Maarten Voors
Biographic Data
| ID | 200275 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Maarten Voors |
| GIVEN NAMES | Maarten |
| FAMILY NAME | Voors |
| SIGNATURE | VOORS M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Wageningen University & Research |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5907-3253 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 334 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Anthropology & the Nobel Prize for Economics 2024
Conflict, Displacement and Overlapping Vulnerabilities: Understanding Risk Factors for Gender Based Violence Among Displaced Women in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo
Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been embroiled in decades-long conflict that has resulted in the forced displacement of millions of people and extremely high rates of gender-based violence (GBV). While much attention has understandably focused on conflict-related sexual violence, intimate partner violence (IPV) is in fact one of the most pervasive forms of GBV, including in conflict settings. This paper presents results of a large,…
Evaluating the impacts of a large-scale voluntary Redd+ project in Sierra Leone
Carbon offsets from the REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation) framework to protect forests are expected to see a 100-fold increase in market value by 2050. However, independent causal impact evaluations are scarce and only a few studies assess benefits to communities themselves, a core objective of REDD+. Following a pre-analysis plan, we use a before-after-control-intervention (BACI) framework to evaluate the impact of a …
Skill Versus Voice in Local Development
Where the state is weak, traditional authorities control the local provision of public goods. These leaders come from an older, less educated generation and often rule in an authoritarian and exclusionary fashion. This means the skills of community members may not be leveraged in policymaking. We experimentally evaluate two solutions to this problem in Sierra Leone: one encourages delegation to higher-skill individuals, and a second fosters broad…
Long-Run Effects of Aid: Forecasts and Evidence from Sierra Leone
We evaluate the long-run effects of a decentralised approach to economic development called community-driven development—a prominent strategy for delivering foreign aid—by revisiting a randomised community-driven development program in Sierra Leone 11 years after launch. We estimate large persistent gains in local public goods and market activity, and modest positive effects on institutions. There is suggestive evidence that community-driven deve…
Falling living standards during the Covid-19 crisis: Quantitative evidence from nine developing countries
Income, employment, and food security fell sharply across low- and middle-income countries during the COVID crisis.
Covid-19 vaccine acceptance and hesitancy in low- and middle-income countries
Widespread acceptance of COVID-19 vaccines is crucial for achieving sufficient immunization coverage to end the global pandemic, yet few studies have investigated COVID-19 vaccination attitudes in lower-income countries, where large-scale vaccination is just beginning. We analyze COVID-19 vaccine acceptance across 15 survey samples covering 10 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in Asia, Africa and South America, Russia (an upper-middle-inco…
Does microcredit increase aspirational hope? Evidence from a group lending scheme in Sierra Leone
Traditional Leaders and the 2014–2015 Ebola Epidemic
We assess the role of traditional authorities during an acute health crisis, the 2014–15 Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone. We exploit plausible exogenous variation in the political competition for local chieftaincy positions and find evidence that traditional leaders helped shape the course of the epidemic. Locations with more “powerful” chiefs experienced substantially fewer recorded Ebola cases. We argue that this result is consistent with a view…
Contributions of experimental approaches to development and poverty alleviation: Field experiments and humanitarian assistance
Citizen Attitudes Toward Traditional and State Authorities: Substitutes or Complements
Do citizens view state and traditional authorities as substitutes or complements? Past work has been divided on this question. Some scholars point to competition between attitudes toward these entities, suggesting substitution, whereas others highlight positive correlations, suggesting complementarity. Addressing this question, however, is difficult, as it requires assessing the effects of exogenous changes in the latent valuation of one authorit…
Trust in African Villages
This chapter studies the correlates of trust and trustworthiness for a population of African smallholder farmers. Using experimental and survey data from 1,289 subjects in 86 communities in Sierra Leone, the study finds that the number of tokens sent in a trust game is smaller than amounts typically sent in other contexts. Levels of trustworthiness, as measured by the number of tokens sent back in the trust game, are comparable. The chapter also …
Resources and Governance in Sierra Leone’s Civil War
We empirically investigate the role of natural resources, and governance in explaining variation in the intensity of conflict during the 1991–2002 civil war in Sierra Leone. As a proxy for governance quality we exploit exogenous variation in political competition at the level of the chieftaincy. As a proxy for resources we use data on the location of pre-war mining sites. Our main result is that neither governance nor resources robustly explains …
How to improve your relationship with your future self
