Forhad Shilpi

• World Bank

We analyze the challenges in adopting the rank-rank model of intergenerational mobility for policy evaluation. For rank-based analysis of intergenerational mobility, it is standard to calculate cohort-specific ranks from the national distribution, but separately for children's and parents' generations. This ensures that children's inherited socioec...

Using a nationally representative large-scale survey of individual ICT skills in India (Multiple Indicators Survey, 2020), we provide evidence on the effects of ICT skills on labor market outcomes and household welfare as measured by per capita expenditure. We study the effects both at the extensive and intensive margins of labor market. To tackle...

Can temporary trade restrictions reshape regional development? To analyze this, we exploit the Cote d’Ivoire civil war that disrupted access to Abidjan port for neighboring land-locked countries: Mali and Burkina Faso. Estimates from a difference-in-difference design suggest negative effects on economic activity and a reverse structural change in t...

Many high-quality data sets such as census and Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) are usually not used for estimating intergenerational mobility in developing countries owing to concerns about sample truncation bias in coresident data. Using four exceptional data sets that include nonresident children, we report the first evidence that the bias in...

The economic effects of market integration due to transport infrastructure investments have been the focus of a large and growing literature. However, most of the existing studies analyze the effects of roads and highways, and railways, and research on the effects of large bridges remains scarce. The Jamuna bridge, a 4.8 km bridge over the river Ja...

From 1965 to 1985, the number of schools doubled in developing countries, but little is known about their impacts on intergenerational educational mobility. We study the effects of 61,000 public primary schools constructed in the 1970s in Indonesia on intergenerational educational mobility. The empirical analysis uses full-count census data, a DiD...

Can temporary trade restrictions reshape regional development? To analyze this, we exploit the Cote d'Ivoire civil war that disrupted access to Abidjan port for neighboring landlocked countries: Mali and Burkina Faso. Estimates from a difference-indifference design suggest negative effects on economic activity and a reverse structural change in the...

A large empirical literature on intergenerational educational mobility measures relative mobility by the slope of a conditional expectation function (CEF) relating children's education to parental education. Three measures are widely used: intergenerational regression coefficient (IGRC) with years of schooling as the indicator of educational attain...

Investments in transport infrastructure lower trade costs and lead to integration of villages with urban markets. Does spatial market integration increase land inequality in rural areas? Braverman and Stiglitz (1989) suggest that the interactions of lower trade costs with credit market imperfections can increase land inequality. The primary mechani...

We present credible and comparable evidence on intergenerational educational mobility in 53 developing countries using sibling correlation as a measure, and data from 230 waves of Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS). This is the first paper, to our knowledge, to provide estimates of sibling correlation in schooling for a large number of developing...

We study the effects of 61,000 public primary schools on intergenerational educational mobility in Indonesia using full-count census data, a credible identification strategy, and theory-based nonlinearity in the mobility equation. We find that the mobility curve is concave in most of the cases, and school expansion reduced the degree of concavity....

A large literature on intergenerational mobility focuses on the conditional mean of children's economic outcomes to understand the role of family background, but ignores the information contained in conditional variance. Using exceptionally rich data free of coresidency bias, we provide evidence on three large developing countries (China, India, an...

This paper investigates the effects of land market restrictions on structural change from agriculture to non-agriculture in a rural economy. A model with higher migration costs due to land restrictions identifies the possibility of a reverse structural change where the share of non-agricultural employment declines. For identification, this paper ex...

We provide a theory based empirical analysis of the role of two types of complementarities in intergenerational educational mobility. We develop a model where parental financial investment in children's schooling can be a substitute of or complementary to school quality and parent's education level. Such complementarities can make the mobility equa...

This chapter provides an analytical survey and synthesis of economic literature on intergenerational mobility in developing countries, with a focus on data and methodological challenges. Sample truncation from co-residency and measurement error cause substantial downward bias in intergenerational regression coefficient, whereas intergenerational co...

The effectiveness of microfinance in improving the economic lives of the poor has been under extensive scrutiny in last two decades. Most of the studies on Bangladesh focus on the poverty and women's empowerment impacts of microfinance. We provide a discussion on two relatively neglected aspects: the impacts on moneylenders, and the coping ability...

