Calendrier du 21 mars 2018
Development Economics Seminar
Du 21/03/2018 de 16:30 à 18:00
salle R2-01, campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan 75014 Paris
UDRY Chris (Northwestern University)
Information, Market Access and Risk: Addressing Constraints to Agricultural Transformation in Northern Ghana
Farm yields in northern Ghana are 75-80% below agronomic potential. This yield gap is the motivation for the overall shape of agricultural policy in the region. We describe the preliminary results of a 4 year RCT of a set of five interventions designed to overcome barriers to productivity gains on smallholder farms. Farmers were provided with access to community-based, high frequency agricultural extension services, with access to lower transaction-cost access to improved inputs, to introductory grants of rainfall index insurance, to daily updates on remote market prices of output, and to short-term rainfall forecasts. Neither yield nor agricultural profits respond strongly to any, or all, of these interventions on average. Treatment effects vary strongly across rainfall outcomes, and by gender of the cultivator.
Economic History Seminar
Du 21/03/2018 de 12:30 à 14:00
Salle R2-01, Campus Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris
MONTALBO Adrien (SUSSEX)
Economic resources and primary schooling in the early nineteenth-century France
The Guizot Law of 1833 was the first step undertaken in France towards the organization
of primary schooling at a national level, making it mandatory for municipalities more
than 500 inhabitants to open a primary school for boys. To this date, primary schooling
was mostly managed by municipal authorities who could freely decide to subsidise schools
or to let them be entirely funded through schooling fees paid by families. A national
survey was conducted in 1833 to determine the location of the existing primary schools.
Exploiting the data coming from this survey at the arrondissements (departmental districts)
and municipal levels, I investigate the economic determinants of primary schooling
spreading in France before the Guizot Law. I first show that economic resources and
population dispersion were key in explaining primary schools’ presence, municipal grants
and higher enrolment rates. The percentage of municipalities with schools along with the
percentage of teachers provided with an accommodation, a classroom, a fixed salary or an
occupation by municipalities were indeed higher in wealthier districts. Then, I show that
the pattern of this investment was also depending on the population deciles municipalities
were belonging to. Finally, I investigate the link between municipal grants and enrolment
rates. Local authorities acted to lower the level of fees in the schools they subsidised,
which reduced the costs of education borne by families and contributed to increase enrolment
rates. Primary schooling thus developed mostly in areas where it was economically
valuable, through the concomitant action of municipalities and families, which divided
the burden of education costs.