Reproducibility package for The Psychosocial Value of Employment: Evidence from a Refugee Camp
Overview
Employment may be important to well-being for reasons beyond its role as an income source. This paper presents a causal estimate of the psychosocial value of employment in refugee camps in Bangladesh. The study involves 745 individuals in a field experiment with three arms: a control arm, a weekly cash arm, and an employment arm of equal value. The findings show that employment raises psychosocial well-being substantially more than cash alone, and 66 percent of the employed are willing to forego cash payments to continue working temporarily for free. Despite material poverty, the individuals in the sample both experience and recognize the nonmonetary, psychosocial value of employment.
Reproducibility Package
| Name | URL |
|---|---|
| Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License | https://www.openicpsr.org/openicpsr/aea |
| Repository name | URI |
|---|---|
| AEA Data and Code Repository | https://www.openicpsr.org/openicpsr/aea |
Reproducibility
A readme file with detailed instructions is part of the (external) reproducibility package.
Data
All data is public and contained in the (external) reproducibility package.
Description
| Author | Affiliation | |
|---|---|---|
| Reshmaan Hussam | Harvard Business School | rhussam@hbs.edu |
| Erin M. Kelley | World Bank | erinmkelley@worldbank.org |
| Gregory Lane | Harris School of Public Policy - University of Chicago | laneg@uchicago.edu |
| Fatima Zahra | New York University | fz2095@nyu.edu |
We are grateful to Emily Breza, Fiona Burlig, Rafael Di Tella, Fred Finan, Reema Hanna, Johannes Haushofer, Sylvan Herskowitz, Dean Karlan, Asim Khwaja, John Loeser, Matt Lowe, Berk Ozler, Gautam Rao, Frank Schilbach, and participants at seminars for their helpful comments and suggestions. We gratefully acknowledge financial support the Gates Foundation; the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, awarded through Innovation for Poverty Action’s Peace & Recovery Program, as well as from “Building the Evidence on Forced Displacement: A Multi-Stakeholder Partnership,” a program managed by the World Bank Group in collaboration with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and likewise funded by UK aid from the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office. We are extremely thankful to the entire IPA Bangladesh team, and in particular Shadman Rahman for exceptional field management, as well as Pulse Bangladesh, our partner NGO who helped obtain the necessary permissions to offer work opportunities to the participants
in our study. We are also grateful to Adil Bhatia and Grace Liu for their excellent research assistance. AEA RCT identification number: 0006000. This project received IRB approval from Harvard University (#IRB19-0067). This paper successfully completed a Stage 1 (pre-results) review at the Journal of Development Economics, and we are indebted the reviewers for their valuable feedback.
2022-11
Scope and coverage
| Location | Code |
|---|---|
| Bangladesh | BGD |
Disclaimer
The materials in the reproducibility packages are distributed as they were prepared by the staff of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/the World Bank. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this event do not necessarily reflect the views of the World Bank, the Executive Directors of the World Bank, or the governments they represent. The World Bank does not guarantee the accuracy of the materials included in the reproducibility package.
Version statement
2022-11
Access and rights
| Name | URI |
|---|---|
| Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
Information on metadata
| Name | Abbreviation | Affiliation |
|---|---|---|
| San Martin | LESM | World Bank |
| Krestel | CK | World Bank |
2023-07-14
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