We study the effects of Jamuna Bridge in Bangladesh that reduced the average trade costs by 50% and connected 26 million people by road to the capital city. We use a difference-in-difference design where the isolated Padma hinterland constitutes the comparison. Balance tests for an array of economic characteristics support the parallel trends assum...

Traders are often blamed for high prices, prompting government regulation. We study the effects of a government ban of a layer of financing intermediaries in edible oil supply chain in Bangladesh during 2011–2012. Contrary to the predictions of a standard model of an oligopolistic supply chain, the ban caused downstream wholesale and retail prices...

This paper reviews the recent literature on rural-urban migration in developing countries, focusing on three key questions: What motivates or forces people to migrate? What costs do migrants face? What are the impacts of migration on migrants and the economy? The literature paints a complex picture whereby rural-urban migration is driven by many fa...

We use high resolution satellite data on the proportion of buildings in a 250x250 meter cell to study the evolution of human settlement in Ghana over a 40 year period. We find a strong increase in built-up area over time, mostly concentrated in the vicinity of roads, and also directly on the coast. We find strong evidence of agglomeration effects b...

We incorporate gender bias against girls in the family, the school and the labor market in a model of intergenerational persistence in schooling where parents self-finance children's education because of credit market imperfections. Parents may underestimate a girl's ability, expect lower returns, and assign lower weights to their welfare ("pure so...

We evaluate the impacts of a job fair intervention that decreases meeting costs between large firms and young jobseekers, randomizing fair attendance among workers and among firms. The fairs generate a rich set of interactions between workers and firms, but very few hires: one for every twelve firms that attended. On the other hand, the fairs motiv...

This paper provides an analysis of the rural-urban divide in intergenerational educational mobility in Indonesia with two distinguishing features. First, the estimating equations are derived from theory incorporating rural-urban differences in returns to education and school quality, and possible complementarity between parent's education and finan...

This paper provides evidence on the effects of microfinance competition on moneylender interest rates and households' dependence on informal credit. The views among practitioners diverge sharply: proponents claim that the MFI competition reduces both the moneylender interest rate and households' reliance on informal credit, while critics argue the...

In many models of corruption where enforcement is unbiased, the rich are more likely to pay bribes for their children's education, implying that corruption reduces educational inequality. We develop models of bribery that reflect the fact that in developing countries, anticorruption enforcement is not unbiased, and higher income of a household is a...

In response to rising inequality following decades of trade liberalization, many countries are adopting trade restrictions. Can temporary trade restrictions have long-lasting effects on spatial distribution of employment and resource allocation? To analyze this, we exploit the civil war in Cote d'Ivoire (2002-2007) that disrupted access to world ma...

This paper uses a framework that goes beyond rural-urban dualism and highlights the role of small-town economy in understanding structural change in a developing country. It provides a theoretical and empirical analysis of the role of agricultural productivity in structural transformation in the labor market in small towns and the surrounding rural...

This paper studies the effects of a large reduction in transport costs on agricultural development in a developing country with a focus on the interactions among comparative advantage and transport costs of a location, and transport intensity and value of a commodity. We extend the von Thunen model of land allocation to incorporate costly technolog...

This paper uses a quasi-experimental study of a major bridge construction in Bangladesh to understand the effects of a large reduction in trade costs on the pattern of structural change and agricultural productivity. We develop a spatial general equilibrium model with a core and two hinterlands at the opposite sides separated by rivers, and allow f...

This paper studies the effects of a large reduction in transport costs on agricultural development in a developing country, with a focus on the interactions among the comparative advantage and transport costs of a location, and the trans-port intensity and value of a commodity. The paper extends the von Thunen model of land allocation to incorporat...

Biases from truncation caused by coresidency restriction have been a challenge for research on intergenerational mobility. Estimates of intergenerational schooling persistence from two data sets show that the intergenerational regression coefficient, the most widely used measure, is severely biased downward in coresident samples. But the bias in in...

