16/06/2022 Learning with Others - A Randomized Field Experiment on the Formation of Aspirations in Rural Ethiopia Tanguy Bernard 1 , Stefan Dercon 2 , Kate Orkin 2 , and Alemayehu Seyoum Taffesse 1 1 International Food Policy Research Institute, 2 University of Oxford July 18, 2013 Eleventh International Conference on the Ethiopian Economy Ethiopian Economic Association 1
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Learning with Others - A Randomized Field Experiment on the Formation of Aspirations in Rural Ethiopia
International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and Ethiopian Development Research Institute (EDRI) in collaboration with Ethiopian Economics Association. Eleventh Conference on Ethiopian Economy, July 18-20, 2013
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13/04/2023
Learning with Others - A Randomized Field Experiment on the Formation of Aspirations in
Rural Ethiopia
Tanguy Bernard1, Stefan Dercon2, Kate Orkin2, and Alemayehu Seyoum Taffesse1
1International Food Policy Research Institute, 2 University of Oxford
July 18, 2013Eleventh International Conference on the Ethiopian Economy
Ethiopian Economic Association
1
Motivation Elements of the aspirations framework Aspirations project Field experiment – design and findings
Outline
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Conceptual – ‘opportunities’
Empirical – Why do the poor not ‘invest’?
Ethiopians and fatalism?
Focus 1 - ‘external circumstances’ and ‘opportunities’.
Low returns to investments; Unexploited opportunities due to lack of information or
knowledge; Social constraints;
Focus 2 - constraints associated with the manifested attributes of decision makers
Identity issues: sense of self; Psychological issues: impatience, commitment, and psychological
barriers
Aspirations failure perspective
Motivation – why aspirations
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Aspirations:
A desire or an ambition to achieve something An aim and implied effort to reach it A set of future-regarding preferences
Related concepts
Economics : Satisficing Psychology : Self-efficacy, locus of control Anthropology : Aspiration failures
Common elements
Goals and aspirations are important determinants of success; Evolution through time in response to circumstances; Role of social comparisons and learning from relevant others,
An individual-level yet culturally (collectively) determined attribute towards exploration of individual-group symbiosis
Elements of the Aspirations Perspective
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Elements of the Aspirations Perspective
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What are Aspirations?
Aspirations have two distinctive aspects:
• Future-oriented - are goals that can only be satisfied at some future time (differ from immediate gratifications);
• Motivators - are goals individuals are willing, in principle, to invest time, effort or money in to attain (different from idle daydreams and wishes)
Note: the ‘willingness to invest’ is ‘potential’, or ‘conditional’
Aspirations and expectations – preference vs. beliefs;
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Elements of the Aspirations Perspective
Why are aspirations important/useful?
Aspirations (or the capacity to aspire):
Reflect bounded rationality;
Are socially determined (social interaction);
Are distributed unevenly within communities.
Condition individual behaviour and well-being
Useful device in analysing and/or addressing poverty
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Elements of the Aspirations PerspectiveHow do aspirations condition individual behaviour?
Aspiration window:
an individual’s cognitive world, his/her zone of ‘similar’, ‘attainable’ individuals;
Reflects the information and economic opportunities of the local environment;
Multi-dimensional (‘similarity’);
Aspiration gap:
difference between the aspired ‘state’ and current ‘state’ Conditions future-oriented behaviour - inverted U relationship
between gap and effort
A possible outcome is an aspiration failure - lack of pro-active behaviour (or ‘under-investment’) towards filling the aspiration gap
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Conceptual Schema
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Elements of the Aspirations PerspectiveMeasurement Issues
• Aspirations are not directly observable
– Revealed by observed behaviour: interpretation issues (linking aspirations and behaviour)
– Elicited using subjective questions: measurement issues
• Limits to subjective assessment:
– Subjects: subjects’ willingness to report private knowledge, evaluation apprehension, and subject role playing
– Instruments (attributes of): order of questions (anchoring), the number of categories on the rating scale (odd-even), the adjectives that are used as the endpoints of the rating scale, and the adverbs that describe scale categories.
(e.g. Delavande et al. (2009), Bertrand and Mullainathan (2001) for reviews)
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Elements of the Aspirations Perspective
Identification issues
• individual characteristics affect aspirations, aspiration windows and behaviour (e.g. schooling levels, wealth, and family background),
Particularly the endogeneity of the aspiration window a key hurdle
• aspirations ‘cause’ success – a person with higher aspirations may be more successful.
• Success ‘causes’ aspirations – a successful person may revise his/her aspiration to a higher level, or
experiment, panel data13/04/2023 10
The “Aspirations” project
Step 1 – correlates of aspiration-related conceptsStep 2 – test and validate a measurement strategyStep 3 – assess validity of the “aspiration window” hypothesis
An experiment Exogenous shock to aspirations: Mini-documentaries of local
success stories screened to randomly selected individuals. Placebo: local TV show.
3 rounds of data• Baseline pre-treatment (Sept-Dec 2010)• Aspirations retest immediately after treatment• Follow-up (Mar-May 2011)
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Field Experiment - Aspirations Measures
• 200,000 ETB ~ value of one harvest of chat from one hectare
100,000 ETB ~ value of one harvest of chat from half a hectare
0 ETB
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Surveyed : Treatment, 6 households (12 individuals) in every villagePlacebo, 6 households (12 individuals) in every villageControl, 6 households (12 individuals) in every village
* p<0.1; ** p<0.05; *** p<0.01; Screening site fixed effects and controls for age, age², gender and education not reported; Robust standard errors in parenthesis
Table 10 – Treatment effects on savings behaviour
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Treatment and Placebo Effects on Future-Oriented Behaviour
Table A1 - Direct and indirect treatment effect on Locus of Control LOC
Documentaries affected aspirations, expectations, time allocation, savings behaviour, and perceptions more than the placebo even 6 months after treatment;
Direct and, even more visible, indirect (group) effects are detected – more of an aspiration window story rather than a role model one;
It is not obvious why some effects are direct (savings) while others are indirect (time allocation);
Further analysis; Expanding coverage – Malawi, Pakistan via IFPRI;