Florence Kondylis

Agricultural Outputs and Conflict Displacement: Evidence from a Policy Intervention in Rwanda

In 1997 Rwanda introduced a resettlement policy for refugees displaced during previous conflicts. I exploit geographic variation in the speed of implementation of this policy to investigate the impact of conflict‐induced displacement and the resettlement policy on household agricultural output and on skill spillover mechanisms between returnees and stayers. I find that returns to on‐farm labor are higher for returnees relative to stayers, although the evidence suggests that the policy contributed little additional effect to this differential. More speculatively, these differentials suggest that, upon return from conflict‐induced exile, returnees are more motivated to increase their economic performance.

Protecting the Environment

The role of extrinsic versus intrinsic motivation in environmental decisions remain unresolved. We exploit data from a lab-in-the-field experiment to analyze the role of extrinsic and intrinsic incentives in shaping individual demand for a payment for environmental services (PES) program in São Paulo, Brazil. The lab-in-the-field experiment is a theoretical incentive program that offers annual payments to landholders in vulnerable watersheds for either conserving and/or restoring trees surrounding springs on their land to preserve and improve local water quality. Our findings suggest that, in contrast with predictions from rational choice theory, individuals’ responses to incentives are not monotonic. Landholders who took part in our lab-in-the-field experiment were randomly assigned to four offer levels and asked a double-bounded contingent valuation question to elicit a willingness to accept value. Landholders were less likely to accept the higher offers compared to the lowest offers. Given that the rational choice model fails to fully account for the role of incentives in shaping demand for PES, we then look at the interaction of the randomized incentive offers and individuals’ initial intrinsic motivations. We find that, while high monetary incentives crowd in demand of progovernment landholders, they crowd out demand of proenvironment and prosocial landholders. Overall, we find much evidence of heterogeneous responses.

Economic consequences of conflict and environmental displacement

In recent years, conflicts and natural disasters have displaced scores of people. Yet, the economic consequences of displacement are seldom studied. Identification challenges pose important limitations in drawing causal inference in this field of study. In light of recent advances in the literature, we propose a conceptual framework and discuss plausible identification strategies. Next, we review the relevant literature and set the conceptual framework in motion to analyze the impact of conflict in Bosnia Herzegovina and floods in Pakistan on household welfare. We conclude by reviewing and proposing policy actions that could effectively expose and address constraints faced by displaced populations at their destination.

Do they do as they say? stated versus revealed preferences and take up in an incentives for conservation program

Use of conditional cash transfers has become widespread in development policy given their success in boosting health and education outcomes. Recently, conditional cash transfers are being used to promote pro-environmental behavior. While many of these Payments for Environment Services (PES) programs have been successful, it has been hypothesized that those with less favorable outcomes have been subject to low additionality, whereby landholders already conserving their land self-select into the program. Insights from the behavioral economics literature suggest that an external incentive, such as PES, has the potential to crowd in or crowd out individual behavior differentially across the initial distribution of intrinsic motivations (Frey, 1992). Thus, to increase the impact of PES, program administrators might gain from a better understanding of both the pre-existing motivations and existing baseline conservation behavior of potential participants. This paper contributes to the literature by disentangling and measuring intrinsic motivations, specifically: Pro-Environment, Pro-Social, Pro-Government, and Social Norms. Controlling for observable opportunity costs, we use these latent motivations to analyze behavioral determinants of take up for a conservation program in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The payments are an incentive to comply with the Brazil Forest Code. We find that Pro-Social and Pro-Environment landholders are both more likely to be conserving private land not under legal protection before the program is introduced, whereas only Pro-Social landholders are already conserving land under legal protection. With respect to enrollment in the PES program, we find Pro-Social landholders are less likely to enroll while Pro-Environment landholders are more likely to enroll. Thus we expect some level of additionality from the PES program. We discuss these findings in light of the theoretical framework on Self-Determination Theory (SDT).