Eliana La Ferrara
Biographic Data
| ID | 994339 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Eliana La Ferrara |
| GIVEN NAMES | Eliana |
| FAMILY NAME | La Ferrara |
| SIGNATURE | LA FERRARA E |
| AFFILIATIONS | Bocconi University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 53 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Understanding Child Sex Trafficking by Use of Victim-Level Data
We use unique survey data from former victims of child sex trafficking and vulnerable girls in shelters in the Philippines to study the predictors of becoming a victim of trafficking and provide insights about this understudied group. Key predictors include household composition, especially the number of older sisters, and negative rainfall shocks in the year before leaving the home. We also provide descriptive evidence on expectations before lea…
Violence Against Women
Using a new dataset, we investigate violence against women in Africa. We focus on cultural factors arising from pre‐colonial customs, and show that these factors determined social norms about gender roles, family structures and intra‐family violence, which persisted even when the initial conditions change. A first set of ancestral characteristics relates to women's economic role: ethnic groups where women participated less in production (e.g. due…
Learning Spillovers in Conditional Welfare Programmes
We study spillovers in learning about the enforcement of Bolsa Familia, a programme conditioning benefits on children’s school attendance. Using original administrative data, we find that individuals’ compliance responds to penalties incurred by their classmates and by siblings’ classmates (in other grades/schools). As the severity of penalties increases with repeated noncompliance, the response is larger when peers are punished for ‘higher stage…
Conflict, Climate, and Cells
We conduct a disaggregated empirical analysis of civil conflict at the subnational level in Africa over 1997 to 2011 using a new gridded data set. We construct an original measure of agriculture-relevant weather shocks exploiting within-year variation in weather and in crop growing season and spatial variation in crop cover. Temporal and spatial spillovers in conflict are addressed through spatial econometric techniques. Negative shocks occurring…
Soap Operas and Fertility
We estimate the effect of television on fertility in Brazil, where soap operas portray small families. We exploit differences in the timing of entry into different markets of Globo, the main novela producer. Women living in areas covered by Globo have significantly lower fertility. The effect is strongest for women of lower socioeconomic status and in the central and late phases of fertility, consistent with stopping behavior. The result does not…
Self-Help Groups and Mutual Assistance
This article examines the incomes of individuals who have joined self-help groups in poor neighborhoods of Nairobi. Self-help groups are often advocated as a way of facilitating income pooling. We find that incomes are indeed more correlated among individuals in the same group than among individuals who belong to different groups. Using an original methodology, we test whether this correlation is due to self-selection of similar individuals into …
A Generalized Index of Fractionalization
This paper characterizes an index that is informationally richer than the commonly used ethno-linguistic fractionalization (ELF) index. Our measure of fractionalization takes as a primitive the individuals, as opposed to ethnic groups, and uses information on the similarities among them. Compared to existing indices, our measure does not require that individuals are pre-assigned to exogenously determined categories or groups. We provide an empiri…
The economic effects of violent conflict
This article studies the effects of conflict onset on asset markets applying the event study methodology. The authors consider a sample of 101 internal and inter-state conflicts during the period 1974-2004 and find that a sizeable fraction of them has had a significant impact on stock market indices, exchange rates, oil and commodity prices. This fraction is inconsistent with pure chance, that is, with the selected probability of type-I errors in…
Une perspective historique de la famille et des liens de parenté dans le développement
L’analyse des liens entre culture et développement a donné lieu à des positionnements fortement antagonistes, voire caricaturaux, qui méritent d’être décortiqués. Après une revue de littérature sur l’impact économique des structures familiales, l’article souligne un avantage comparatif des familles et des groupes de parenté comme substituts au marché. L’article se réfère surtout à l’assurance informelle et aux marchés de crédit. D’éventuelles ins…
Diamonds Are Forever, Wars Are Not
This paper studies the relationship between civil war and the value of firms in a poor, resource-abundant country using microeconomic data for Angola. We focus on diamond mining firms and conduct an event study on the sudden end of the conflict, marked by the death of the rebel movement leader in 2002. We find that the stock market perceived this event as “bad news” rather than “good news” for companies holding concessions in Angola, as their abn…
Descent rules and strategic transfers. Evidence from matrilineal groups in Ghana
Ethnic Diversity and Economic Performance
