women are the primary actors in political events, they are more likely to engage in sole decision making by 11.9 percentage points regarding the uptake of paid work.
The second session on political economy was also chaired by Dr. Danila Serra. The first speaker of the session Dr. Sanval Nasim (Assistant Professor, Colby College) presented on whether concerns to preserve an anti-liberal self-image affect low cost, private school owners’ willingness to explore a collaboration with a liberal Pakistani NGO. The authors find limited evidence that treated school owners are less willing to explore a collaboration with their partner NGO. The second paper by Alix Bonargent (PhD student, London School of Economics and Political Science) investigated whether relaxing political constraints on partnership formation results in more collaboration between researchers and policymakers, and whether this translates into higher evidence take-up in programmatic decision-making. Preliminary results suggested that collaboration with policymakers substantially increases the likelihood that changes in programmatic decisions are observed after project implementation. Findings also revealed that the emergence of partnerships coincide with the election cycle: they occur earlier in the term when political conditions are conducive to experimentation and reform. Dr. Faiz Ur Rehman (Associate Professor, Institute of Business Administration) examined whether frontier rule, which disallows frontier residents from recourse to formal institutions of conflict management and disproportionately empowers tribal elites, provides a more fragile basis for maintaining social order in the face of shocks. The authors find that the 9/11 tragedy represented a universal shock to grievances against the state that led to a sharp surge in attacks against state targets in the frontier regions.
Dr. Naved Hamid (Director, Center for Research in Economics and Business (CREB)) chaired the last session of day 2 on state effectiveness. The first speaker of the session Shabbar Shagufta (PhD student, Institute of Business Administration) examined two types of social assistance i.e. lump sum transfer (LST) versus unconditional cash transfer (UCT) and determined which is more effective in enhancing a household's income in the long term in a district in Sindh, Pakistan. The empirical analysis suggests that the static LST permanently increases the total household income. The difference in the household incomes of LST and UCT recipients in the long run is large and significant. The last paper of the session by Muhammad Nadeem Sarwar (PhD Scholar in Economics, Institute of Business Administration) proposed social cost as an alternative punishment for tax evasion and tested it against the existing monetary penalty as punishment for its effectiveness in controlling tax evasion and its impact on labor supply. The authors find that social cost punishment leads to decreasing tax evasion incidents but in case of evasion, the share of evaded income increases. On the other hand, the social cost punishment strategy positively affects labor efforts. Both papers were discussed by Dr. Fareena Malhi (Senior Research Fellow, Center for Research in Economics and Business (CREB)).
Also in Express Tribune
Day 3
The second day of the conference opened with a plenary address by Dr. Theresa Thompson Chaudhry (Professor, Lahore School of Economics; Research Affiliate, International Growth Centre; Co-Director; Lahore School of Economics Innovation and Technology Center) on firms and exports in Pakistan. Her talk focused on export growth driven by productivity gains at the firm level which can be made possible through innovation. Dr T. Chaudhry also highlighted that while exports may have increased by 20% over the last year, the long run growth in exports has been exceptionally low despite repeated depreciations and Pakistan continues to rely on labor remittances to keep the external economy afloat.
The plenary address was followed by a session on education, chaired by Dr. David K. Evans (Senior Fellow, Center for Global Development; Professor, Pardee RAND Graduate School). The first speaker of the session Dr. Hashibul Hassan (Associate Professor, Jagannath University) explored an educational intervention consisting of a set of audio lessons that were delivered through mobile phones to primary school students using Interactive Voice Response (IVR), to address poor access to formal education. The authors find that the intervention improved the test scores of children in literacy and numeracy by 0.60 Standard Deviations (SD), increased the amount of time that parents spent on homeschooling and was particularly beneficial for academically weaker students, those from the poorest strata, and those with less-educated caregivers. The second paper by Dr. Aatir Khan (Assistant Professor, Habib University) evaluated the impact of the recent school head policy in the province of Sindh. He finds that having dedicated school heads is positively linked to impact on school resources, student enrollment, and total teachers. Jennifer Opare-Kumi (Phd candidate, University of Oxford) explored the direct effects of Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) on the mental well-being, behavior, and the educational success of young people. The authors find that MBSR led to a 0.30 standard deviation increase in prosocial behavior, with a stronger effect observed in girls compared to boys. Additionally, MBSR improved student’s behaviors related to mood, interactions with siblings and parents and stress experienced at home.
Dr. Waqar Wadho (Associate Professor and Director Graduate Studies (Economics), Lahore School of Economics; Senior Research Fellow, Center for Research in Economics and Business (CREB)) chaired the last session of day 3 on environment. The first speaker of the session Muhammad Karim (Phd candidate, University of California San Diego) assessed whether access to loans helps households living in flood-prone areas to adapt better and become more resilient to floods. The author finds that households with access to loans diversified their income before the floods and were more likely to relocate temporarily during the floods while, after the floods, the loans increased labor supply and livestock in the non-flooded villages and increased income in the flooded villages. The second paper by Ayesha Zehra (Research Analyst, Research and Development Solutions) estimated, using panel data on Punjab and Sindh from the Pakistan Rural Household Survey (2001; 2004; and 2010), the effects of marginal changes in temperature intervals and other climatic variables such as precipitation, humidity, and wind speed on wheat yield and rice yield. The authors find that wind speed had a negative effect on wheat yield while humidity (proxied by dew) and precipitation failed to demonstrate statistical significance. Dr. Azreen Karim (Research Fellow, Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies) examined the possible determinants of household disaster preparedness behavior focusing on knowledge and perception and prior damage and employment channels of disaster experience. The authors utilized big data of 143,980 households and 12 natural disasters covering 64 disaster-affected districts in Bangladesh and find that disaster and climate knowledge and perception are strong predictors of preparedness adoption explaining around 1.46%-1.51% of formal education and nearly 7.39%-7.68% of female education compared to the mean.
Dr. Naved Hamid (Director, Center for Research in Economics and Business (CREB)) at the end of the 5th International Applied Development Economics Conference highlighted the importance of promoting collaborative research, developing good researchers and building networks. Dr. Hamid looks forward to expanding the outreach of the conference in the future
Dr. Shahid Chaudhry, rector of the Lahore School of Economics, in his closing remarks thanked the speakers, attendees and the organizing team for their contributions in making this conference a success and in enriching one another’s global experiences. Dr. Chaudhry highlighted how this conference played a vital role in pushing the pressing agenda of sustainable growth in the developing world forward.
Labels: Applied Development Economics, CREB, IGC, ITC, Lahore School, Pakistan Economy, Research
posted by S A J Shirazi @ 8/24/2023 08:41:00 AM,
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