rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
# Improving Nutritional Status through Behavioral Change: Lessons from Madagascar<sup>†</sup>

## Emanuela Galasso

_Development Research Group World Bank_ and Nithin Umapathi _University College London, Institute for Fiscal Studies and Centre for Microdata Methods and Practice_

### (JEL   I12, I18, J13, O15)

Keywords: Community-based program, nutrition, behavioral change, Madagascar

> † This research has been sponsored by the World Bank Research Grant “Community Nutrition: Evaluation of Impacts in Africa”. We thank Claudia Rokx, the project task manager at the onset of the evaluation for her enthusiastic support and Harold Alderman, Anne Bossuyt for very useful discussions, Pedro Carneiro and Imran Rasul for detailed comments on various drafts. We are extremely grateful to the project management unit and to the provincial directors of the Seecaline program in Madagascar for sharing their vast knowledge on the details of the program. We thank Bart Minten for having shared the data on the Commune Census.  These are the views of the authors and do not reflect those of the World Bank, its Executive Directors, or the countries they represent. All errors are our own. Correspondence by email to <u>egalasso@worldbank.org or n.umapathi@ucl.ac.uk.</u>
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**Country**

|**Country**|_Changesin_<br>|_framework_|Ownership**links**|betweenbank<br>_Ch_|s and corpor<br>_angesinown_|ations<br>_ershipstructure_|||Banks' andnon-<br>financials'capital<br>adequacypositions|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
||Bklld|Nfiil||||||||
||ansaoweto<br>ownnon-financials<br>|on-nancas<br>allowedtoown<br>financials<br>|Nationalization<br>(shareofassetsheld<br>bystate-owned)<br>|Privatization<br>|Saleto<br>foreigners|Concentrationof<br>ownership<br>controlamnong<br>top15famnilies|Assets<br>carvedout|Assetsheldby<br>stateas shareof<br>GDP||
|Poland<br>(1992-95)|Nochanges'|Nochanges|Sevenof9state<br>owned connnercial<br>banksreceived<br>governmentbonds<br>toraisetheircapital<br>adequacy.|Authorities<br>ainwdat<br>privatization<br>ofall nine<br>state-owned<br>commercial<br>banks.Asof<br>end1995,4<br>bankswith<br>13%oftotal<br>banking assets<br>were<br>privatized.By<br>1998,only<br>twostate-<br>ownedbanks<br>remained.|Saleoffour<br>banks<br>resultedin<br>foreign<br>ownership<br>sharesinthe<br>rangeof25-<br>56%.<br>Initially,<br>bank<br>privatization<br>faced<br>political<br>resistanceto<br>foreign<br>investment,<br>"|Notapplicable|Not<br>applicable|38%ofbanking<br>systemequity36<br>(1995)|Recapitalization allowed7<br>bankstoachieve12%CAR.<br>Buttwospecializedbanks<br>(26%oftotalbankassets,<br>1995)areinneedof<br>restructuing.Butmnany<br>privatebanks createdin the<br>early1990swithloose<br>licensingstandardswould<br>face capital shortfallsunder<br>existingrequirements.<br>Thus,overallCARforthe<br>entire bankingsystemstood<br>at6%in1995.'<br>In1996,if<br>loanclassificationstandards<br>hadbeenstrictlyapplied,the<br>specializedbanksandnmany-<br>small bankswouldhave<br>beenoutofcompliance.3<sup>'</sup>|
|Tbailand<br>(1997-<br>ongoing)|Nochanges|Nochanges|4institutions;<br>43 percent(1999)|Intendedfor<br>public<br>institutions|2banks sold<br>toforeigners;<br>4pending<br>(1999)|53.5percent|2percent<br>(finance<br>companies,<br>1999)|127percent<br>(1999)|No.Mainprivateandlarge<br>publicbankscontinuetobe<br>weaklycapitalized.|

74 Unclear about the position of equity holdings swapped for bad debts in 5 commercial banks (imnplications for managenment and banks' regulatory conmpliance) (World Bank 1994).