We survey and assess the literature on the positive and negative effects of ethnic diversity on economic policies and outcomes. Our focus is on communities of different size and organizational structure, such as countries, cities in developed countries, and villages and groups in developing countries. We also consider the endogenous formation of political jurisdictions and highlight several open issues in need of further research, in particular t…
Preferences for redistribution in the land of opportunities
Who trusts others
The Determinants of Trust
Both individual experiences and community characteristics influence how much people trust each other. Using data drawn from US localities we find that the strongest factors that reduce trust are: i) a recent history of traumatic experiences, even though the passage of time reduces this effect fairly rapidly; ii) belonging to a group that historically felt discriminated against, such as minorities (black in particular) and, to a lesser extent, wom…
Participation in Heterogeneous Communities
This paper studies both theoretically and empirically the determinants of group formation and of the degree of participation when the population is heterogeneous, both in terms of income and race or ethnicity. We are especially interested in whether and how much the degree of heterogeneity in communities influences the amount of participation in different types of groups. Using survey data on group membership and data on US localities, we find th…
Descent rules and strategic transfers. Evidence from matrilineal groups in Ghana
The economic effects of violent conflict
This article studies the effects of conflict onset on asset markets applying the event study methodology. The authors consider a sample of 101 internal and inter-state conflicts during the period 1974-2004 and find that a sizeable fraction of them has had a significant impact on stock market indices, exchange rates, oil and commodity prices. This fraction is inconsistent with pure chance, that is, with the selected probability of type-I errors in…
Violence Against Women
Using a new dataset, we investigate violence against women in Africa. We focus on cultural factors arising from pre‐colonial customs, and show that these factors determined social norms about gender roles, family structures and intra‐family violence, which persisted even when the initial conditions change. A first set of ancestral characteristics relates to women's economic role: ethnic groups where women participated less in production (e.g. due…
A Generalized Index of Fractionalization
This paper characterizes an index that is informationally richer than the commonly used ethno-linguistic fractionalization (ELF) index. Our measure of fractionalization takes as a primitive the individuals, as opposed to ethnic groups, and uses information on the similarities among them. Compared to existing indices, our measure does not require that individuals are pre-assigned to exogenously determined categories or groups. We provide an empiri…
Self-Help Groups and Mutual Assistance
This article examines the incomes of individuals who have joined self-help groups in poor neighborhoods of Nairobi. Self-help groups are often advocated as a way of facilitating income pooling. We find that incomes are indeed more correlated among individuals in the same group than among individuals who belong to different groups. Using an original methodology, we test whether this correlation is due to self-selection of similar individuals into …
Learning Spillovers in Conditional Welfare Programmes
We study spillovers in learning about the enforcement of Bolsa Familia, a programme conditioning benefits on children’s school attendance. Using original administrative data, we find that individuals’ compliance responds to penalties incurred by their classmates and by siblings’ classmates (in other grades/schools). As the severity of penalties increases with repeated noncompliance, the response is larger when peers are punished for ‘higher stage…
The Determinants of Trust
Both individual experiences and community characteristics influence how much people trust each other. Using data drawn from US localities we find that the strongest factors that reduce trust are: i) a recent history of traumatic experiences, even though the passage of time reduces this effect fairly rapidly; ii) belonging to a group that historically felt discriminated against, such as minorities (black in particular) and, to a lesser extent, wom…
Participation in Heterogeneous Communities
This paper studies both theoretically and empirically the determinants of group formation and of the degree of participation when the population is heterogeneous, both in terms of income and race or ethnicity. We are especially interested in whether and how much the degree of heterogeneity in communities influences the amount of participation in different types of groups. Using survey data on group membership and data on US localities, we find th…
Who trusts others
Ethnic Diversity and Economic Performance
We survey and assess the literature on the positive and negative effects of ethnic diversity on economic policies and outcomes. Our focus is on communities of different size and organizational structure, such as countries, cities in developed countries, and villages and groups in developing countries. We also consider the endogenous formation of political jurisdictions and highlight several open issues in need of further research, in particular t…