This essay provides practical advice about how to do transparent and reproducible data analysis and writing. We note that doing research in this way today will not only improve the cumulation of knowledge within a discipline, but it will also improve the life of the researcher tomorrow. We organize the argument around a series of homilies that lead to concrete actions. (1) Data analysis is computer pro - gramming. (2) No data analyst is an island…
Conflict Exposure and Competitiveness: Experimental Evidence from the Football Field in Sierra Leone
We use data from a street football tournament and a series of lab-in-field experiments in postconflict Sierra Leone to examine the impact of exposure to conflict violence on competitive behavior. We find that football players who experienced more intense exposure to violence are more likely to get a foul card during a game. In the lab we find that these individuals are significantly less risk averse and more altruistic toward their in-group (team…
Conflict and the evolution of institutions: Unbundling institutions at the local level in Burundi
The impact of armed conflict may persist long after the end of war, and may include a lasting institutional legacy. We use a novel dataset from rural Burundi to examine the impact of local exposure to conflict on institutional quality, and try to 'unbundle' institutions by distinguishing between three dimensions of the institutional framework: property rights security, local political institutions, and social capital. We find that conflict exposu…
Who believes in witches? Institutional flux in Sierra Leone
Witchcraft has been documented across the globe. The widespread occurrence of such beliefs in modern Africa affects politics, economic development, and poverty alleviation. Anthropologists have analysed the semiotics of African witchcraft, but there is less information on distributional issues. An important question is which communities are most affected, and why? Using data from a survey of 182 villages and 2,443 household heads in the Gola Fore…
Violent Conflict and Behavior: A Field Experiment in Burundi
We use a series of field experiments in rural Burundi to examine the impact of exposure to conflict on social, risk, and time preferences. We find that conflict affects behavior: individuals exposed to violence display more altruistic behavior towards their neighbors, are more risk-seeking, and have higher discount rates. Large adverse shocks can thus alter savings and investments decisions, and potentially have long-run consequences-even if the …
Peasant grievance and insurgency in Sierra Leone: Judicial serfdom as a driver of conflict
Was the civil war in Sierra Leone (1991–2002) fought for diamonds, or was it a peasant insurgency motivated by agrarian grievances? The evidence on both sides is less than conclusive. This article scrutinizes the peasant insurgency argument via a more rigorous methodology. Hypotheses concerning intra-peasant tensions over marriage and farm labour are derived from an examination of the anthropological literature. These are tested using econometric…
Violent Conflict and Behavior: A Field Experiment in Burundi
We use a series of field experiments in rural Burundi to examine the impact of exposure to conflict on social, risk, and time preferences. We find that conflict affects behavior: individuals exposed to violence display more altruistic behavior towards their neighbors, are more risk-seeking, and have higher discount rates. Large adverse shocks can thus alter savings and investments decisions, and potentially have long-run consequences-even if the …
Citizen Attitudes Toward Traditional and State Authorities: Substitutes or Complements
Do citizens view state and traditional authorities as substitutes or complements? Past work has been divided on this question. Some scholars point to competition between attitudes toward these entities, suggesting substitution, whereas others highlight positive correlations, suggesting complementarity. Addressing this question, however, is difficult, as it requires assessing the effects of exogenous changes in the latent valuation of one authorit…
Conflict and the evolution of institutions: Unbundling institutions at the local level in Burundi
The impact of armed conflict may persist long after the end of war, and may include a lasting institutional legacy. We use a novel dataset from rural Burundi to examine the impact of local exposure to conflict on institutional quality, and try to 'unbundle' institutions by distinguishing between three dimensions of the institutional framework: property rights security, local political institutions, and social capital. We find that conflict exposu…
Peasant grievance and insurgency in Sierra Leone: Judicial serfdom as a driver of conflict
Was the civil war in Sierra Leone (1991–2002) fought for diamonds, or was it a peasant insurgency motivated by agrarian grievances? The evidence on both sides is less than conclusive. This article scrutinizes the peasant insurgency argument via a more rigorous methodology. Hypotheses concerning intra-peasant tensions over marriage and farm labour are derived from an examination of the anthropological literature. These are tested using econometric…
Conflict Exposure and Competitiveness: Experimental Evidence from the Football Field in Sierra Leone
We use data from a street football tournament and a series of lab-in-field experiments in postconflict Sierra Leone to examine the impact of exposure to conflict violence on competitive behavior. We find that football players who experienced more intense exposure to violence are more likely to get a foul card during a game. In the lab we find that these individuals are significantly less risk averse and more altruistic toward their in-group (team…
