Julian C. Jamison

Does poverty alleviation decrease depression symptoms in post-conflict settings? A cluster-randomized trial of microenterprise assistance in Northern Uganda

Background. By 2009, two decades of war and widespread displacement left the majority of the population of Northern Uganda impoverished. Methods. This study used a cluster-randomized design to test the hypothesis that a poverty alleviation program would improve economic security and reduce symptoms of depression in a sample of mostly young women. Roughly 120 villages in Northern Uganda were invited to participate. Community committees were asked to identify the most vulnerable women (and some men) to participate. The implementing agency screened all proposed participants, and a total of 1800 were enrolled. Following a baseline survey, villages were randomized to a treatment or wait-list control group. Participants in treatment villages received training, start-up capital, and follow-up support. Participants, implementers, and data collectors were not blinded to treatment status. Results. Villages were randomized to the treatment group (60 villages with 896 participants) or the wait-list control group (60 villages with 904 participants) with an allocation ration of 1:1. All clusters participated in the intervention and were included in the analysis. The intent-to-treat analysis included 860 treatment participants and 866 control participants (4.1% attrition). Sixteen months after the program, monthly cash earnings doubled from UGX 22 523 to 51 124, non-household and non-farm businesses doubled, and cash savings roughly quadrupled. There was no measurable effect on a locally derived measure of symptoms of depression. Conclusions. Despite finding large increases in business, income, and savings among the treatment group, we do not find support for an indirect effect of poverty alleviation on symptoms of depression.

Applying behavioral insights to improve tax collection : experimental evidence from Poland

Mobilizing domestic revenues efficiently is a priority for the Government of Poland, but it is not easy. There are numerous instruments that can be used to achieve this objective. Traditional measures to boost government revenues include changes to the tax legislation and reforms in the area of tax administration. Such measures can have a large fiscal impact, but are often politically challenging to design and negotiate, and can take time to implement. Behavioral interventions often focus on adapting existing systems and processes and can thus be implemented relatively quickly and at a low cost. Overall, they are an additional tool in the policy toolkit that country authorities have to improve tax compliance, and thus complement but do not substitute traditional measures to establish effective tax collection systems including changes in tax legislations and tax administration reforms. Behavioral interventions can also help the Tax Authority to align its strategy more accurately to taxpayer behavior. The Polish authorities were interested in applying insights from behavioral economics to their communications with taxpayers to see if making small changes could promote tax compliance. This paper summarizes the results of a randomized controlled trial (RCT) that used letters to remind taxpayers in Poland to pay their taxes. These taxpayers had declared their personal income tax (PIT) for the 2015 fiscal year but had failed to pay what they owed by the deadline, April 30, 2016 (i.e., taxpayers in arrears). The trial took place between May and August 2016 and covered a total of 149,925 individual taxpayers.

Motivating bureaucrats through social recognition : evidence from simultaneous field experiments

Bureaucratic performance is a crucial determinant of economic growth. Little is known about how to improve it in resource-constrained settings. This study describes a field trial of a social recognition intervention to improve record keeping in clinics in two Nigerian states, replicating the intervention -- implemented by a single organization -- on bureaucrats performing identical tasks in both states. Social recognition improved performance in one state but had no effect in the other, highlighting both the potential and the limitations of behavioral interventions. Differences in observables did not explain cross-state differences in impacts, however, illustrating the limitations of observable-based approaches to external validity.

Social learning about environmental innovations : experimental analysis of adoption timing

Laboratory experiments were conducted to investigate how private and public information affect the selection of an innovation and the timing of adoption. The results shed light on the behavioral anomaly called the “energy-efficiency gap” in which consumers and firms delay adoption of cost-effective energy and environmental innovations. The subjects chose between competing innovations with freedom to select the timing of their adoption, relying on private signals and possibly observation of their peers. When deciding whether to make an irreversible choice between safe and risky technologies, roughly half the subjects delayed adoption beyond the time indicated by equilibrium behavior -- confirming the behavioral anomaly found for environmental innovations. When they did adopt, the subjects gave proportionately more weight to their private signals than to the actions of their peers, implying they do not ‘herd’ on the latter. Nevertheless, when the subjects observed their peers’ decisions, they did accelerate the timing of their adoption despite not necessarily imitating their peers. This result occurred even when the payoffs were statistically independent, as if observing prior adoptions exerted ‘peer pressure’ on the subjects to act. The experimental results suggest that rapid dissemination of information about peer actions can speed up the diffusion of environmental innovations and improve selection among competing technologies.

Overcoming behavioral obstacles to escaping poverty

International development policy is ripe for an overhaul. Behavioral science can help policymakers to spur changes in behaviors that are difficult to explain from a conventional economic perspective and impede economic development. We focus here on two well-documented, often coinciding psychological phenomena that have particularly wide-ranging implications for development policy: present bias (favoring immediate rewards over long-term considerations) and limited attention. We present a number of general policy recommendations that are informed by insight into these phenomena and offer concrete examples of how the recommendations can be implemented to help low-income individuals improve their lives and reach their long-term goals.

Perceptions Regarding the Value of Life Before and After Birth

Objective: This paper aims to explain the practical importance of placing a numeric value on the relative values of lives (or deaths) at different ages, including just before and after birth, and to implement one feasible method for estimating concrete inputs into such values. Methods: The study population consisted of an online convenience sample of 1628 unique individuals. They were each asked to fill out a short survey consisting of six demographic questions and one question requesting an explicit comparison of numbers of lives saved across groups of humans at different ages. Subjects were randomized into one of ten treatment conditions, where each condition involved a different comparison. The age groups which were asked about consisted of fetuses at 10 and 39 weeks gestation; pregnant women at 10 and 39 weeks gestation; infants in the first week of life; 1-year-old children; and adult women. Results: On average respondents valued younger fetuses less than more developed ones; fetuses less than children; children less than adult women; and women less than pregnant women. However, there was no discernible difference in valuation between 39-week fetuses and early neonatal infants. Female subjects valued all fetuses and children (relative to adult women) more highly than did male subjects. Conclusion: Meaningful data can be collected about sensitive topics using online experiments. In this case we find support for a continuously growing valuation of life with developmental age, starting early in gestation and without any sudden jump at birth.