This article draws on data from over 35,000 respondents in 22 public opinion surveys in 10 countries and finds strong evidence that ethnic identities in Africa are strengthened by exposure to political competition. In particular, for every month closer their country is to a competitive presidential election, survey respondents are 1.8 percentage points more likely to identify in ethnic terms. Using an innovative multinomial logit empirical methodology, we find that these shifts are accompanied by a corresponding reduction in the salience of occupational and class identities. Our findings lend support to situational theories of social identification and are consistent with the view that ethnic identities matter in Africa for instrumental reasons: because they are useful in the competition for political power.

http://danielnposner.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Eifert-Miguel-Posner-2010.pdf

Political Competition and Ethnic Identification in Africa

Participation in commercial agriculture holds considerable potential for unlocking suitable opportunity sets necessary for providing better incomes and sustainable livelihoods for smallscale farmers. This study examined factors that influence the intensity of market participation among smallholder farmers in Kenya. Data was obtained through a rapid rural appraisal and a household survey. A truncated regression model was applied in the analysis. Results showed that farmers in peri-urban areas sold higher proportions of their output than those in rural areas. Distance from farm to point of sale is a major constraint to the intensity of market participation. Better output price and market information are key incentives for increased sales. These findings demonstrate the urgent need to strengthen market information delivery systems, upgrade roads in both rural and peri-urban areas, encourage market integration initiatives, and establish more retail outlets with improved market facilities in the remote rural villages in order to promote production and trade in high value commodities by rural farmers.

Factors influencing the intensity of market participation by smallholder farmers: A case study of rural and peri-urban areas of Kenya

School Governance, Teacher Incentives, and Pupil-Teacher Ratios: Experimental Evidence from Kenyan Primary Schools. NBER Working Paper No. 17939.

We present experimental evidence on the impact of a school choice program in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh that provided students with a voucher to finance attending a private school of their choice. The study design featured a unique two-stage lottery-based allocation of vouchers that created both student-level and market-level experiments, which allows us to study the individual and the aggregate effects of school choice (including spillovers). After two and four years of the program, we find no difference between test scores of lottery winners and losers on Telugu (native language), math, English, and science/social studies, suggesting that the large cross-sectional differences in test scores across public and private schools mostly reflect omitted variables. However, private schools also teach Hindi, which is not taught by the public schools, and lottery winners have much higher test scores in Hindi. Furthermore, the mean cost per student in the private schools in our sample was less than a third of the cost in public schools. Thus, private schools in this setting deliver slightly better test score gains than their public counterparts (better on Hindi and same in other subjects), and do so at a substantially lower cost per student. Finally, we find no evidence of spillovers on public school students who do not apply for the voucher, or on private school students, suggesting that the positive effects on voucher winners did not come at the expense of other students. JEL Codes: C93, H44, H52, I21, O15.

/pdf/the-aggregate-effect-of-school-choice-evidence-from-a-two-36bbaob8cg.pdf

The Aggregate Effect of School Choice: Evidence from a Two-Stage Experiment in India

https://web.stanford.edu/~pdupas/DDK_ETP.pdf

School Governance, Teacher Incentives, and Pupil-Teacher Ratios: Experimental Evidence from Kenyan Primary Schools

Strategies aimed at poverty reduction need to identify factors that are strongly associated with poverty and that are amenable to modification by policy. This article uses household level data collected in 1994 to examine probable determinants of poverty status, employing both binomial and polychotomous logit models. The study shows that poverty status is strongly associated with the level of education, household size and engagement in agricultural activity, both in rural and urban areas. In general, those factors that are closely associated with overall poverty according to the binomial model are also important in the ordered-logit model, but they appear to be even more important in tackling extreme poverty.

/pdf/determinants-of-poverty-in-kenya-a-household-level-analysis-2h9u3jac19.pdf

Determinants of Poverty in Kenya: A Household Level Analysis

Why Did Abolishing Fees Not Increase Public School Enrollment in Kenya? Africa Growth Initiative. Working Paper 4.

Determinants of Educational Achievement in Kenya since the Introduction of FPE.

This paper investigates the impact of public operating subsidies on the performance of public transit systems across the U.S. and examines how political and economic factors enter into this subsidy-cost relationship. Specifically, using data on 118 local public transit agencies for the years 1984 through 1986, it is found that larger local, state, and federal subsidies translate into significantly higher operating costs per vehicle revenue hour. The adverse cost impact is particularly great for subsidies financed by state revenue sources and for federal subsidies transferred to transit systems serving small U.S. cities. State operating subsidies are estimated to account for half of the cost inflation associated with the public finance of transit deficits. This result suggests that when the bulk of a local transit system's operating deficit is financed by taxpayers residing outside the transit system's operating area, the cost share borne by local residents and, hence, their incentive to become informed about and to monitor the transit agency's performance is reduced.

A public choice analysis of public transit operating subsidies

http://r4d.dfid.gov.uk/PDF/Outputs/IIG/AfrobriefNo48.pdf

Mwangi S. Kimenyi

Papers

Determinants of Poverty in Kenya: A Household Level Analysis

Why Did Abolishing Fees Not Increase Public School Enrollment in Kenya? Africa Growth Initiative. Working Paper 4.

Determinants of Educational Achievement in Kenya since the Introduction of FPE.

A public choice analysis of public transit operating subsidies

Ethnicity and Violence in the 2007 Elections in Kenya.