Department of Economics

[No abstract]

We study how human capital and economic conditions causally affect the choice of religious denomination. We utilize a longitudinal dataset monitoring the religious history of more than 5,000 Kenyans over twenty years, in tandem with a randomized experiment (deworming) that has exogenously boosted education and living standards. The main finding is that the program reduces the likelihood of membership in a Pentecostal denomination up to 20 years later when respondents are in their mid-thirties, while there is a comparable increase in membership in traditional Christian denominations. The effect is concentrated and statistically significant among a sub-group of participants who benefited most from the program in terms of increased education and income. The effects are unlikely due to increased secularization, because the program does not reduce measures of religiosity. The results help explain why the global growth of the Pentecostal movement, sometimes described a "New Reformation", is centered in low-income communities.

This article reviews and summarizes current reproduction and replication practices in political science. We first provide definitions for reproducibility and replicability. We then review data availability policies for 28 leading political science journals and present the results from a survey of editors about their willingness to publish comments and replications. We discuss new initiatives that seek to promote and generate high-quality reproductions and replications. Finally, we make the case for standards and practices that may help increase data availability, reproducibility, and replicability in political science.

In Kenya, the number of adults aged ≥60 is expected to nearly quadruple by 2050, making it one of the most rapidly aging countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Accordingly, we designed the Longitudinal Study of Health and Ageing in Kenya (LOSHAK) to generate novel data to address the health and economic consequences of this demographic transition. Specifically, LOSHAK will investigate the social, economic, environmental, biological, and policy processes that shape late-life health and economic well-being in Kenya. Modeled on the U.S. Health and Retirement Study (HRS), LOSHAK joins a network of harmonized studies on aging in >45 countries worldwide; however, LOSHAK will be only the 2nd such study in SSA. The current feasibility and pilot phase of LOSHAK will validate measures and data collection procedures in a purposive sample of Kenyan adults aged ≥45 years. We have linguistically and culturally translated instruments while aiming to maintain harmonization with both existing HRS network studies and the ongoing Kenya Life Panel Survey. The current phase of LOSHAK is nested within the Kaloleni/Rabai Community Health and Demographic Surveillance System on the coast of Kenya. LOSHAK will advance population aging research in low- and middle-income countries through the study of (a) biomarkers and physiological measures; (b) the impacts of air pollution and climate vulnerability; (c) Alzheimers disease and related dementias, mental health, disability, caregiving, and psychosocial wellbeing; and (d) economic security, including the impact of social welfare. LOSHAK will inform future public health and economic policy to address challenges related to rapid aging in Kenya and throughout SSA. Accordingly, this paper aims to introduce and provide a description of LOSHAK and its aims and objectives, as well as to inform the scientific community of current study activities being used to build toward the full population-representative study.

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the most common non-communicable disease occurring globally. Although previous literature has provided useful insights into the important role that diet plays in CVD prevention and treatment, understanding the causal role of diets is a difficult task considering inherent and introduced weaknesses of observational (e.g. not properly addressing confounders and mediators) and experimental research designs (e.g. not appropriate or well designed). In this narrative review, we organised current evidence linking diet, as well as conventional and emerging physiological risk factors, with CVD risk, incidence and mortality in a series of diagrams. The diagrams presented can aid causal inference studies as they provide a visual representation of the types of studies underlying the associations between potential risk markers/factors for CVD. This may facilitate the selection of variables to be considered and the creation of analytical models. Evidence depicted in the diagrams was systematically collected from studies included in the British Nutrition Task Force report on diet and CVD and database searches, including Medline and Embase. Although several markers and disorders linked to conventional and emerging risk factors for CVD were identified, the causal link between many remains unknown. There is a need to address the multifactorial nature of CVD and the complex interplay between conventional and emerging risk factors with natural and built environments, while bringing the life course into the spotlight.

In response to the Covid-19 crisis, 186 countries implemented direct cash transfers to households, and 181 introduced in-kind programs that lowered the cost of utilities such as electricity, water, transport, and mobile money. During times of crisis, do people prefer in-kind transfers or cash, and why? In this paper, we compare electricity transfers against a benchmark of cash transfers (mobile money) among 2000 rural and urban residents of Kenya with pre-paid electricity meter connections. We offer participants an incentivized choice between electricity transfers or mobile money, totaling approximately USD 10 to 15, and then implement their choice over three months. We generate three main findings. First, participants overwhelmingly prefer cash, with three-quarters of participants opting for mobile money even when offered electricity tokens with a cash value that is 40 percent higher, possibly due to the flexibility in expenditures or credit constraints. Second, despite relatively low baseline electricity consumption, preference for cash is slightly lower in rural areas, possibly due to higher transaction costs for purchasing electricity, lower mobile money penetration, or savings constraints. Third, electricity tokens transfers generate a larger increase in electricity consumption than equivalent cash transfers, suggesting a role for mental accounting; however, we estimate no impact of either electricity or cash transfers on a broad set of socioeconomic outcomes. These patterns suggest that mobile money transfers generate larger welfare gains than electricity credit, at least in settings with high mobile money penetration.