In Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson, henceforth AJR, (2001), we advanced the hypothesis that the mortality rates faced by Europeans in different parts of the world after 1500 affected their willingness to establish settlements and choice of colonization strategy. Places that were relatively healthy (for Europeans) were—when they fell under European control—more likely to receive better economic and political institutions. In contrast, places where European settlers were less likely to go were more likely to have “extractive” institutions imposed. We also posited that this early pattern of institutions has persisted over time and influences the extent and nature of institutions in the modern world. On this basis, we proposed using estimates of potential European settler mortality as an instrument for institutional variation in former European colonies today. Data on settlers themselves are unfortunately patchy—particularly because not many went to places they believed, with good reason, to be most unhealthy. We therefore followed the lead of Curtin (1989 and 1998) who compiled data on the death rates faced by European soldiers in various overseas postings. 1 Curtin’s data were based on pathbreaking data collection and statistical work initiated by the British military in the mid-nineteenth century. These data became part of the foundation of both contemporary thinking about public health (for soldiers and for civilians) and the life insurance industry (as actuaries and executives considered the

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The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation

A Treatise on the Family. G. S. Becker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1981. Gary Becker is one of the most famous and influential economists of the second half of the 20th century, a fervent contributor to and expounder of the University of Chicago free-market philosophy, and winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in economics. Although any book with the word "treatise" in its title is clearly intended to have an impact, one coming from someone as brilliant and controversial as Becker certainly had such a lofty goal. It has received many article-length reviews in several disciplines (Ben-Porath, 1982; Bergmann, 1995; Foster, 1993; Hannan, 1982), which is one measure of its scholarly importance, and yet its impact is, I think, less than it may have initially appeared, especially for scholars with substantive interests in the family. This book is, its title notwithstanding, more about economics and the economic approach to behavior than about the family. In the first sentence of the preface, Becker writes "In this book, I develop an economic or rational choice approach to the family." Lest anyone accuse him of focusing on traditional (i.e., material) economics topics, such as family income, poverty, and labor supply, he immediately emphasizes that those topics are not his focus. "My intent is more ambitious: to analyze marriage, births, divorce, division of labor in households, prestige, and other non-material behavior with the tools and framework developed for material behavior." Indeed, the book includes chapters on many of these issues. One chapter examines the principles of the efficient division of labor in households, three analyze marriage and divorce, three analyze various child-related issues (fertility and intergenerational mobility), and others focus on broader family issues, such as intrafamily resource allocation. His analysis is not, he believes, constrained by time or place. His intention is "to present a comprehensive analysis that is applicable, at least in part, to families in the past as well as the present, in primitive as well as modern societies, and in Eastern as well as Western cultures." His tone is profoundly conservative and utterly skeptical of any constructive role for government programs. There is a clear sense of how much better things were in the old days of a genderbased division of labor and low market-work rates for married women. Indeed, Becker is ready and able to show in Chapter 2 that such a state of affairs was efficient and induced not by market or societal discrimination (although he allows that it might exist) but by small underlying household productivity differences that arise primarily from what he refers to as "complementarities" between caring for young children while carrying another to term. Most family scholars would probably find that an unconvincingly simple explanation for a profound and complex phenomenon. What, then, is the salient contribution of Treatise on the Family? It is not literally the idea that economics could be applied to the nonmarket sector and to family life because Becker had already established that with considerable success and influence. At its core, microeconomics is simple, characterized by a belief in the importance of prices and markets, the role of self-interested or rational behavior, and, somewhat less centrally, the stability of preferences. It was Becker's singular and invaluable contribution to appreciate that the behaviors potentially amenable to the economic approach were not limited to phenomenon with explicit monetary prices and formal markets. Indeed, during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, he did undeniably important and pioneering work extending the domain of economics to such topics as labor market discrimination, fertility, crime, human capital, household production, and the allocation of time. Nor is Becker's contribution the detailed analyses themselves. Many of them are, frankly, odd, idiosyncratic, and off-putting. …

A Treatise on the Family

We investigate conditions sufficient for identification of average treatment effects using instrumental variables. First we show that the existence of valid instruments is not sufficient to identify any meaningful average treatment effect. We then establish that the combination of an instrument and a condition on the relation between the instrument and the participation status is sufficient for identification of a local average treatment effect for those who can be induced to change their participation status by changing the value of the instrument. Finally we derive the probability limit of the standard IV estimator under these conditions. It is seen to be a weighted average of local average treatment effects.

