Social Transfers and Growth: 皇冠体育app Missing Evidence from Luminosity Data
Abstract
皇冠体育app effects of social transfers on growth are still unclear. 皇冠体育app limitations of aggregated data at sub-national levels have confined the analysis to the use of simulation models and household surveys. As an alternative, this paper contributes to the empirical literature by assessing the effects of Colombia鈥檚 Familias en Accion, a human development cash transfer programme, on municipality level growth rates during its initial stage of implementation between 2000 and 2004. 皇冠体育app natural experiment that resulted from the scaling-up of the intervention facilitated the set-up of a difference-in-differences analysis. 皇冠体育app lack of sub-national GDP accounts is tackled by using luminosity data generated by satellites orbiting the earth, which have demonstrated to be a suitable proxy for economic growth and per capita growth. 皇冠体育app results show that the programme can generate large positive effects on municipality level economic growth rates. Robustness checks confirm the reliability of these findings.
Citation
Villa, J. Social Transfers and Growth: 皇冠体育app Missing Evidence from Luminosity Data. UNU-WIDER, Helsinki, Finland (2014) 23 pp. ISBN 978-92-9230-811-7 [WIDER Working Paper No. 2014/090]