" Following the first bank privatization, the banks' shares were put on the market and the subsequent price jumnp led to criticismn of the MOF for having undervalued the shares before going public. This prompted the authorities to be more cautious in selecting investment advisors and caused a slowdown in the process. _'6_ As of 1995, total bank assets stood at 42% of GDP. State held _55%_ of bank assets.

" World Bank 1997c.

" World Bank 1997c.
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Collecting information on FAFH through household surveys raises several methodological challenges, and scalable best practices have not been yet defined. A recent study that looks at the most recent nationally representative survey across many developing countries finds great variation in practices and quality of information collected (Smith et al., 2014). For example, 10 percent of the surveys analyzed do not have any reference to FAFH. Among those that do, 24 percent dedicate only one line to FAFH, and only 35 percent account for snacks. The aim of this study is to build systematic evidence by testing alternative modules and protocols, and ultimately identifying best practices for the collection of FAFH consumption in household surveys.

To test different methods of collecting this consumption, we conducted a randomized experiment in Hanoi, Vietnam, within the framework of the Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey (VHLSS). Important considerations for the design of the experiment were not only potential improvements in accuracy, but also cost and scalability. The randomized control trial (RCT) consisted of five different experimental arms. Each arm tested alternative modules and protocols addressing methodological issues not only specific to the collection of food away from home (such as _what_ to report and _who_ should report), but also from traditional sources of measurement error (such as lack of knowledge or memory). The treatment arms draw from the survey methodology and behavioral sciences literatures to encourage more accurate reporting.

Drawing on the comparison across treatment arms the following lessons emerge. First, asking about household-level FAFH in a one-line question within a larger module significantly underestimates households’ FAFH consumption (by about 33 percent). Second, the introduction of behaviorally-informed changes to survey protocols can significantly improve FAFH measurement, to the point of making it indistinguishable from our first-best benchmark measure (i.e. a heavily supervised individual-level diary) at a significantly reduced cost. In particular, we introduced an initial visit prior to the interview to mark the beginning of the recall period and make the recall period more salient. Furthermore, we introduced a tool to help respondents track household FAFH consumption in order to make FAFH more salient and thereby improve FAFH reporting. Third, we find that a household-level FAFH recall outperforms an individuallevel recall when the household recall is accompanied by these changes to survey protocols (a bounding visit and FAFH recording tool).

The structure of the paper is as follows: Section 2 summarizes background literature on food and FAFH measurement; Section 3 describes the experimental design and sample; Section 4 presents the main results; Section 5 follows with robustness checks, unintended consequences of the experimental variations, and exploration of results beyond the means; Section 6 provides a discussion on trade-offs across treatment arms, including a cost-benefit analysis; and Section 7 concludes.

3
South, South-LAC, LAC-North, LAC-South, and LAC-LAC). Having controlled for these factors, the regressions measure the trends in financial connections across regions. Table 3 also reports the results of a two-tailed P-value test for the differences between these trend coefficients to analyze if LAC countries have been integrating faster than other South countries in the financial network (both as senders and receivers).

The regressions in Table 3 show a positive trend for almost all the region pair connections. The only negative trend is observed in the case of North-LAC flows of syndicated loans, which is consistent with the patterns described in Figure 5. In addition, for all types of financial investments, the coefficients of South-LAC and LAC-LAC trends are higher than North-LAC ones.<sup>14</sup> This is consistent with the fact that North-LAC links were already well established even at the beginning of the 2000s, as shown in Table 2. As expected, the gravity controls coefficients show that the probability of a connection between two countries is decreasing on the geographical distance between the countries. On the other hand, the fact that the countries share a common language, have a common legal origin, or have a colony relation, increases the probability of a connection.

The intensive margin regressions (Table 4) are OLS regressions with the log of the bilateral flows (the value of the connections) as a dependent variable. In order to capture the intensive margin, these regressions only include links that were already established in the first period of each investment type.<sup>15</sup> Unlike Table 3, these regressions use region-region and country-region level data (not countrycountry level) and therefore there is no need to use gravity controls. Table 4 also reports the differences between the trend coefficients (as in Table 3).