Traditional Leaders and the 2014–2015 Ebola Epidemic
We assess the role of traditional authorities during an acute health crisis, the 2014–15 Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone. We exploit plausible exogenous variation in the political competition for local chieftaincy positions and find evidence that traditional leaders helped shape the course of the epidemic. Locations with more “powerful” chiefs experienced substantially fewer recorded Ebola cases. We argue that this result is consistent with a view…
Who believes in witches? Institutional flux in Sierra Leone
Witchcraft has been documented across the globe. The widespread occurrence of such beliefs in modern Africa affects politics, economic development, and poverty alleviation. Anthropologists have analysed the semiotics of African witchcraft, but there is less information on distributional issues. An important question is which communities are most affected, and why? Using data from a survey of 182 villages and 2,443 household heads in the Gola Fore…
Long-Run Effects of Aid: Forecasts and Evidence from Sierra Leone
We evaluate the long-run effects of a decentralised approach to economic development called community-driven development—a prominent strategy for delivering foreign aid—by revisiting a randomised community-driven development program in Sierra Leone 11 years after launch. We estimate large persistent gains in local public goods and market activity, and modest positive effects on institutions. There is suggestive evidence that community-driven deve…
Does microcredit increase aspirational hope? Evidence from a group lending scheme in Sierra Leone
Evaluating the impacts of a large-scale voluntary Redd+ project in Sierra Leone
Carbon offsets from the REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation) framework to protect forests are expected to see a 100-fold increase in market value by 2050. However, independent causal impact evaluations are scarce and only a few studies assess benefits to communities themselves, a core objective of REDD+. Following a pre-analysis plan, we use a before-after-control-intervention (BACI) framework to evaluate the impact of a …
Contributions of experimental approaches to development and poverty alleviation: Field experiments and humanitarian assistance
How to improve your relationship with your future self
This essay provides practical advice about how to do transparent and reproducible data analysis and writing. We note that doing research in this way today will not only improve the cumulation of knowledge within a discipline, but it will also improve the life of the researcher tomorrow. We organize the argument around a series of homilies that lead to concrete actions. (1) Data analysis is computer pro - gramming. (2) No data analyst is an island…
Peasant grievance and insurgency in Sierra Leone: Judicial serfdom as a driver of conflict
Was the civil war in Sierra Leone (1991–2002) fought for diamonds, or was it a peasant insurgency motivated by agrarian grievances? The evidence on both sides is less than conclusive. This article scrutinizes the peasant insurgency argument via a more rigorous methodology. Hypotheses concerning intra-peasant tensions over marriage and farm labour are derived from an examination of the anthropological literature. These are tested using econometric…
Violent Conflict and Behavior: A Field Experiment in Burundi
We use a series of field experiments in rural Burundi to examine the impact of exposure to conflict on social, risk, and time preferences. We find that conflict affects behavior: individuals exposed to violence display more altruistic behavior towards their neighbors, are more risk-seeking, and have higher discount rates. Large adverse shocks can thus alter savings and investments decisions, and potentially have long-run consequences-even if the …
Who believes in witches? Institutional flux in Sierra Leone
Witchcraft has been documented across the globe. The widespread occurrence of such beliefs in modern Africa affects politics, economic development, and poverty alleviation. Anthropologists have analysed the semiotics of African witchcraft, but there is less information on distributional issues. An important question is which communities are most affected, and why? Using data from a survey of 182 villages and 2,443 household heads in the Gola Fore…
Conflict and the evolution of institutions: Unbundling institutions at the local level in Burundi
The impact of armed conflict may persist long after the end of war, and may include a lasting institutional legacy. We use a novel dataset from rural Burundi to examine the impact of local exposure to conflict on institutional quality, and try to 'unbundle' institutions by distinguishing between three dimensions of the institutional framework: property rights security, local political institutions, and social capital. We find that conflict exposu…
How to improve your relationship with your future self
This essay provides practical advice about how to do transparent and reproducible data analysis and writing. We note that doing research in this way today will not only improve the cumulation of knowledge within a discipline, but it will also improve the life of the researcher tomorrow. We organize the argument around a series of homilies that lead to concrete actions. (1) Data analysis is computer pro - gramming. (2) No data analyst is an island…
Conflict Exposure and Competitiveness: Experimental Evidence from the Football Field in Sierra Leone
We use data from a street football tournament and a series of lab-in-field experiments in postconflict Sierra Leone to examine the impact of exposure to conflict violence on competitive behavior. We find that football players who experienced more intense exposure to violence are more likely to get a foul card during a game. In the lab we find that these individuals are significantly less risk averse and more altruistic toward their in-group (team…
