In many developing countries, the beneficiaries of transfer programmes are determined by communit... more In many developing countries, the beneficiaries of transfer programmes are determined by community-based processes, based on some general targeting rules related to needs. This opens the door for local social and political processes to impact on who gets access. Despite increasingly large scale social protection programmes in Africa, we have limited evidence on the political economy processes involved. We focus on Ethiopia were the local political authorities are in charge of food aid transfers. We investigate whether social networks and political connections matter for access. We find evidence for the hypothesis that the process results in the targeting of households that cannot easily rely on support from relatives or friends. On average, for each additional person the household can rely on in times of need, the probability of this household of obtaining food aid decreases with almost 1 percentage point. We also find strong evidence of political connections and favouritism. Households having close associates holding official positions have, ceteris paribus, more than 10 percent higher probability of obtaining free food than households that are not well connected with powerful households. We do not find evidence for the hypothesis that other social networks in the community influence the food aid allocation process. Finally, investigating reverse causality, we find no evidence that social and political networks are affected by the food aid transfer system.
This paper reports on a randomized survey experiment among 1840 households, designed to compare p... more This paper reports on a randomized survey experiment among 1840 households, designed to compare pen-and-paper interviewing (PAPI) to computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI). We find that PAPI data contain a large number of errors, which can be avoided in CAPI. Error counts are not randomly distributed across the sample, but are correlated with household characteristics, potentially introducing sample bias if dubious observations need to be dropped. We demonstrate a tendency for the spread of total measured consumption to be higher on paper compared to CAPI, translating into significantly higher measured inequality. Investigating further the nature of PAPI's measurement error for consumption, we fail to reject the hypothesis that it is classical: it attenuates the coefficient on consumption when used as explanatory variable and we find no evidence of bias when consumption is used as dependent variable. Finally, CAPI and PAPI are compared in terms of interview length, costs and respondents' perceptions.
Corporatism and macroeconomic stabilization policies
Abstract. This paper analyzes corporatism in a two-player game which integrates macroeconomic sta... more Abstract. This paper analyzes corporatism in a two-player game which integrates macroeconomic stabilization policy and a policy of social transfers. The government decides on the level of nominal social transfers, and the trade union decides on the nominal wage level. A central finding ...
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Papers by Bet Caeyers