The regressions of Table 4 show an increase in the value of the preexisting connections for portfolio investments (even in terms of GDP). This is consistent with the results of Table 2, which show that the growth in cross-border portfolio investments was driven mostly by the intensive margin. For M&A, there is a rise in the intensive margin of connections between North and LAC and within LAC countries (even in terms of GDP), but not for links between LAC and other South countries.<sup>16</sup> For syndicated loans, many of the trend coefficient are not significant (when measuring in terms of GDP), suggesting that the extensive margin played a more important role. Finally for greenfield flows

> 14 Although not reported, the differences are significant for portfolio investments, syndicated loans, and M&A flows, but not for greenfield investments. 15 That is, we only include connections that were already established in 2001-2005 for portfolio investments, 1996-2000 for syndicated loans, 1990-1995 for M&A, and 2003-2005 for greenfield flows.

> 16 For M&A, the LAC-South trend is omitted because none of the 1996-2011 connections existed in 1990-1995 (as shown in Table 2).

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majority of primary teachers have difficulties with high-school material.

The tests used in this research were developed by the Center for Educational Assessment of the Indonesian Ministry of Education and Culture ( _Pusat Penilaian Pendidikan_ or _Puspendik_ ). The tests consist of a 20 item math component, a 20 item science component, and a 20 item Indonesian language component. Another 40 items were used to assess pedagogical knowledge and social and personality traits. Teachers had 2 hours to complete the entire test. This meant that teachers had 1 minute and 12 seconds on average for each question. All questions were 5-option multiple choice questions. Approximately 1,700 primary school teachers in 240 public primary schools were tested.

The test intended to roughly reflect what the Center for Educational Assessment expects teachers to know. Scores of around 60 percent correct or higher, then, are considered “a pass”. But what does passing really mean? The Center for Educational Assessment may have been too ambitious for example, by setting targets too high. It is even more difficult to compare such raw scores internationally as standards for _appropriate levels of knowledge_ may differ between countries. Comprehensive studies specifically designed to evaluate teachers’ subject-matter knowledge across countries, such as PISA or TIMSS for students, do not exist. Hanushek, Piopiunik, and Wiederhold (2014) cleverly measure cross-country variations in teacher knowledge from OECD’s Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). PIAAC does not focus on teachers explicitly, but as the PIAAC samples are large enough, sufficiently many teachers are part of it. The first round of PIAAC however does not survey any of the developing economies.

As cross-country comparisons of teachers’ subject knowledge are lacking in the developing world, we rely on introspection of the reader of this paper to make an assessment of whether Indonesian teachers are up to standard. For the analysis we select two items from the 20-item math component of the subject-matter test of the Midline study (fielded in April-May 2011). Midline data of teachers is arguably the most reliable source of information we have, as both baseline and endline had to rely on smaller budgets for the field work. Especially, for midline, we managed in most cases to test teachers in the same classroom as their students, thereby minimizing the risk of collaboration among teachers. The two test items we look at are the 5
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# I. Objectivesand Strategy

The belief that economic policy is a major determinant of economic growth has been expressed in the writings of economists for over 200 years. Much empirical work in the development literature has demonstrated such a link.’ For example, Table 1 shows how over the past 30 years, fast-growing countries have had less government consumption, lower inflation, less of a black market premium, and more trade than slow-growing countries.

TABLE 1 <!-- Start of picture text --> Cross-Country Averages: 1960-89. -<br>Fastgrowers Slowgrowers<br>Share of investment in GDP 0.27 0.17<br>Secondary echool enrollment rates 0.27 0.07<br>Primary school enrollment rates 0.90 0.52<br>GovernmentGoverment / GDF 0.16 0.13<br>Inflation rate.consumption/ GDP 80 . 4208 160 . 4251<br>Standard deviation of inflation 8.75° 19.38 - .<br>Black warket exchange rate premium 4.65 75.03°<br>Standard deviation of premiun. 6.53 105.69 - i:<br>Shareof exports: to GDP 0.44. 0.29 ;<br>Fastgrovece: One standard deviation greater than or equal to the meen _<br>Slowgrowere: One-standardgrowth rete. deviation.-less.than.(cutoffs 6.0; n=i2) or equal.to the mean growth<br>tate. (cutoff *-0.2; n#i5) “<br><!-- End of picture text --> However, the nature of the relationship between policy and growth is far from settled. Controversy continues on which policies, if any, have growth effects as opposed to one-time effects on the level of income. For example, some authorr have argued that policies that induce distortions are relatively unimportant because they have only one-time effects on income that seldom amount to more than a few percentage points (e.g. Rodrik (1990)). Others question the causality of the relationship between the policy variables and growth of the type shown in Table 1. Substantial controversy remains as te which policies explain relative successes and failures, and to what extent external factors play a role relative to national policies. Other doubts exist whether the relationship between policy variables and growth is the simple linear one usually assumed, or is more complex, with thresholds for effective minimum reforms.

