Oriana Bandiera, Robin Burgess, Narayan Das, Selim Gulesci et al.
Abstract We study how women's choices over labor activities in village economies correlate with poverty and whether enabling the poorest women to take on the activities of their richer counterparts can set them on a sustainable trajectory out of poverty. To do this we conduct a large-scale randomize...
Livia Alfonsi, Oriana Bandiera, Vittorio Bassi, Robin Burgess et al.
We design a labor market experiment to compare demand‐ and supply‐side policies to tackle youth unemployment, a key issue in low‐income countries. The experiment tracks 1700 workers and 1500 firms over four years to compare the effect of offering workers either vocational training (VT) or firm‐provi...
Clare Balboni, Oriana Bandiera, Robin Burgess, Maitreesh Ghatak et al.
There are two broad views as to why people stay poor. One emphasizes differences in fundamentals, such as ability, talent, or motivation. The poverty traps view emphasizes differences in opportunities that stem from access to wealth. To test these views, we exploit a large-scale, randomized asset tr...
Oriana Bandiera, Niklas Buehren, Robin Burgess, Markus Goldstein et al.
Women in developing countries are disempowered relative to their contemporaries in developed countries. High youth unemployment and early marriage and childbearing interact to limit human capital investment and enforce dependence on men. In this paper, we evaluate an attempt to jump-start adolescent...
Livia Alfonsi, Oriana Bandiera, Vittorio Bassi, Robin Burgess et al.
We design a labor market experiment to compare demand- and supply-side policies to tackle youth unemployment, a key issue in low-income countries. The experiment tracks 1700 workers and 1500 firms over four years to compare the effect of offering workers either vocational training (VT) or firm-provi...
Oriana Bandiera, Imran Rasul, Keesler Welch, Jacob Geray
We study how women's choices over labor activities in village economies correlate with poverty and whether enabling the poorest women to take on the activities of their richer counterparts can set them on a sustainable trajectory out of poverty.To do this we conduct a large-scale randomized control ...
Oriana Bandiera, Robin Burgess, Erika Deserranno, Ricardo Morel et al.
There has been a rise in the use of the local delivery model for development interventions, where local agents are hired as intermediaries to target benefits to potential beneficiaries. We study this model in the context of a standard agricultural extension intervention in Uganda. We document a trad...
Oriana Bandiera, Robin Burgess, Narayan Das, Selim Gulesci et al.
The world’s poorest people lack capital and skills and toil for others in occupations that others shun. Using a large-scale and long-term randomized control trial in Bangladesh this paper demonstrates that sizable transfers of assets and skills enable the poorest women to shift out of agricultural l...
Oriana Bandiera, Robin Burgess, Narayan Das, Selim Gulesci et al.
The world’s poorest people lack both capital and skills and are trapped in low return occupations. However, whether their economic lives can be transformed by programs which attempt to tackle both constraints by providing assets and training to enable them to run small businesses is unknown. To shed...
Oriana Bandiera, Vittorio Bassi, Robin Burgess, Imran Rasul et al.
One third of the 420 million young people in Africa are unemployed. Understanding how youth search for jobs and what a¤ects their ability to ...nd good jobs is of paramount importance. We do so using a ...eld experiment tracking young job seekers for six years in Uganda’s main cities. We examine how...
Oriana Bandiera, Robin Burgess, Selim Gulesci, Imran Rasul et al.
Microcredit programs are widely promoted by governments and non‐governmental organisations in many developing countries, as a means to alleviate poverty through income generation activities. BRAC, which was established in 1972, is currently the largest non‐governmental organisation operating in the ...
Clare Balboni, Oriana Bandiera, Robin Burgess, Maitreesh Ghatak et al.
There are two broad views as to why people stay poor. One emphasizes differences in fundamentals, such as ability, talent or motivation. The other, the poverty traps view, differences in opportunities which stem from access to wealth. To test between these two views, we exploit a large-scale, random...
Oriana Bandiera, Vittorio Bassi, Robin Burgess, Imran Rasul et al.
Oriana Bandiera, Robin Burgess, Erika Deserranno, Ricardo Morel et al.
The bulk of the world's extreme poor work in subsistence agriculture. Diversification out of this activity is often seen as the sine qua non of economic development. We evaluate whether the roll‐out of a mainstay development intervention—microfinance—into poor, agricultural and largely unbanked popu...
Oriana Bandiera, Selim Gulesci, Imran Rasul, Robin Burgess
Whether basic entrepreneurship can be inculcated amongst the poorest in society and serve as a route out of poverty remains an open question. We provide evidence on this issue by looking at the effects of a large-scale asset transfer and training programme which is targeted at the poorest women in r...