Tiago Freire

Abstract: Over the past decades the pattern of migration has changed significantly, with the increase of women migrants, in particular low skill women. These low skill women migrants often end up working in the domestic service sector, a close substitute for household work. The largest beneficiaries of from this trend as local high skill women, who respond to a decrease cost in domestic services by hiring maids and joining the labor force. We start by presenting a model were the assumption that women are more productive than men in household production is enough for the gender composition of migration to matter. In particular, when there are more low skill women, the price of domestic services decreases, and the labor supply of women increases, as opposed to a situation where there are only low skill men migrants. Furthermore, we improve on previous work by using weather shocks in rural areas and historical patterns of migration, to determine a migration shock by skill and gender to a given city. Next, we use this exogenous shock of migration to instrument for local labor wages and the price of domestic services. We nd that a 10% decrease in the wage of domestic workers, increases the labor participation of high skill women by 4%, and the total number of hours worked by 5%..

Abstract: Using survey data on fishermen and fishing villages in Aceh, Indonesia from 2005 and 2007, this paper examines the effect of the December 2004 tsunami and resulting massive aid effort on local public good provision, in particular on public labor inputs, but also public capital choices. Also analyzed are the roles of and changes in local social and political institutions and participation in political and social activities. Such an examination informs not only our understanding of the impacts of aid on villages, but also our understanding of how villages allocate resources to public goods. For public labor inputs, volunteerism is lower in villages with more aid projects, but that is offset if the dominant donor mitigates agency problems by doing its own implementation. Volunteerism is lower in villages with more “democratic” activity such as elections, although that effect is mitigated in villages with higher levels of social capital pre-tsunami. Evidence suggests volunteerism is lower not because of changes in types of leaders with village elections per se, but rather due to heightened internal divisions associated with elections. Correspondingly for public capital, villages with more democratic activity combined with more aid projects tend to emphasize garnering private aid (e.g., houses) at the expense of public aid (e.g., public buildings).

© 2009 Tiago Alexandre M. de Abreu Freire