Evolution and Rationality Some Recent Game-Theoretic Results. Identification and Estimation of Local Average Treatment Effects

The Personal Interview

Ethnic Groups in Conflict

Over the past decade, the Peruvian government has issued property titles to over 1.2 million urban households, the largest government titling program targeted to urban squatters in the developing world. This paper examines the labor market effects of increases in tenure security resulting from the program. In particular, I study the direct impact of securing a property title on hours of work, substitution of home for market work and substitution of adult for child labor. To isolate the causal role of ownership security I make use of differences across regions induced by the timing of the program and differences across target populations in the level of pre-program tenure security. My estimates suggest that titling results in a substantial increase in labor hours, a shift in labor supply away from work at home to work in the outside market and substitution of adult for child labor. For the average squatter family, granting of a property title is associated with a 17% increase in total household work hours, a 47% decrease in the probability of working inside the home, and a 28% reduction in the probability of child labor.

Entitled to Work: Urban Property Rights and Labor Supply in Peru

Using data from rural Bangladesh, we explore the hypothesis that women attain less schooling as a result of social and financial pressure to marry young. We isolate the causal effect of marriage timing using age of menarche as an instrumental variable. Our results indicate that each additional year that marriage is delayed is associated with 0.22 additional year of schooling and 5.6 percent higher literacy. Delayed marriage is also associated with an increase in use of preventive health services. In the context of competitive marriage markets, we use the above results to obtain estimates of the change in equilibrium female education that would arise from introducing age of consent laws.

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Early Marriage, Age of Menarche, and Female Schooling Attainment in Bangladesh

This brief summarizes the results of a gender impact evaluation study, entitled Entitled to work : urban property rights and labor supply in Peru, new legal rights were issued in 1996; project teams providing titling service through 2003, in Peru. The study observed that between 1996 and 2003, the Peruvian government issued property titles to over 1.2 million urban households, the largest titling program targeted at urban squatters in the developing world. This paper examines the labor market effects of increases in tenure security resulting from the program. Pre-program squatters in program neighborhoods were significantly more likely to report improved tenure security, by 60 percent. Similarly, program participants were 18.8 percentage points less likely to report a high likelihood of eviction or invasion and 18.8 percentage points more likely to report that their dwelling was currently very secure from eviction or invasion. The likelihood of working inside the home significantly falls by 11.6 percentage points for the average squatter family with two program periods.

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What constrains the entrepreneurial choices of poor women? Do traditional institutions pose unique barriers to business growth and profitability for female-run enterprises? The explosion of microfinance programs, which typically target poor female entrepreneurs, has drawn attention to these questions. Indeed, one view is that inadequate access to credit prevents women from undertaking high-return business activities. However, one recent empirical study finds low returns to capital in female-run micro-enterprises (Suresh De Mel, David McKenzie and Christopher Woodruff 2008). Thus, another view is that the primary barrier to female entrepreneurial success is limited demand for rather than supply of credit, with poor women lacking high-return means of expanding their businesses. For instance, due to gender differences in education or business networks, women might be relatively uninformed about investment opportunities and untrained in basic cost-benefit analysis (Dean S. Karlan and Martin Valdivia 2008). A second possibility is that norms governing women’s roles in society limit women’s perceptions about what is achievable in the workplace. Even differences

https://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~sjv340/entrepreneurs.pdf

Do Traditional Institutions Constrain Female Entrepreneurship? A Field Experiment on Business Training in India

This paper examines the effect of changes in tenure security on residential investment in urban squatter neighborhoods. To address the endogeneity of property rights, I make use of variation in ownership status induced by a nationwide titling program in Peru. In a difference-in-difference analysis, I compare the change in housing investment before and after the program among participating households to the change in investment among two samples of nonparticipants. My results indicate that strengthening property rights in urban slums has a significant effect on residential investment: the rate of housing renovation rises by more than two-thirds of the baseline level. The bulk of the increase is financed without the use of credit, indicating that changes over time reflect an increase in investment incentives related to lower threat of eviction. (JEL: O12, O18, P25, P26)

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Erica Field

Papers

Entitled to Work: Urban Property Rights and Labor Supply in Peru

Early Marriage, Age of Menarche, and Female Schooling Attainment in Bangladesh

Entitled to Work: Urban Property Rights and Labor Supply in Peru

Do Traditional Institutions Constrain Female Entrepreneurship? A Field Experiment on Business Training in India

Property rights and investment in urban slums