Trust in African Villages
This chapter studies the correlates of trust and trustworthiness for a population of African smallholder farmers. Using experimental and survey data from 1,289 subjects in 86 communities in Sierra Leone, the study finds that the number of tokens sent in a trust game is smaller than amounts typically sent in other contexts. Levels of trustworthiness, as measured by the number of tokens sent back in the trust game, are comparable. The chapter also …
Resources and Governance in Sierra Leone’s Civil War
We empirically investigate the role of natural resources, and governance in explaining variation in the intensity of conflict during the 1991–2002 civil war in Sierra Leone. As a proxy for governance quality we exploit exogenous variation in political competition at the level of the chieftaincy. As a proxy for resources we use data on the location of pre-war mining sites. Our main result is that neither governance nor resources robustly explains …
Contributions of experimental approaches to development and poverty alleviation: Field experiments and humanitarian assistance
Citizen Attitudes Toward Traditional and State Authorities: Substitutes or Complements
Do citizens view state and traditional authorities as substitutes or complements? Past work has been divided on this question. Some scholars point to competition between attitudes toward these entities, suggesting substitution, whereas others highlight positive correlations, suggesting complementarity. Addressing this question, however, is difficult, as it requires assessing the effects of exogenous changes in the latent valuation of one authorit…
Does microcredit increase aspirational hope? Evidence from a group lending scheme in Sierra Leone
Traditional Leaders and the 2014–2015 Ebola Epidemic
We assess the role of traditional authorities during an acute health crisis, the 2014–15 Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone. We exploit plausible exogenous variation in the political competition for local chieftaincy positions and find evidence that traditional leaders helped shape the course of the epidemic. Locations with more “powerful” chiefs experienced substantially fewer recorded Ebola cases. We argue that this result is consistent with a view…
Falling living standards during the Covid-19 crisis: Quantitative evidence from nine developing countries
Income, employment, and food security fell sharply across low- and middle-income countries during the COVID crisis.
Covid-19 vaccine acceptance and hesitancy in low- and middle-income countries
Widespread acceptance of COVID-19 vaccines is crucial for achieving sufficient immunization coverage to end the global pandemic, yet few studies have investigated COVID-19 vaccination attitudes in lower-income countries, where large-scale vaccination is just beginning. We analyze COVID-19 vaccine acceptance across 15 survey samples covering 10 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in Asia, Africa and South America, Russia (an upper-middle-inco…
Skill Versus Voice in Local Development
Where the state is weak, traditional authorities control the local provision of public goods. These leaders come from an older, less educated generation and often rule in an authoritarian and exclusionary fashion. This means the skills of community members may not be leveraged in policymaking. We experimentally evaluate two solutions to this problem in Sierra Leone: one encourages delegation to higher-skill individuals, and a second fosters broad…
Long-Run Effects of Aid: Forecasts and Evidence from Sierra Leone
We evaluate the long-run effects of a decentralised approach to economic development called community-driven development—a prominent strategy for delivering foreign aid—by revisiting a randomised community-driven development program in Sierra Leone 11 years after launch. We estimate large persistent gains in local public goods and market activity, and modest positive effects on institutions. There is suggestive evidence that community-driven deve…
Conflict, Displacement and Overlapping Vulnerabilities: Understanding Risk Factors for Gender Based Violence Among Displaced Women in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo
Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been embroiled in decades-long conflict that has resulted in the forced displacement of millions of people and extremely high rates of gender-based violence (GBV). While much attention has understandably focused on conflict-related sexual violence, intimate partner violence (IPV) is in fact one of the most pervasive forms of GBV, including in conflict settings. This paper presents results of a large,…
Evaluating the impacts of a large-scale voluntary Redd+ project in Sierra Leone
Carbon offsets from the REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation) framework to protect forests are expected to see a 100-fold increase in market value by 2050. However, independent causal impact evaluations are scarce and only a few studies assess benefits to communities themselves, a core objective of REDD+. Following a pre-analysis plan, we use a before-after-control-intervention (BACI) framework to evaluate the impact of a …
Anthropology & the Nobel Prize for Economics 2024
Economics (13 works) · Political science (11 works) · Sierra leone (9 works) · Culture, Economy, and Development Studies (8 works) · Development economics (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Politics (7 works) · Economic growth (6 works) · Agricultural risk and resilience (5 works) · Business (4 works)