Comments with supplementary information on

JADE Conference, November 14, 2020

     Panel Discussion “Developing Countries after COVID-19?
              The Role of Development Economists”

                         Comments
         (with supplementary information on
      data collection in India and Pakistan, 2020)

Takashi Kurosaki (kurosaki@ier.hit-u.ac.jp, Hitotsubashi University)
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Issues discussed by the 3 speakers and the focus of my comment:
  • Sonobe:
     • Research topics: Some COVID effects but not likely to be very large
     • Funding and publishing process: Trade-off between agility and rigorous evidence
     • Importance of education to foster international cooperation, coordination, and multilateralism
  • Sawada:
     • Slowness of development economics research was hurting our discipline
     • Induced innovation in development economics research is coming up, such as use of big data, interdisciplinary
       research, hybrid approach
  • Shimada:
     • Need for utilizing recipient-country manpower to implement ODA projects, despite rising importance of tied
       aids in Japanese ODA
     • Distribution of vaccine is the urgent research topic
     • Development economists’ involvement in policies need to go beyond small project evaluations, such as SDR
       policies or global development policies

  • My addition:
     As another role of development economists, sharing data collection details in the field could contribute to
     the understanding of COVD-19 impact in developing countries
     • My experiences in data collection in India and Pakistan, 2020
     • Especially supplementary to Sawada’s point on induced innovation in research methodology

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Background: COVID-19 in India and Pakistan
India
• Dynamics:
        •   Jan 30 = 1st case; Mar 15 = over 100; Mar 28 = over 1,000;
        •   April 13 = over 10,000; May 18 = over 100,000; July 16 =
            over 1,000,000
        •   Nov 11 = 8,684 thousand cases; 128 thousand deaths
• Government response: Stringent lockdown (March 24-),
  with harsh police monitoring; All schools and major
  shopping centers closed
• Possible reasons for the contrast: Larger economy with
  active long-distance transient domestic migration; Housing
  conditions on average worse than Pakistan
Pakistan
• Dynamics:
        •   Feb 26 = 1st case; Mar 16 = over 100; Mar 25 = over 1,000;
        •   Apr 22 = over 10,000; June 8 = over 100,000;
        •   Nov 11 = confirmed 347 thousand; deceased = 7 thousand
        •   Initially quicker surge than in India, but under control after the
            peak in June 2020 (Pakistan’s population is 16% of India’s)
• Government response: Smart lockdown with SOP (standard
  operating procedures); Schools reopened in Oct 2020
• Possible reasons for the contrast: Smaller economy than
  India; Housing conditions on average better, with hand
  washing common; SOP endorsed by Islamic leaders

Data sources: www.dawn.com, www.covid19india.org, www.coronatracker.com
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“GroMoTo”: Successful implementation of a traditional,
face-to-face survey in Pakistan
  • Project: To improve children’s poor health outcomes (stunting, wasting, underweight) in Pakistan
    and other South Asian countries, RCT was attempted to test a behavioral intervention, GroMoTo
    (growth monitoring tool, a poster in the house).
  • Study Site: 1200 households in a low-income community, Gulshan-e-Sikandarabad, Karachi,
    Pakistan, were randomly divided into three treatment arms.
  • Timeline:
      • July 2019: Baseline survey
      • August 2019 – February 2020: GroMoTo intervention for 6 months (6 monthly visits by community
         health workers, with randomized activity components)
       # Monthly anthropometric measurement data suggests (+) impact on health, especially among low-
      caste households and among boys
      • August 2020: Endline survey initially scheduled => Postponed due to COVID-19
      • October 2020: Rescheduled endline survey with attrition rate of 19% (11.5% due to relocation)

  • Factors responsible for the survey success:
      • Trust on the research team among project participants, nurtured through monthly interventions
      • Enhanced SOP => Reduced survey hours thanks to CAPI (computer-aided personal interview)
      • Multidisciplinary research team with a public health specialist and an NGO
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Study site in Gulshan-e-Sikandarabad,
Karachi, and GroMoTo chart

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“BribeWatch”: Successful implementation of an App-based
survey in India (joint research with Jun Goto and Yuko Mori)
• Project: To quantify how social-media news on corruption affect citizen’s social norms on bribery, a
  smartphone application “BribeWacth” App was developed for India, with randomized display of news/
  others’ comments. To measure social norms, in-the-App experiments of bribery games with the roles of
  private citizen (bribe giver), officials (bribe taker), and other member of the society (punisher) were
  provided with incentive points.
• Timeline:
    •   May 2020: Start of “BribeWatch”, with 5 initial users
    •   June 30, 2020: Number of users = 1,053. Stopped new hiring of users
    •   July 14, 2020: Last day of paying the incentive points
    •   August 4, 2020: End of sample period for the analysis (all of 1,053 users remained)
• Preliminary findings:
    • Users intensively accessed the App (22hrs/day, 5.1 comments/day, 4.1 news browsed/day)
    • Exposure to less critical news on corruption in India makes people more likely to send bribes, while exposure to
      more critical news on corruption in India makes people less likely to send bribes
    • Corruption news on other countries do not matter much, etc.

• Factors responsible for the survey success:
    • COVID-19 and lockdown => Users had more time to use smartphones; some sign of routine formation
    • Incentives in points, attractive news contents (collaboration with App developer)
    # The target population is English-speaking, smartphone users of India, a clear minority in the Indian society (avg
    age = 24 yrs, ratio of males = 68.2%, ratio of students = 12.5%,)
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“BribeWatch” App images

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Unsuccessful attempts: Resurvey interviews using mobile phones
• Industrial workers in Faridabad, Delhi Capital Region, India:
    • Questionnaire-based survey of 263 workers in October 2019 – February 2020, focusing on
      migration, labor contracts, and housing conditions
    • More than 95% of them are informal workers with no social security, although the majority of them
      are employed in formal-sector firms
    • Telephonic resurvey in April 2020 => Survey success rate about 20% (relocation or refusal)
• Rural residents in former tribal areas of Pakistan on the Afghanistan border:
    • Questionnaire-based survey of 2,798 residents in November 2018 – January 2019, focusing on
      identity, state legitimacy, and civil conflicts
    • More than 50% of them suffered from violence, resulting in higher risk aversion and present bias
    • Telephonic resurvey in May-June 2020 => Survey success rate about 15% (no connection or
      refusal)

    • Examples of successful and unsuccessful cases provide valuable lessons for designing innovative
      survey methodology with COVID-19
    • Mechanisms underlying success/failure help understanding the economic structure of the cases
      under research and the impact of COVID-19
    • Sharing such information is not only useful for development economists’ research design but also
      for policy discussions
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