We analyse the effects of land market restrictions on the rural labour market outcomes for women. The existing literature emphasizes two mechanisms through which land restrictions can affect economic outcomes: collateral value of land, and (in)security of property rights. Our analysis focuses on an alternative mechanism where land restrictions incr...

The rice yield and real agricultural wage in Bangladesh increased by 3.8% and 2.1% per annum respectively from 2000 to 2010. Over the same period, the share of hired labor in agriculture decreased from 19.4% to 15.5%. A focus of this paper is to understand if the observed changes in wages and hired labor are in part due to agricultural productivity...

Central place theory predicts that agglomeration can arise from external shocks. We investigate whether gold mining is a catalyst for early stages of urbanization in rural Ghana. We call this phenomenon proto-urbanization. Using cross-sectional data, we find that locations with gold mines exhibit most of the tell-tale signs of proto-urbanization. T...

This paper analyzes the effects of land market restrictions on structural change from agriculture to non-farm in a rural economy. This paper develops a theoretical model that focuses on higher migration costs due to restrictions on alienability, and identifies the possibility of a reverse structural change where the share of nonagricultural employm...

Potential biases from coresident sample selection have been a major stumbling block for research on intergenerational mobility in developing countries. We use two rich data sets from Bangladesh and India to provide evidence on the extent of coresidency bias in standard measures of intergenerational mobility: intergenerational regression coefficient...

Using census data from Nepal we examine how the partial derivatives of predicted household welfare vary with parental education.We focus on fertility, child survival, schooling, and child labor. Female education is not as strongly associated with beneficial outcomes as is often assumed. Male education often matters more, and part of the association...

This paper provides evidence on the effects of agricultural productivity on wage, labor supply to market oriented activities and labor allocation between own farming and wage labor in agriculture. To guide the empirical work, it develops a general equilibrium model that underscores the role of reallocation of family labor engaged in the production...

Taking advantage of a historical quasi-experiment in Sri Lanka, this paper provides evidence on the effects of land market restrictions on equilibrium wage and its spatial pattern. For identification, we exploit the effects of historical malaria prevalence on the incidence of land restrictions through the availability of `crown land'. The results i...

In many models of corruption where enforcement is unbiased and the official maximizes her income, the rich are more likely to pay bribes for their children's education, implying that corruption reduces educational inequality. We develop models of bribery that reflect the fact that, in developing countries, anti-corruption enforcement is not unbiase...

Abstract This paper provides empirical evidence of an U-shaped causal relationship between the extent of the market (size of the relevant urban market) and the pattern of crop specialization in a village economy. We use the recent two-stage estimator developed by Lewbel (2012) and exploit heteroscedasticity for identification. The results suggest t...

India experienced sustained economic growth for more than two decades following the economic liberalization in 1991. While economic growth reduced poverty significantly, it was associated with an increase in inequality. Does this increase in inequality reflect deep-seated inequality of opportunity or efficient incentive structure in a market orient...

India experienced sustained economic growth for more than two decades following the economic liberalization in 1991. While economic growth reduced poverty significantly, it was associated with an increase in inequality. Does this increase in inequality reflect deep-seated inequality of opportunity or efficient incentive structure in a market orient...

India experienced sustained economic growth for more than two decades following the economic liberalization in 1991. While economic growth reduced poverty significantly, it was associated with an increase in inequality. Does this increase in inequality reflect deep-seated inequality of opportunity or efficient incentive structure in a market orient...

India experienced sustained economic growth for more than two decades following the economic liberalization in 1991. While economic growth reduced poverty significantly, it was associated with an increase in inequality. Does this increase in inequality reflect deep-seated inequality of opportunity or efficient incentive structure in a market orient...

India experienced sustained economic growth for more than two decades following the economic liberalization in 1991. While economic growth reduced poverty significantly, it was associated with an increase in inequality. Does this increase in inequality reflect deep-seated inequality of opportunity or efficient incentive structure in a market orient...

Using census data from Nepal we examine how the partial derivatives of predicted household welfare vary with parental education.We focus on fertility, child survival, schooling, and child labor. Female education is not as strongly associated with beneficial outcomes as is often assumed. Male education often matters more, and part of the association...