———————_—— appendix 1 provides 2 brief survey of the literature. A more extensive survey can be found in Reneit (1990).
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**Table 4: Sexual Violence with Both Spouses Reporting**

||(1)|(2)|(3)|(4)|(5)|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|Agree;Husband|0.039***|0.034***|0.039***|0.038***|0.041***|
||(0.005)|(0.005)|(0.006)|(0.006)|(0.006)|
|Wife says Husb;Husb says Joint|0.047***|0.043***|0.047***|0.047***|0.049***|
||(0.006)|(0.006)|(0.006)|(0.006)|(0.006)|
|Wife says Husb;Husb says Wife|0.048***|0.045***|0.050***|0.049***|0.052***|
||(0.008)|(0.008)|(0.008)|(0.008)|(0.008)|
|Wife says Joint;Husb says Husb|0.012*|0.010*|0.011*|0.011*|0.011*|
||(0.005)|(0.005)|(0.005)|(0.005)|(0.005)|
|Wife says Joint;Husb says Wife|0.029***|0.029***|0.029***|0.029***|0.027***|
||(0.007)|(0.007)|(0.008)|(0.007)|(0.008)|
|Wife says Wife;Husb says Husb|0.089***|0.085***|0.084***|0.082***|0.081***|
||(0.012)|(0.012)|(0.013)|(0.013)|(0.013)|
|Wife says Wife;Husb says Joint|0.057***|0.056***|0.059***|0.059***|0.058***|
||(0.009)|(0.009)|(0.009)|(0.009)|(0.009)|
|Agree;Wife|0.096***|0.093***|0.098***|0.097***|0.096***|
||(0.016)|(0.016)|(0.017)|(0.017)|(0.017)|
|Obsv|31228|31228|27889|27889|27656|
|R-squared|0.049|0.052|0.056|0.056|0.060|
|Mean of sample|.08|.08|.08|.08|.08|
|Country FE|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|
|HH controls|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|
|Attitudes|No|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|
|Preferences|No|No|Yes|Yes|Yes|
|Marriage|No|No|No|Yes|Yes|
|Bargaining|No|No|No|No|Yes|

(1) “Agree;Joint” is the reference category for the above table.

(2) Attitudes include attitude of husband and wife towards violence; Preferences include knowledge and alignment of preferences of husband and wife for children; Marriage includes years of marriage, total number of children the couple has, whether the couple is in a polygamous marriage; Bargaining includes wife’s education, age when she was married, difference in wife and husband’s education and age, whether husband and wife work, whether she earns more and relative ownership of assets.

(3) HH controls include whether household is in rural area, it has electricity and wealth quintile to which the household belongs.

(4) Robust standard errors in parentheses; * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001 23
The potentially very high elasticities of those earning near the minimum wage makes the overall impact on poverty potentially ambiguous: an elasticity over 1 implies that total income transfers to the target _groupfall_ with a rise in the wage. In the US, the evidence is ambiguous. As examples, Card and Krueger find weakly significant improvements in poverty, while Neumark, et. al. (2000) find that earned incomes of lowwage workers decline in response to minimum wage increases and actually increase poverty. **2** The debate arguably becomes more relevant in LDCs where enforcement of labor norms is thought not to extend to the unprotected or "informal" sector. Standard dualistic models ranging from the earliest (Harris and Todaro 1970) to some of the most recent (Agenor and Aizenman 1999) assume a labor market segmented by nominal wage rigidities such as the minimum wage. Here, the worker who loses his job has no access to unemployment insurance and instead takes refuge in the informal sector whose wage adjusts to accommodate supply. In this case, a rise in the minimum wage forces some workers into jobs earning below what they did before. The available empirical evidence for Latin America is ambiguous. Morely (1992) and de Janvry and Sadoulet (1996) find that poverty falls with a rise in the minimum, but only for periods of recovery in the former and only in periods of recession in the latter. Using world wide LDC data, McLeod and Lustig (1996) confirm a negative effect on poverty, but also a significant negative effect on employment as well.

