This paper demonstrates a method for estimating treatment effects in spatial tests, utilizing a second control group to measure unexplained spatial phenomena. The technique is implemented on two innovations in Ugandan microfinance, and we measure the ways in which concurrent shocks such as an Ebola outbreak and a contentious presidential election altered outcomes differentially across regions. By correcting for this spatial heterogeneity, we measure the impact of the policies; a program that increased borrowers' control over the terms of their loans improved outcomes, while the results of a program that bundled health insurance into the lending contract were more mixed. Copyright by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In this paper, we examine net emigration from Mexico over the period 1960 to 2000. The data are consistent with labor supply shocks having made a substantial contribution to Mexican emigration, accounting for two-fifths of Mexican labor flows to the United States over the last two decades of the twentieth century. Net emigration rates by Mexican state birth year cohort display a strong positive correlation with the initial size of the Mexican cohort relative to the corresponding U.S. cohort. In states with long histories of emigration, the effects of cohort size on emigration are relatively strong, consistent with the existence of preexisting networks.

border is not a new phenomenon, with previous surges occurring in the 1920s and 1950s, persis tent mass migration did not take hold until late in the twentieth century. Among the factors contributing to emigration from Mexico are weak growth in the country's labor demand and strong growth in its labor sup ply. Mexico's economy stagnated in the 1980s and 1990s, such that per capita GDP in the early 2000s was unchanged from two decades before. During periods of wage decline in Mexico, emi gration from the country spiked. Perhaps less appreciated is that the 1980s were also a period of accelerated growth in Mexico's relative labor supply. With the US baby boom peaking in 1960, the number of US native born individuals coming of working age actually declined in the 1980s. Adding in the secular increase in US educational attain ment, the number of native born American workers with less than a high school education has dropped sharply. In Mexico, high levels of fertility in the 1960s and 1970s meant that two decades hence the country had large numbers of young adults entering the labor force. While educational attainment has also increased in

We report on a field experiment using several methods for collecting deposits made in formal bank accounts in rural areas in Sri Lanka. We find that only frequent, face-to-face collection increases aggregate household savings. Collection involving community lock boxes increases balances at the collecting bank, but not overall household savings. Only community box collection appears to have the possibility of being financially viable. The various collection methods allow us to unbundle the role of frequency, salience and habit formation in deposit decisions. We find that frequency and salience affect the number of transactions, but not the level of savings.

We study the consequences of poverty-alleviation programs for environmental degradation. We exploit the community-level eligibility discontinuity for a conditional cash transfer program in Mexico to identify the impacts of income increases on deforestation and use the program's initial randomized rollout to explore household responses. We find that additional income raises consumption of land-intensive goods and increases deforestation. The observed production response and deforestation increase are larger in communities with poor road infrastructure. This suggests that better access to markets disperses environmental harm and that the full effects of poverty alleviation on the environment can be observed only where poor infrastructure localizes them.

Abstract We introduce a new mobile money interface that permits Sri Lankans to deposit mobile airtime balances directly into a formal bank account. Randomizing access and prices, we find a small increase in savings deposits with the partner institution and formal banks more generally, but no change in overall savings. When the deposit transaction costs are completely removed, only 26% use the mobile deposit service and only 7% use it frequently. Our results imply that deposit transaction costs are not a significant barrier to increasing savings, limiting the potential gains of mobile-linked savings products for financial inclusion.