Essays in development economics and industrial organization

This dissertation contains three essays in development economics and industrial organization. In the first chapter, coauthored with Enrique Seira, we study a nationwide welfare program in Mexico in which the government, in an effort to eliminate hunger, sells milk to households at subsidized rates via a network of thousands of specialized ``ration stores.'' Existing in many countries, such direct-provision programs often appear puzzling to economists, as it seems unlikely that the government would have any comparative advantage over the private market in procuring and distributing milk. To understand direct provision, we develop and estimate an equilibrium model of the market, then use the model to compare this program against natural (budget-neutral) alternatives, such as milk vouchers or unrestricted cash transfers. Using rich household-level panel data and the variation generated by the staggered introduction of new government stores, we show that market power by private milk suppliers is an important concern and that government-sold and privately-sold milk are close (though imperfect) substitutes. Consequently, direct provision plays an important role in the milk market in Mexico by disciplining private-milk prices. Indeed, our results suggest that in the absence of government milk, private market prices would be 3% higher. Moreover, direct provision generates 4% more gains in consumer welfare relative to milk vouchers and 2% more relative to unrestricted cash transfers. In the second chapter, co-authored with Sara G. Castellanos, Aprajit Mahajan, and Enrique Seira, we study expanding financial access (particularly borrowing) to underserved populations. Credit card debt is increasingly common among poor and inexperienced borrowers -- thus de facto a financial inclusion product. However, it remains relatively under-studied. We use detailed card level data and a product that accounted for 15% of all first-time formal loans in Mexico and show that default rates are high and ex-ante unpredictable for new borrowers -- suggesting an important role for ex-post contract terms in limiting risk. However, using a large nationwide experiment we find that default is unresponsive to minimum payment increases, a commonly proposed policy remedy. We provide evidence that the zero result is driven by the offsetting effects of tightened liquidity constraints and lower debt burdens. Surprisingly, we also find muted default responses to large experimental changes in interest rates -- suggesting a limited role for ex-post moral hazard in our context. Finally, we use job displacements to document large effects of unemployment on default, highlighting the centrality of idiosyncratic shocks as a barrier to the expansion of formal credit among poorer populations. In the third and last chapter, coauthored with Joshua J. Kim and Aleksandr Shirkhanyan, we study savings in Armenia, particularly focusing on a unique problem that households in the developing world often face: how to safely store their assets when the value of their local currency is unstable. This instability leads to several complicated decisions households must make, such as how much to save and which currencies to save in. These choices are especially important for households during periods of macroeconomic volatility such as currency depreciations. In this paper, we study how households make such savings decisions following a large currency depreciation in Armenia. We exploit the unique structure of Armenian financial instruments, which generates quasi-random variation in which savers are nudged into paying attention to the depreciation. We then study how this random difference in initial attention affects the future savings choices that individuals make. Using a differences-in-differences design, we find that individuals who received a nudge to pay attention to the currency depreciation significantly reduced their total savings, held their savings for shorter periods of time, and chose to save their assets in USD. We find that these effects are strongest for individuals who predominantly saved in the domestic currency and individuals who are less financially sophisticated. We also find that while some of the differences in savings decisions are temporary, others persist long after the original depreciation event

Keywords: Economics.
Advisor: Dupas Pascaline
Einav Liran
Cuesta Jose Ignacio 
Morten Melanie