Pedro C. Vicente

Votes and Violence: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Nigeria

Following the wave of democratization during the 1990s, elections are now common in low-income societies. However, these elections are frequently flawed. We investigate the Nigerian general election of 2007, which is to date the largest election held in Africa and one seriously marred by violence. We designed and conducted a nationwide field experiment based on randomized anti-violence grassroots campaigning. We find direct effects on violence outcomes from exploring both subject-surveying and independent data sources. Crucially, we establish that voter intimidation is effective in reducing voter turnout, and that the violence was systematically dissociated from incumbents. We suggest that incumbents have a comparative advantage in alternative strategies, vote buying and ballot fraud. Voter intimidation may be a strategy of the weak analogous to terrorism.

Is Vote Buying Effective? Evidence from a Field Experiment in West Africa

Vote buying, i.e. cash for votes, happens frequently in many parts of the world. However, in the presence of secret ballots, there is no obvious way to enforce vote transactions. To infer effects of vote buying on electoral behaviour, I designed and conducted a randomised field experiment during an election in Sao Tome and Principe. I follow a voter education campaign against vote buying, using panel survey measurements as well as disaggregated electoral results. Results show that the campaign reduced the influence of money offered on voting, decreased voter turnout and favoured the incumbent. This evidence suggests that vote buying increases participation and counteracts the incumbency advantage.

Introducing Mobile Money in Rural Mozambique: Evidence from a Field Experiment

The limitations of access to finance in Africa, together with the recent boom in cell phone use in that continent, created high expectations regarding the introduction of mobile money in many African countries. The success story of M-PESA in Kenya raised the bar further. We designed and conducted a field experiment to assess the impact of randomized mobile money dissemination in rural Mozambique. For this purpose we benefit from the fact that mobile money was only recently launched in the country, allowing for the identification of a pure control group. This paper reports on the first results of this ongoing project after the first wave of dissemination efforts in rural locations, which included the recruitment and training of mobile money agents, community meetings and theaters, as well as individual rural campaigning. Administrative and behavioral data both show clear adherence to the services in the treatment group. Financial literacy and trust outcomes are also positively affected by the treatment. We present behavioral evidence that the marginal willingness to remit was increased by the availability of mobile money. Finally, we observe a tendency for mobile money to substitute traditional alternatives for both savings and remittances. JEL codes: O12, O33, G20, R23

Is Information Power? Using Mobile Phones and Free Newspapers During an Election in Mozambique

Incumbent politicians in African countries have been cementing their positions in recent elections. That was the case of the Mozambican election of 2009, where the ruling party secured 75 percent of the vote, amid low participation and clear challenges of political accountability. We conducted a field experiment implemented nationwide based on three interventions providing information to voters and calling for their participation in the elections: an SMS civic education campaign centered on the elections, an SMS hotline to which citizens were able to report electoral misconduct, and the distribution of a free newspaper door-to-door focusing on voter education. We measure the effects of these treatments by looking at official electoral results, a behavioral measure of political participation, reports by electoral observers, and surveys. We find a clear positive effect of all treatments on voter turnout, close to five percentage points. Some treatments benefited incumbents. We also have evidence that the distribution of the free newspaper led to more accountability-based participation and to a decrease in the incidence of electoral problems. All treatments increased information but caused diverse effects on perceptions about politics.

Return Migration, Self-selection and Entrepreneurship†

Are return migrants more entrepreneurial? Existing literature has not addressed how estimating the impact of return migration on entrepreneurship is affected by double unobservable migrant self-selection, both at the initial outward migration and at the final inward return migration stages. This paper exploits exogenous variation provided by the civil war and the incidence of agricultural plagues in Mozambique, as well as social unrest and other shocks in migrant destination countries. The results lend support to overall negative unobservable return migrant self-selection, which results in an under-estimation of the effects of return migration on entrepreneurial outcomes when using a ‘naive’ estimator that does not control for self-selection at both the initial migration and at the final return migration stages.