countries to the current context. Many studies in developing countries have used some variant of the elicitation methodology developed in Manski (2004) and Dominitz and Manski (1997) and have adapted it to diverse contexts (see Attanasio, 2009; Delavande, Giné, and McKenzie, 2011, for recent reviews). Specifically, this study adapts the approach used in Attanasio and Kaufmann (2009) to elicit the range of subject beliefs, and the approaches used in Dizon-Ross (2014) and Delavande and Kohler (2009) to elicit a coarse measure of the entire probability distribution of the subjects’ beliefs. While the latter studies elicit probability density function (pdf) of beliefs within a pre-determined and wide range of values, I allow for the range of values to be determined by the range of beliefs of the respondents themselves. This allows for a more precise estimate of the p.d.f. of their beliefs. As far as I know, in a developing country context, McKenzie, Gibson, and Stillman (2013) remains the only other study to elicit subjective expectations of potential earnings from migration abroad, and Delavande and Kohler (2009) is the only other study to elicit subjective expectations on mortality rate.

Finally, this paper relates to a growing literature on the effectiveness of targeted information in ameliorating information failure. Some examples of studies where information interventions have proven to be quite successful include Jensen (2010), Nguyen (2008), and Dinkelman and Martínez A (2014) on improving schooling; Dizon-Ross (2014) on parental investment in the schooling of their children; Duflo and Saez (2003) on better planning for retirement; De Mel, McKenzie, and Woodruff (2011) on better access to credit; Dupas (2011a) and Godlonton, Munthali, and Thornton (2015) on safer sexual behaviors; Madajewicz, Pfaff, Van Geen, Graziano, Hussein, Momotaj, Sylvi, and Ahsan (2007) on choices of safe drinking water; and Shrestha and Yang (2015) on improving job satisfaction among migrant workers. This study shows another context where providing credible information can be a powerful policy tool to enable potential migrants to make informed decisions.<sup>7</sup> The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2 describes the context and the study setting, Section 3 outlines the intervention design and empirical strategy, Section 4 discusses the effect of the interventions on perceptions, Section 5 describes the follow-up survey and presents the effect of the interventions on migration and other outcomes, Section 6 outlines the methodology for VSL estimation and presents the results, Section 7 uses the VSL and the elasticity estimates to understand the large extent of misinformation on mortality risks, and Section 8 concludes.

# **2 Context and study setting**

With remittances from abroad comprising almost a third of the national GDP, international migration for work is tremendously important for Nepal. In this section, I first describe the national context of migration to Malaysia and the Persian Gulf countries. I then describe the context specific to this study and compare the study sample with the population of migrants in the country along a few observable characteristics.

## **2.1 Context**

In recent years, Nepal has been one of the biggest suppliers of low-skill labor to Malaysia and the Persian Gulf countries. This phenomenon, however, is quite recent. As Appendix Table A.1 shows, historic migrant-to-population ratio hovered slightly above 3 percent and was driven mostly by migration to India, with which Nepal maintains an open border. However, between 2001 and 2011, the share of nonIndia migrants exploded six-fold with only a small change in the share of India migrants. The rising Maoist conflict in the early 2000s and the economic instability during the conflict and in years following the end of that conflict are often cited as key reasons behind this surge. However, in Shrestha (2016), I find that migration flows to non-India destinations are more responsive to shocks in the destination economies than to incomes at the origin. This suggests that the booming demand for low-skill labor in Malaysia and the Persian Gulf countries in the 2000s is key in attracting many Nepali workers.

> 7 Providing information may not be sufficient to change behaviors in other contexts (see Bryan, Chowdhury, and Mobarak, 2014, for instance), especially when other constraints are more binding. In addition, the content of the information, its manner of presentation, the identity of the information provider, and the identity of the recipient may matter in determining the effectiveness of providing information (see Dupas, 2011b, for a review of the role of information in the context of health).

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