Preferences for redistribution in the land of opportunities
Descent rules and strategic transfers. Evidence from matrilineal groups in Ghana
Diamonds Are Forever, Wars Are Not
This paper studies the relationship between civil war and the value of firms in a poor, resource-abundant country using microeconomic data for Angola. We focus on diamond mining firms and conduct an event study on the sudden end of the conflict, marked by the death of the rebel movement leader in 2002. We find that the stock market perceived this event as “bad news” rather than “good news” for companies holding concessions in Angola, as their abn…
Une perspective historique de la famille et des liens de parenté dans le développement
L’analyse des liens entre culture et développement a donné lieu à des positionnements fortement antagonistes, voire caricaturaux, qui méritent d’être décortiqués. Après une revue de littérature sur l’impact économique des structures familiales, l’article souligne un avantage comparatif des familles et des groupes de parenté comme substituts au marché. L’article se réfère surtout à l’assurance informelle et aux marchés de crédit. D’éventuelles ins…
The economic effects of violent conflict
This article studies the effects of conflict onset on asset markets applying the event study methodology. The authors consider a sample of 101 internal and inter-state conflicts during the period 1974-2004 and find that a sizeable fraction of them has had a significant impact on stock market indices, exchange rates, oil and commodity prices. This fraction is inconsistent with pure chance, that is, with the selected probability of type-I errors in…
A Generalized Index of Fractionalization
This paper characterizes an index that is informationally richer than the commonly used ethno-linguistic fractionalization (ELF) index. Our measure of fractionalization takes as a primitive the individuals, as opposed to ethnic groups, and uses information on the similarities among them. Compared to existing indices, our measure does not require that individuals are pre-assigned to exogenously determined categories or groups. We provide an empiri…
Soap Operas and Fertility
We estimate the effect of television on fertility in Brazil, where soap operas portray small families. We exploit differences in the timing of entry into different markets of Globo, the main novela producer. Women living in areas covered by Globo have significantly lower fertility. The effect is strongest for women of lower socioeconomic status and in the central and late phases of fertility, consistent with stopping behavior. The result does not…
Self-Help Groups and Mutual Assistance
This article examines the incomes of individuals who have joined self-help groups in poor neighborhoods of Nairobi. Self-help groups are often advocated as a way of facilitating income pooling. We find that incomes are indeed more correlated among individuals in the same group than among individuals who belong to different groups. Using an original methodology, we test whether this correlation is due to self-selection of similar individuals into …
Conflict, Climate, and Cells
We conduct a disaggregated empirical analysis of civil conflict at the subnational level in Africa over 1997 to 2011 using a new gridded data set. We construct an original measure of agriculture-relevant weather shocks exploiting within-year variation in weather and in crop growing season and spatial variation in crop cover. Temporal and spatial spillovers in conflict are addressed through spatial econometric techniques. Negative shocks occurring…
Learning Spillovers in Conditional Welfare Programmes
We study spillovers in learning about the enforcement of Bolsa Familia, a programme conditioning benefits on children’s school attendance. Using original administrative data, we find that individuals’ compliance responds to penalties incurred by their classmates and by siblings’ classmates (in other grades/schools). As the severity of penalties increases with repeated noncompliance, the response is larger when peers are punished for ‘higher stage…
Violence Against Women
Using a new dataset, we investigate violence against women in Africa. We focus on cultural factors arising from pre‐colonial customs, and show that these factors determined social norms about gender roles, family structures and intra‐family violence, which persisted even when the initial conditions change. A first set of ancestral characteristics relates to women's economic role: ethnic groups where women participated less in production (e.g. due…
Understanding Child Sex Trafficking by Use of Victim-Level Data
We use unique survey data from former victims of child sex trafficking and vulnerable girls in shelters in the Philippines to study the predictors of becoming a victim of trafficking and provide insights about this understudied group. Key predictors include household composition, especially the number of older sisters, and negative rainfall shocks in the year before leaving the home. We also provide descriptive evidence on expectations before lea…
Economics (12 works) · Psychology (7 works) · Demographic economics (6 works) · Political science (6 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Ethnic group (5 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Culture, Economy, and Development Studies (4 works) · Geography (4 works) · Microfinance and Financial Inclusion (4 works)