Essays in the Political Economy of Development and the Family
Date
2021-08
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Abstract
This dissertation comprises of three chapters that apply modern econometric tools to explore novel economic questions surrounding the political economy of development and the family. In the first chapter, I build and provide the first analysis of a novel database on marriage contracts in Pakistan. The data was constructed using original administrative records that contain information on variables such as religious identity, the geographical distance between the bride and the groom’s family, and payments from the groom’s family to the bride – the dower. I find that a larger distance between families causes the dower payment to be higher, consistent with the hypothesis that families with lower familiarity require a higher payment in the marriage contract. Interestingly, I find that religious identity plays the most important role in determining the size of the dower. Here, religious identity mimics caste dynamics in other South Asian countries, where a certain religious identity is honoured higher above others. I further use the data to evaluate an interesting policy on marriage expenses and its effects on the dower. The policy established in 2003 in the city of Lahore attempts to restrict expenses on marriages by restricting food options and establishes curfew timings at marriage halls. A simple before and after estimator suggests that this policy has translated in increasing dower payments, yielding positive welfare implications for girls in marriages. The second chapter is a program evaluation exercise that studies an early marriage awareness intervention in a rural district of Pakistan. The intervention used theatrical plays and workshops in public places to help educate women, men and children on the possible consequences of early marriage and child marriage, a significant issue throughout the world. As the intervention was assigned to different locations over time, I employ a difference in differences estimation strategy and show that the intervention caused a decrease in overall probability of marriage and has helped push marriage later past the official legal marriage age of 16. The third chapter, co-authored with Sacha Kapoor and Arvind Magesan, studies how and why the number of candidates in an election affects voter turnout. This is an old question in political science which is difficult to answer given obvious simultaneity issues. To get causal estimates, we use an instrumental variables design generated by India’s system of political reservation for disadvantaged minorities, together with a sharp unexpected change in electoral deposit requirements which differentially and exogenously changed the barriers faced by potential election candidates across space and time. We find that more candidates result in higher voter turnout and that the effect is more pronounced in constituencies that are at a higher level of socioeconomic development, consistent with the idea that candidates are better able to reach voters where there is better road access, media access and literacy.
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Keywords
Family Economics, Development
Citation
Khan, A. A. A. (2021). Essays in the Political Economy of Development and the Family (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.