AMID

"Actors, Markets, and Institutions in Developing Countries: A micro-empirical approach"

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'Development Economics has seen an explosion of high quality empirical work in the past ten years. But despite the quality of many individual researchers, Europe is lagging behind the US in terms of number of students, faculty, and publications. Remedying this gap is important, not only for scientific reasons, but also because development research is a critical input to decision making by Governments and international Institutions. The partners in the proposed ITN are dedicated to producing the next generation of research scholars working on development issues in Europe. The ITN will harness and combine intellectual resources which are scattered across Europe to offer doctoral students a first rate training, comparable to the best opportunities available worldwide. The Network will emphasise rigorous empirical methods put to the service of fundamental questions in development economics. The work will evolve around three workpackages: WP1 (Human capital and policy evaluation) will investigate how households respond to incentives, design policies to improve education and health, and evaluate their impact. WP2 (Market access for the poor) will study market imperfections in insurance, credit, product and labour markets and evaluate the effectiveness of innovative schemes to address them. WP3 (Institutions: Micro evidence) will study the emergence of social norms, the legacy of historical institutions, and their implications for governance and accountability. Training will involve student exchanges across nodes, participation in team research projects, and support for students’ travel and field work. The distinguishing features are: (a) formal coursework with emphasis on rigorous empirical methods and exposure to other disciplines in PhD courses, workshops and summer schools. (b) active participation in data collection and field projects in developing countries, attained through participation in (often multidisciplinary) team research projects and internships with industry partners and NGOs. Fieldwork experience is an essential element of training for development economists, but is rarely offered in doctoral programs. (c) opportunities to forge relationships with faculty and students throughout Europe through exchanges, workshops, and virtual networks.'

Introduzione (Teaser)

Novel strategies for analysing challenges in developing nations will help underline crucial issues and pave the way to tackling them.

Descrizione progetto (Article)

The EU might not be perfect in every respect, but it boasts a standard of living and a model society that is the envy of many developing nations.

Indeed, the bloc can do much to encourage positive change in these countries through knowledge transfer, best practices and valuable research.

In this context, the EU-funded project 'Actors, markets, and institutions in developing countries: A micro-empirical approach' (AMID) worked on providing cutting-edge research scholars with tools to investigate development issues. It achieved this by bringing together key intellectual resources from five European universities with high-level training offered by the project partners.

More specifically, the project team developed formal coursework that outlines rigorous empirical research methods, with exposure to other disciplines in PhD courses, workshops and summer schools. It worked on field projects in developing countries and on data collection, often with non-governmental organisations. This involved building relationships with students and faculty across Europe, through workshops for example, strengthening exchanges and virtual networks, and analysing key development issues around the world.

Specific project exercises included a study of educational choices and credit constraints in Mexico, and the role of television in affecting household and lifetime decisions such as divorce. Free primary education impacts in Cambodia, human trafficking in the Philippines and inequalities in China were also investigated in the first part of the project on human capital and policy evaluation.

The second phase of the project involved studying market access for the poor, investigating issues such as savings and gleaning policy implications. One notable project study during this phase involved assessing the impact of a unified social health insurance plan in Rwanda.

With respect to the last project phase, the team investigated micro evidence in institutions, such as the inefficiency of land co-ownership in eastern Europe. Another similar issue under study involved land property rights in the Dominican Republic and how this is shaped by family ties and social norms.

From assessing the impact of teaching Roma in Serbia to evaluating new mechanisms that minimise the spread of HIV in Lesotho, AMID consolidated valuable research knowledge to benefit developing nations. Most importantly, the project's training programme gave birth to new tools and skills that can be used for an in-depth understanding of development issues.

As new partnerships in this arena emerged, the project disseminated its results through publications, conferences and workshops, as well as online. Clearly, such an endeavour will contribute significantly to how we assess development and what methods, strategies and policies work best to raise the quality of life in developing countries.