The minimum wage also enters strongly into debates about the impacts of mandated non-wage benefit payments and other regulations have on labor demand. If, for instance, the worker fully values the health insurance provided by the employer, then

> **2** Their evidence suggests that the pressure for implementing minimum wages comes from unions seeking to reduce wage competition.

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The SUR results indicate the importance of labor market issues to increase firm production in the region. To examine how much production would be increased by a small reduction in production factor prices, such as wages, the output elasticities are calculated (Table 5). Labor costs turned out to have the highest output elasticity among other production factors: The elasticity is 0.42–0.63 in absolute terms.

Among infrastructure costs, the output elasticity associated with electricity costs is found to be particularly high at 0.107 in the SUR model. This seems to be consistent with the general perspective of firm managers who identified electricity as one of the most crucial business constraint. However, the SFA results remain inconclusive. The elasticity with respect to transport costs is estimated at about 0.04, which means that a 10 percent reduction in transport costs would increase firm production (or more precisely, firm sales in our case) by 0.4 percent.

Although our infrastructure measurements are not perfect, our results indicate that the quality of infrastructure is important, particularly in the transport sector. The output elasticity with respect to transport infrastructure quality is estimated at 0.06–0.07 in absolute terms, which is statistically significant (Table 6). If transport infrastructure is improved (i.e., firm inventory is reduced) by 10 percent, firm sales would increase 0.6-0.7 percent. In practical terms, this means that an “average” firm could increase its profits by about US$10,000, holding everything else constant.<sup>8</sup> In the SFA, the elasticity of water quality is also found significant. If the quality of water supply increases (i.e., the number of days that water supply is suspended declines), the firm output would increase.

Since different industries require different production inputs, the sample firms are divided into five groups: textile, agrobusiness (including food and wood products), energy-intensive manufacturing (such as chemical and metal), other manufacturing, and service, and the SUR and SFA are performed separately. The output elasticities are found to vary across the

> 8 The sample average of sales is US$2.7 million, while the median is only US$71,000.
_Ceará_ , and the results suggest that the large gains in student learning after introducing TA and reformulating the RBF rule were attained without increasing municipal public spending.

The paper is organized as follows. After this introduction, section 2 provides background information on _Ceará_ and explains the RBF reform that introduced education incentives for mayors. Section 3 describes the data and presents descriptive statistics. The identification strategy is discussed in section 4. Section 5 illustrates the RBF effects, presents estimation results on test scores, and disentangles the components of TA. Section 6 investigates several mechanisms explaining our results. Section 7 concludes.

# **2 Background**

The state of _Ceará_ is located in northeast Brazil and has approximately 9 _._ 1 million inhabitants (equivalent to Austria or Israel) living in an area of 148 _,_ 895km<sup>2</sup> (equivalent to Bangladesh or Greece). According to 2017 data, its GDP per capita reached _R_ $16 _,_ 395 (or US$7 _,_ 378 PPP), similar to Vietnam (US$7 _,_ 448) and Cabo Verde ( _US_ $7 _,_ 454), which translates into the fifth smallest GDP per capita in Brazil. Three-fourths of its population is concentrated in urban areas, infant mortality is around 13 _._ 2 per 1 _,_ 000 live births, and life expectancy is 74 _._ 3 years _−_ 2 years less than the national average.<sup>2</sup>

## _−_ **2.1 The Results Based Financing Reform in** **_Ceará_**

In this socioeconomic context, in December 2007 _Ceará_ initiated a reform modifying how state consumption tax revenues were redistributed to municipalities. The tax in question is the _Imposto sobre Circulação de Mercadorias e Serviços_ (henceforth, ICMS), an important source of

> 2The information about economic activity, demography, and socioeconomic characteristics of _Ceará_ is from Cavalcante et al. (2019) and de Oliveira et al. (2020).

6