Lucas Koepke

Promises and pitfalls of mobile money in Afghanistan: evidence from a randomized control trial

Despite substantial interest in the potential for mobile money to positively impact the lives of the poor, little empirical evidence exists to substantiate these claims. In this paper, we present the results of a field experiment in Afghanistan that was designed to increase adoption of mobile money, and determine if such adoption led to measurable changes in the lives of the adopters. The specific intervention we evaluate is a mobile salary payment program, in which a random subset of individuals of a large firm were transitioned into receiving their regular salaries in mobile money rather than in cash. We separately analyze the impact of this transition on both the employer and the individual employees. For the employer, there were immediate and significant cost savings; in a dangerous physical environment, they were able to effectively shift the costs of managing their salary supply chain to the mobile phone operator. For individual employees, however, the results were more ambiguous. Individuals who were transitioned onto mobile salary payments were more likely to use mobile money, and there is evidence that these accounts were used to accumulate small balances that may be indicative of savings. However, we find little consistent evidence that mobile money had an immediate or significant impact on several key indicators of individual wealth or well-being. Taken together, these results suggest that while mobile salary payments may increase the efficiency and transparency of traditional systems, in the short run the benefits may be realized by those making the payments, rather than by those receiving them.

The impact of public access to ICTs: findings from a five-year, eight-country study

This article summarizes the findings of a five-year study investigating the impacts of public access to information and communication technologies (ICTs). The research was conducted in eight low and medium income countries employing a range of survey, ethnographic, and experimental research approaches. The analysis revealed substantial first-order effects in terms of technology access, information access and ICT skills development. Second-order effects in domains such as health, education, employment and income varied considerably, though when public access users had a need in any of these areas they were generally successful in achieving their goals. The study also found significant impacts among non-users, a group that includes former users, a largely unexplored dimension of public access. These findings challenge a commonly held notion that public access is solely a stepping stone to private access.

Risk and Protective Factors Associated with Cyberbullying: Are Relationships or Rules More Protective?.

The aim of this paper is to investigate which adolescents are most and least at risk of experiencing online victimization. The results of logistic regression analyses using data on 2079 adolescents attending secondary school in Bermuda indicate that not all forms of media use place adolescents at risk of experiencing cyberbullying. Adolescents who spent more time using their cell phone were more likely to report having received an aggressive or threatening electronic communication and having had someone say nasty things about them online. There was no such relationship between time on the internet and either form of online victimization. The findings also suggest that strong parent relationships and positive experiences at school are generally more protective against cyberbullying than adults’ restrictions on adolescents’ media use. These findings contribute important insight into strategies that hold promise for decreasing cyberbullying among adolescents.