M. Shahe Emran

• Research Fellow at IPD Columbia University

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...

The existing theoretical analysis of microfinance focuses on the nature of the loan contract such as group liability. We draw attention to the role of missing or imperfect labour markets in understanding some of the important “second generation” debates in microfinance. Our analysis helps explain a number of puzzles in microfinance including high r...

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...

A significant empirical literature on women's say in the household focuses on the effects of microcredit, but there is little evidence on the relative roles of access to credit and education. Using household survey data from Bangladesh, this paper provides a comparative analysis of the effects of education and credit on women's decision-making powe...

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...

We extend the Becker-Tomes model to a rural economy with farm-nonfarm occupational dualism to study intergenerational educational mobility in rural China and India. Using data free of coresidency bias, we find that fathers’ nonfarm occupation and education were complementary in determining sons schooling in India, but separable in China. Sons faced...

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...

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...

A significant empirical literature on women's say in the household focuses on the effects of microcredit, but there is little evidence on the relative roles of access to credit and education. Using household survey data from Bangladesh, this paper provides a comparative analysis of the effects of education and credit on women's decision making powe...

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...

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 uses a unique data set on 143,000 poor households from Northern Bangladesh to analyze the effects of microfinance membership on a household's ability to cope with seasonal famine known as Monga. We develop an identification and estimation strategy that exploits a jump and a kink at the 10 decimal land ownership-threshold driven by the Mi...

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...

We extend the Becker-Tomes model of intergenerational educational mobility to a rural economy characterized by occupational dualism (farm vs. nonfarm) and provide a comparative analysis of rural China and rural India. The model provides a micro-foundation for the widely used linear-in-levels estimating equation. Returns to education for parents and...

This paper uses a unique data set on 143,000 poor households from Northern Bangladesh to analyze the effects of microfinance membership on a household’s ability to cope with seasonal famine known as Monga. We develop an identification and estimation strategy that exploits a jump and a kink at the 10-decimal land ownership-threshold driven by the Mi...

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...

We extend the Becker-Tomes (1986) model of intergenerational educational mobility to a rural economy characterized by occupational dualism (farm vs. nonfarm) and provide a comparative analysis of rural India and rural China. Using two exceptional data-sets, we estimate father-sons intergenerational educational persistence in farm and nonfarm househ...

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...

This paper uses a framework that goes beyond rural-urban dualism and highlights the role of small town economy (STE) in understanding structural change in a rural economy such as Bangladesh. It provides a theoretical and empirical analysis of the role of agricultural productivity in structural transformation in the labor market, with a focus on the...

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...

This article uses household panel data to provide robust evidence on the effects of BRAC’s (Building Resources across Countries) Targeting the Ultra-poor (TUP) program in Bangladesh. We use alternative treatment-comparison pairs; in addition to BRAC’s own classification, we exploit type 1 errors in assignment in BRAC’s selection process to create a...

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...

This paper relaxes the single-factor model of intergenerational educational mobility and analyzes heterogeneous effects of family background on children’s education in villages, with a focus on the role of nonfarm occupations. The analysis uses data from rural China that cover three generations, and are not subject to coresident sample selection. E...

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...

Sunday birth rates in Ecuador have sharply declined, and the drop is larger among young cohorts in urban areas. These trends are attributed to an increase in cesarean births, which are generally scheduled during regular hospital hours. Multiple rounds of Health Surveys confirm that mothers with higher levels of education and socioeconomic status ar...

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...