yellowdoorknob: NEUDC 2019 roundup

As always, David Evans (and Almedina Music)'s one-sentence summary of papers presented in the NUEDC conference is a useful read--even more so now as I start working on my own projects. Of particular interest to me are the 10 Indonesia-related papers. I plucked their summary of the eight papers included in the roundup below, and the titles of the other two papers are added at the end.

Summaries:

Clean energy access improves women’s lung capacity and increases women’s labor supply in Indonesia, as a result of higher domestic productivity allowing for more working hours. (Priya and Imelda)

In Indonesia, a “1 percent increase in the proportion of [internal] migrants in the population leads to a 3.9 percent increase in the number of economically-motivated crimes reported by local media,” but—in an exciting twist—when you look at reports from household surveys, more migrants reduce the probability of being a crime victim. (Feld and Kleemans)

How spatially misallocated is public infrastructure investment, and why? Misallocation in healthcare infrastructure is lower after Indonesia’s democratization in 1999, because (i) of a reduced bias toward previously Suharto-favored villages, and (ii) spillover effects are less internalized as districts become more focused on their own constituents. (Hsiao)

Providing information about the level of inequality increased the likelihood that respondents would vote against the president in Indonesia. Providing information about a respondent‘s position in the distribution resulted in richer Indonesians becoming less supportive of redistribution. (Hoy, Toth, and Meredikawati)

An index of the marginal utility expenditure (IMUE) may better capture changes in households’ welfare from receiving transfers: In over 25 percent of the Indonesian villages the IMUE measure rankings had a higher correlation with the community ranking than proxy means tests or total consumption rankings did. (Trachtman)

As palm oil factories proliferated in Indonesia, areas around those factories had “more non-agricultural employment, higher incomes, and more people.” (Edwards)

Rice import restrictions in Indonesia benefitted villages more suited for rice production in terms of aggregate income and nutrition. Local governments responded by directing more resources toward the more adversely affected villages: They were more likely to receive a health facility. (Sim)

During Ramadan, Muslim salespeople in Indonesia are nearly one-third less productive in the two hours before sunset. After sunset, productivity shoots back up. (Hu and Wang)

Titles only: