This study explores the link between exposure to an earthquake and the incidence of intimate part... more This study explores the link between exposure to an earthquake and the incidence of intimate partner violence using two rounds of Demographic and Health Surveys data in Nepal. Using a differences-in-differences estimation, we find that exposure to the earthquake lead to a statistically and economically significant increase in the incidence of intimate partner violence in urban areas, which is attributable to the increase in stress felt by the victims. We argue that the heterogeneity of the impact between the urban and rural areas would be partly due to the differences in the reconstruction processes and assistance provided.
Non-response is a commonly encountered problem in many population-based surveys. Broadly speaking... more Non-response is a commonly encountered problem in many population-based surveys. Broadly speaking, non-response can be due to refusal or failure to contact the sample units. Although both types of non-response may lead to bias, there is much evidence to indicate that it is much easier to reduce the proportion of non-contacts than to do the same with refusals. In this article, we use data collected from a nationally-representative survey under the Demographic and Health Surveys program to study non-response due to refusals to HIV testing in Malawi. We review existing estimation methods and propose novel approaches to the estimation of HIV prevalence that adjust for refusal behaviour. We then explain the data requirement and practical implications of the conventional and proposed approaches. Finally, we provide some general recommendations for handling non-response due to refusals and we highlight the challenges in working with Demographic and Health Surveys and explore different approaches to statistical estimation in the presence of refusals. Our results show that variation in the estimated HIV prevalence across different estimators is due largely to those who already know their HIV test results. In the case of Malawi, variations in the prevalence estimates due to refusals for women are larger than those for men.
h i g h l i g h t s • A model of myopia is developed in this study. • The model is analytically a... more h i g h l i g h t s • A model of myopia is developed in this study. • The model is analytically and numerically convenient. • The model is applied to a non-renewable extraction problem. • Extraction permits may be a useful policy option.
Objective To find lower and upper bounds of HIV prevalence in Malawi under mild and intuitive ass... more Objective To find lower and upper bounds of HIV prevalence in Malawi under mild and intuitive assumptions to assess the importance of the refusal issue in the estimation of HIV prevalence. Methods We derive bounds based on the following two key assumptions: (i) Among those who have never taken an HIV test before, those who refuse to take an HIV test (hereafter "refusers") have at least as much risk to be HIV positive as those who participate in the HIV test, and (ii) among the refusers, those who have a prior testing experience are at least as likely to be HIV positive as those who have no prior experience. We compute the bounds using the Malawi Demographic and Health Survey and a longitudinal data set with a HIV testing component collected in the Malawi Diffusion and Ideational Change Project disaggregated by the sex, urban/rural areas, and three regions of Malawi. Findings The bounds of HIV prevalence vary substantially across geographic and demographic groups. In particular, the bounds for males are tighter than those for females and the bounds for the Northern region are also tighter than those for other regions. There is no substantial difference in the width of bounds between the rural and urban populations. Conclusion Bounds are useful for assessing the influence of refusal bias without the need for strong assumptions. Refusal issue is less of a concern if bounds are tight. However, when bounds are wide, refusal issue may be important.
We extend the Arrow-Fisher-Hanemann-Henry (AFHH) and Dixit-Pindyck (DP) option values to a game s... more We extend the Arrow-Fisher-Hanemann-Henry (AFHH) and Dixit-Pindyck (DP) option values to a game situation. By reinterpreting the AFHH option value as a change in the surplus from conservation because of the prospect of future information, we deal with a conceptual difficulty associated with the AFHH option value in the presence of strategic interactions. We then introduce the DP option value into a game situation. We show that the equivalence between the expected value of information and the DP option value in the standard model does not hold under strategic interactions.
We compare commune-level poverty rankings in Cambodia based on three different methods: small-are... more We compare commune-level poverty rankings in Cambodia based on three different methods: small-area estimation, principal component analysis using aggregate data, and interviews with local leaders. While they provide reasonably consistent rankings, the choice of the ranking method matters. In order to assess the potential losses from moving away from census-based poverty mapping, we used the concentration curve. Our calculation shows that about three-quarters of the potential gains from geographic targeting may be lost by using aggregate data. The usefulness of aggregate data in general would depend on the cost of data collection.
Using household data for rural northern Viet Nam between 1993 and 2014, we find that the ethnic m... more Using household data for rural northern Viet Nam between 1993 and 2014, we find that the ethnic minority group continued to lag behind the majority group in various development indicators despite the overall improvement in living standards. Our regression and decomposition analyses show that the structural differences between the two groups are an important cause of the persistent development gap. However, the nature of structural differences changed over time and no single source of structural difference explains the persistent gap. We argue that more minority-appropriate policies are needed to lift poor minority households out of poverty further and reduce the development gap.
Absenteeism of health workers in developing countries is common and can severely undermine the re... more Absenteeism of health workers in developing countries is common and can severely undermine the reliability of health system. Therefore, it is important to understand where the prevalence of absenteeism is high. We develop a simple imputation method that combines a Service Delivery Indicators survey and a Service Provision Assessment survey to estimate the prevalence of absenteeism of health workers at the level of regions in Tanzania. The resulting estimates allow one to identify the regions in which the prevalence of absenteeism is significantly higher or lower than the national average and help policymakers determine the priority areas for intervention.
We develop a poverty decomposition method that is based on a consumption regression model. Becaus... more We develop a poverty decomposition method that is based on a consumption regression model. Because this method uses an integral of the partial derivatives of a poverty measure with respect to time, the resulting poverty decomposition satisfies time-reversion consistency and sub-period additivity. Unlike the existing poverty decomposition methods, it allows us to ascribe the observed change in poverty to various covariates of interest collected at a disaggregate level. This method is applied to two datasets from Tanzania to assess, among others, the short- and long-term impacts of infrastructure and market access on poverty.
Poverty reduction is a top priority for international organizations, governments and non-governme... more Poverty reduction is a top priority for international organizations, governments and non-governmental organizations. The aid resources available for poverty reduction are, however, severely constrained in many countries. Minimizing the leakage of aid resources to the non-poor is a key to maximize poverty reduction with the limited amount of resources available. One way to minimize such leakage is to target resources geographically. That is, policymakers can move resources to the poorest part of the country. Geographic targeting can be quite effective when poverty is unevenly distributed across the country, and this proves to be the case in many countries. This paper is structured as follows. In section 2, we summarize the SAE poverty mapping Cambodia. Section 3, discusses the methodology and dataset we used to create an MWBI poverty map in Cambodia. Section 4, we describe the CCDB. In section 5, we compare the SAE poverty map and the MWBI poverty map as well as the CCDB in Cambodia. In section 6, we consider the implications for geographic targeting, and section 7 concludes.
While past two decades have witnessed a remarkable educational progress in Vietnam, ethnic minori... more While past two decades have witnessed a remarkable educational progress in Vietnam, ethnic minority children consistently lagged behind ethnic majority children in academic performance. The government of Vietnam has stepped up efforts to assist ethnic minority students in their learning by lowering the linguistic and cultural barriers they face. Among such efforts is the textbook supply program, and we examine its impact on the learning of children proxied by vocabulary test. We apply difference-indifferences estimation to four rounds of the Young Lives data between 2006 and 2015 in order to investigate how the textbook supply program narrowed the gap between the ethnic minority and majority over time. We show that the textbook supply program became more effective in narrowing the ethnic gap as the education policy in Vietnam became reoriented towards ethnic minority children. We also conduct a causal mediation analysis to explore the relevance of behavioural response through the change in time use. The result of this analysis suggests that increased study time is possibly a moderate mediator through which the textbook supply program helps narrow the ethnic gap in the test score only for the young cohort over and above the direct impact from the textbook program. This paper therefore alludes to the importance of delivering carefully designed materials for the target group to bring about meaningful behavioral changes. It also corroborates the findings from the recent literature on teaching at the right level.
Absenteeism of health workers in developing countries is common and can severely undermine the re... more Absenteeism of health workers in developing countries is common and can severely undermine the reliability of the health system. Therefore, it is important to understand where the prevalence of absenteeism is high. We develop a simple imputation method that combines a Service Delivery Indicators survey and a Service Provision Assessment survey to estimate the prevalence of absenteeism of health workers at the level of regions in Tanzania. The resulting estimates allow one to identify the regions in which the prevalence of absenteeism is significantly higher or lower than the national average and help policymakers determine priority areas for intervention.
This study explores the link between exposure to an earthquake and the incidence of intimate part... more This study explores the link between exposure to an earthquake and the incidence of intimate partner violence using two rounds of Demographic and Health Surveys data in Nepal. Using a differences-in-differences estimation, we find that exposure to the earthquake lead to a statistically and economically significant increase in the incidence of intimate partner violence in urban areas, which is attributable to the increase in stress felt by the victims. We argue that the heterogeneity of the impact between the urban and rural areas would be partly due to the differences in the reconstruction processes and assistance provided.
Non-response is a commonly encountered problem in many population-based surveys. Broadly speaking... more Non-response is a commonly encountered problem in many population-based surveys. Broadly speaking, non-response can be due to refusal or failure to contact the sample units. Although both types of non-response may lead to bias, there is much evidence to indicate that it is much easier to reduce the proportion of non-contacts than to do the same with refusals. In this article, we use data collected from a nationally-representative survey under the Demographic and Health Surveys program to study non-response due to refusals to HIV testing in Malawi. We review existing estimation methods and propose novel approaches to the estimation of HIV prevalence that adjust for refusal behaviour. We then explain the data requirement and practical implications of the conventional and proposed approaches. Finally, we provide some general recommendations for handling non-response due to refusals and we highlight the challenges in working with Demographic and Health Surveys and explore different approaches to statistical estimation in the presence of refusals. Our results show that variation in the estimated HIV prevalence across different estimators is due largely to those who already know their HIV test results. In the case of Malawi, variations in the prevalence estimates due to refusals for women are larger than those for men.
h i g h l i g h t s • A model of myopia is developed in this study. • The model is analytically a... more h i g h l i g h t s • A model of myopia is developed in this study. • The model is analytically and numerically convenient. • The model is applied to a non-renewable extraction problem. • Extraction permits may be a useful policy option.
Objective To find lower and upper bounds of HIV prevalence in Malawi under mild and intuitive ass... more Objective To find lower and upper bounds of HIV prevalence in Malawi under mild and intuitive assumptions to assess the importance of the refusal issue in the estimation of HIV prevalence. Methods We derive bounds based on the following two key assumptions: (i) Among those who have never taken an HIV test before, those who refuse to take an HIV test (hereafter "refusers") have at least as much risk to be HIV positive as those who participate in the HIV test, and (ii) among the refusers, those who have a prior testing experience are at least as likely to be HIV positive as those who have no prior experience. We compute the bounds using the Malawi Demographic and Health Survey and a longitudinal data set with a HIV testing component collected in the Malawi Diffusion and Ideational Change Project disaggregated by the sex, urban/rural areas, and three regions of Malawi. Findings The bounds of HIV prevalence vary substantially across geographic and demographic groups. In particular, the bounds for males are tighter than those for females and the bounds for the Northern region are also tighter than those for other regions. There is no substantial difference in the width of bounds between the rural and urban populations. Conclusion Bounds are useful for assessing the influence of refusal bias without the need for strong assumptions. Refusal issue is less of a concern if bounds are tight. However, when bounds are wide, refusal issue may be important.
We extend the Arrow-Fisher-Hanemann-Henry (AFHH) and Dixit-Pindyck (DP) option values to a game s... more We extend the Arrow-Fisher-Hanemann-Henry (AFHH) and Dixit-Pindyck (DP) option values to a game situation. By reinterpreting the AFHH option value as a change in the surplus from conservation because of the prospect of future information, we deal with a conceptual difficulty associated with the AFHH option value in the presence of strategic interactions. We then introduce the DP option value into a game situation. We show that the equivalence between the expected value of information and the DP option value in the standard model does not hold under strategic interactions.
We compare commune-level poverty rankings in Cambodia based on three different methods: small-are... more We compare commune-level poverty rankings in Cambodia based on three different methods: small-area estimation, principal component analysis using aggregate data, and interviews with local leaders. While they provide reasonably consistent rankings, the choice of the ranking method matters. In order to assess the potential losses from moving away from census-based poverty mapping, we used the concentration curve. Our calculation shows that about three-quarters of the potential gains from geographic targeting may be lost by using aggregate data. The usefulness of aggregate data in general would depend on the cost of data collection.
Using household data for rural northern Viet Nam between 1993 and 2014, we find that the ethnic m... more Using household data for rural northern Viet Nam between 1993 and 2014, we find that the ethnic minority group continued to lag behind the majority group in various development indicators despite the overall improvement in living standards. Our regression and decomposition analyses show that the structural differences between the two groups are an important cause of the persistent development gap. However, the nature of structural differences changed over time and no single source of structural difference explains the persistent gap. We argue that more minority-appropriate policies are needed to lift poor minority households out of poverty further and reduce the development gap.
Absenteeism of health workers in developing countries is common and can severely undermine the re... more Absenteeism of health workers in developing countries is common and can severely undermine the reliability of health system. Therefore, it is important to understand where the prevalence of absenteeism is high. We develop a simple imputation method that combines a Service Delivery Indicators survey and a Service Provision Assessment survey to estimate the prevalence of absenteeism of health workers at the level of regions in Tanzania. The resulting estimates allow one to identify the regions in which the prevalence of absenteeism is significantly higher or lower than the national average and help policymakers determine the priority areas for intervention.
We develop a poverty decomposition method that is based on a consumption regression model. Becaus... more We develop a poverty decomposition method that is based on a consumption regression model. Because this method uses an integral of the partial derivatives of a poverty measure with respect to time, the resulting poverty decomposition satisfies time-reversion consistency and sub-period additivity. Unlike the existing poverty decomposition methods, it allows us to ascribe the observed change in poverty to various covariates of interest collected at a disaggregate level. This method is applied to two datasets from Tanzania to assess, among others, the short- and long-term impacts of infrastructure and market access on poverty.
Poverty reduction is a top priority for international organizations, governments and non-governme... more Poverty reduction is a top priority for international organizations, governments and non-governmental organizations. The aid resources available for poverty reduction are, however, severely constrained in many countries. Minimizing the leakage of aid resources to the non-poor is a key to maximize poverty reduction with the limited amount of resources available. One way to minimize such leakage is to target resources geographically. That is, policymakers can move resources to the poorest part of the country. Geographic targeting can be quite effective when poverty is unevenly distributed across the country, and this proves to be the case in many countries. This paper is structured as follows. In section 2, we summarize the SAE poverty mapping Cambodia. Section 3, discusses the methodology and dataset we used to create an MWBI poverty map in Cambodia. Section 4, we describe the CCDB. In section 5, we compare the SAE poverty map and the MWBI poverty map as well as the CCDB in Cambodia. In section 6, we consider the implications for geographic targeting, and section 7 concludes.
While past two decades have witnessed a remarkable educational progress in Vietnam, ethnic minori... more While past two decades have witnessed a remarkable educational progress in Vietnam, ethnic minority children consistently lagged behind ethnic majority children in academic performance. The government of Vietnam has stepped up efforts to assist ethnic minority students in their learning by lowering the linguistic and cultural barriers they face. Among such efforts is the textbook supply program, and we examine its impact on the learning of children proxied by vocabulary test. We apply difference-indifferences estimation to four rounds of the Young Lives data between 2006 and 2015 in order to investigate how the textbook supply program narrowed the gap between the ethnic minority and majority over time. We show that the textbook supply program became more effective in narrowing the ethnic gap as the education policy in Vietnam became reoriented towards ethnic minority children. We also conduct a causal mediation analysis to explore the relevance of behavioural response through the change in time use. The result of this analysis suggests that increased study time is possibly a moderate mediator through which the textbook supply program helps narrow the ethnic gap in the test score only for the young cohort over and above the direct impact from the textbook program. This paper therefore alludes to the importance of delivering carefully designed materials for the target group to bring about meaningful behavioral changes. It also corroborates the findings from the recent literature on teaching at the right level.
Absenteeism of health workers in developing countries is common and can severely undermine the re... more Absenteeism of health workers in developing countries is common and can severely undermine the reliability of the health system. Therefore, it is important to understand where the prevalence of absenteeism is high. We develop a simple imputation method that combines a Service Delivery Indicators survey and a Service Provision Assessment survey to estimate the prevalence of absenteeism of health workers at the level of regions in Tanzania. The resulting estimates allow one to identify the regions in which the prevalence of absenteeism is significantly higher or lower than the national average and help policymakers determine priority areas for intervention.
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Papers by Tomoki Fujii