• Tomomi Tanaka. ‘The relationship between conflicts, economic shocks, and death with depression, economic activities.’
Authors: Julian Jamison, Kevin Robert McGee, Gbemisola Oseni, Julie Perng, Ryoko Sato, Tomomi Tanaka, Renos Vakis
Abstract: This paper examines the links between adverse events, depression, and decision-making in Nigeria. It investigates how events such as conflicts, shocks, and deaths can affect both short-term perceptions of welfare, as well as longer term decisions on economic activities and human capital investments. First, we find that exposure to conflict has the largest and strongest relationship with depression, associated with an 88 percent increase in the probability of reporting depressive symptoms. This is the equivalent of a reduction in income by around $34 USD (4.4 percent of the average income of households in this sample). Second, we randomize the timing of the shocks module with respect to the mental health one. We find that individuals who were reminded about their history of adverse events have a 10 percent higher probability of reporting depressive symptoms. Our final sets of results show that depression is associated with lower labor force participation and child educational investment. People with depressive symptoms are 8 percent less likely to work; this is driven by a reduction in engagement in agricultural activities for men and self-employment for women. In addition, households with a parent exhibiting depressive symptoms spend 20 percent less on education. These results are suggestive of a direct link between mental health, welfare perceptions and decision-making, beyond the indirect one that can come via exposure to adverse effects.
• Klarizze Puzon. ‘Regional identity and intergenerational resource conflict: an experiment in Guinea.’
Authors: Klarizze PUZON, Ruth TACNENG, Thierno BARRY, Marc WILLINGER
Abstract: We examine the impact of regional fragmentation and ethnicity on behavior in an intergenerational game of non-renewable resource extraction. The dynamic game has a new generation of players every period. It is characterized by shocks endogenously caused by players’ extraction decisions. After a given threshold, the resource suddenly drops to lower values. We present a two-player, framed field experiment on a sample of
Fulani (ethnic majority group) and Malinke (minority group) participants in Guinea-Conakry, Sub-Saharan Africa. We frame instructions in the context of bauxite, the natural resource that Guinea’s economy is heavily dependent on. Our main treatment variable is the ethnically-inclined region of origin of the two players. Preliminary results suggest that regional fragmentation significantly affects the behavior of the majority group, the Fulani. Across time, Fulani tribal members tend to choose lower extraction rates, are less likely to deplete the resource, and thus implicitly more concerned of future generations. This is more prevalent when they are paired with a player of the same social identity as theirs.
• Nicholas Haas. ‘Improving Women’s Access to Justice in a Context of Legal Pluralism: Two Experiments on Short and Long-term Approaches in Somalia.’
Authors: Nicholas Haas, Prabin Khadka
Abstract: States with high-functioning formal institutions perform better on a wide range of outcomes and offer particular promise for vulnerable populations, such as women, that face bias from traditional informal institutions. But building strong formal institutions can take decades, and in recent years scholars and policymakers have sought to provide individuals with access to justice through improvements to informal institutional alternatives. In Somalia, formal courts that offer a mix of secular and Islamic (Sharia) law coexist alongside two alternatives: courts run by Islamist militant group al-Shabaab that enforce a strict brand of Sharia law, and dispute resolution bodies led by traditional clan and religious elders. We ask and seek to answer two questions in this context of legal pluralism. First, what can be done to increase access to justice for women in the short-term? We conduct a randomized controlled trial to evaluate whether a United Nations program that provides alternative Quranic interpretations and non-violent communication training to women and traditional leaders changes attitudes and norms about women and gender-based violence, and improves informal institutional responsiveness to women. Second, what can increase usage of formal institutions, particularly by women, in the long-term? We conduct a conjoint experiment across 40 districts with over 600 subjects to evaluate what leads individuals to seek adjudication of disputes by al-Shabaab, the central obstacle to the establishment of the rule of law, and not formal courts or traditional elders.
• Lamis Saleh. ‘Punishment Patterns, Violence, and Distress among Syrian Civil War Victims in Syria: A Lab-in-the-Fi.’
Authors: Nora El-Bialy, Elisa Fraile Aranda, Andreas Nicklisch, Lamis Saleh, Stefan Voigt
Abstract: Since the year 2011, a brutal civil war has been taking place in Syria. An uncounted number of people is internally displaced or have fled the country. Although participants differ in the area where they reside in Syria, the vast majority of them have experienced severe violence on a daily basis. We ran a series of online and lab-in-the-field experiments with Syrians in Syria- both in government controlled and uncontrolled areas- and with Syrian refugees who escaped the civil war to Jordan. We test their pro- social and cooperative behavior in sequential modified prisoners’ dilemmas and modified ultimatum games. We identify unusual punishment schemes responding to breaches of pro-sociality and cooperativeness. Participants with more exposure to violence are more likely to depict unconditional punishment harshly.