Berk Özler
Biographic Data
| ID | 221808 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Berk Özler |
| GIVEN NAMES | Berk |
| FAMILY NAME | Özler |
| SIGNATURE | ÖZLER B |
| AFFILIATIONS | World Bank |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9397-5955 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 29 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 126 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 29 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Therapy, mental health, and human capital accumulation among adolescent girls in Uganda
A New Distribution Sensitive Index for Measuring Welfare, Poverty, and Inequality
Simple welfare indices such as mean income are ubiquitous but not distribution sensitive. In contrast, existing distribution sensitive welfare indices are rarely used, often because they are difficult to explain and/or lack intuitive units. This paper proposes a simple new distribution sensitive welfare index with intuitive units: the average factor by which individual incomes must be multiplied to attain a given reference level of income. This n…
Asset transfers and anti-poverty programs
Children on the move
Children on the Move
This paper evaluates the impact of the Emergency Social Safety Net (ESSN) in Turkey, the largest cash transfer program for international refugees in the world. The paper provides prima facie evidence that the program quickly caused substantial changes in household size and composition, with a net movement of primarily school-age children from larger ineligible households to smaller eligible ones. A sharp decline in inequality is observed in the e…
Girl Empower – A gender transformative mentoring and cash transfer intervention to promote adolescent wellbeing
We evaluated Girl Empower – an intervention that aimed to equip adolescent girls with the skills to make healthy, strategic life choices and to stay safe from sexual abuse using a cluster-randomized controlled trial with three arms: control, Girl Empower (GE), and GE+. GE delivered a life skills curriculum to girls aged 13–14 in Liberia, facilitated by local female mentors. In the GE + variation, a cash incentive payment was offered to caregivers…
When the money runs out
Optimal Design of Experiments in the Presence of Interference
We formalize the optimal design of experiments when there is interference between units, i.e. an individual's outcome depends on the outcomes of others in her group. We focus on randomized saturation designs, two-stage experiments that first randomize treatment saturation of a group, then individual treatment assignment. We map the potential outcomes framework with partial interference to a regression model with clustered errors, calculate standa…
Combining pre-school teacher training with parenting education
The effects of cash transfers on adult labor market outcomes
ᅟThe basic economic model of labor supply has a very clear prediction of what we should expect when an adult receives an unexpected cash windfall: they should work less and earn less. This intuition underlies concerns that many types of cash transfers, ranging from government benefits to migrant remittances, will undermine work ethics and make recipients lazy. We discuss a range of additional channels to this simple labor-leisure trade-off that c…
Transactional Sex in Malawi
This chapter examines transactional sex as a distinctive feature of traditional “dating” in Malawi. It begins with a review of the existing literature on transactional sex in sub-Saharan Africa, with particular emphasis on the distinction between commercial sex work, informal sex work, and transactional sex. It then analyzes transactional sex among a sample of 13- to 22-year-old, initially never-married females in southern Malawi. It also conside…
Conditional Cash Transfers
Conditional, unconditional and everything in between
Inequality of Opportunity and Economic Growth
Income differences arise from many sources. While some kinds of inequality, caused by effort differences, might be associated with faster economic growth, other kinds, arising from unequal opportunities for investment, might be detrimental to economic progress. This study uses two new metadata sets, consisting of 118 household surveys and 134 Demographic and Health Surveys, to revisit the question of whether inequality is associated with economic…
Designing Experiments to Measure Spillover Effects
This paper formalizes the design of \n experiments intended specifically to study spillover \n effects. By first randomizing the intensity of treatment \n within clusters and then randomly assigning individual \n treatment conditional on this cluster-level intensity, a \n novel set of treatment effects can be identified. The paper \n develops a formal framework for consistent estimation of \n these effects, provides explicit expressions for power…
Quantifying Some of the Impacts of Economics Blogs
Economics blogs represent a significant change in the way research on development economics is discussed and disseminated, yet little is known about the impact of this new medium. Using surveys of development researchers and practitioners, along with experimental and nonexperimental techniques, we try to quantify some of the blogs’ effects. We find that links from blogs cause a striking increase in the number of abstract views and downloads of ec…
Relative Effectiveness of Conditional and Unconditional Cash Transfers for Schooling Outcomes in Developing Countries
Effect of a cash transfer programme for schooling on prevalence of HIV and herpes simplex type 2 in Malawi
Global Development Network, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, National Bureau of Economic Research Africa Project, World Bank's Research Support Budget, and several World Bank trust funds (Gender Action Plan, Knowledge for Change Program, and Spanish Impact Evaluation fund).
The Impact of Economics Blogs
There is a proliferation of economics blogs, with increasing numbers of economists attracting large numbers of readers, yet little is known about the impact of this new medium. Using a variety of experimental and non-experimental techniques, this study quantifies some of their effects. First, links from blogs cause a striking increase in the number of abstract views and downloads of economics papers. Second, blogging raises the profile of the blo…
Cash or Condition? Evidence from a Cash Transfer Experiment
This article assesses the role of conditionality in cash transfer programs using a unique experiment targeted at adolescent girls in Malawi. The program featured two distinct interventions: unconditional transfers (UCT arm) and transfers conditional on school attendance (CCT arm). Although there was a modest decline in the dropout rate in the UCT arm in comparison with the control group, it was only 43% as large as the impact in the CCT arm at th…
Examining the reliability of self-reported data on school participation
The short‐term impacts of a schooling conditional cash transfer program on the sexual behavior of young women
Recent evidence suggests that conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs for schooling are effective in raising school enrolment and attendance. However, there is also reason to believe that such programs can affect other outcomes, such as the sexual behavior of their young beneficiaries. Zomba Cash Transfer Program is a randomized ongoing CCT intervention targeting young women in Malawi that provides incentives (in the form of school fees and cash…
Reinterpreting between-group inequality
We evaluate observed inequality between population groups against a benchmark of the maximum between-group inequality attainable given the number and relative sizes of those groups under examination. Because our measure is normalized by these parameters, drawing comparisons across different settings is less problematic than with conventional inequality decompositions. Moreover, our measure can decline with finer sub-partitioning of population gro…
Not Separate, Not Equal
I examine the changes in poverty and inequality in South Africa during the first 5 years following the end of the apartheid era. First, I construct new, comparable consumption aggregates for 1995 and 2000. Second, using the “cost‐of basic‐needs” approach, I derive lower‐bound (R322, in South African rands) and upper‐bound (R593) poverty lines (per capita per month in 2000 prices, adjusted for provincial cost of living differences) for South Afric…
Poverty alleviation through geographic targeting
Poverty alleviation through geographic targeting
When the money runs out
Crime and Local Inequality in South Africa
The effects of cash transfers on adult labor market outcomes
ᅟThe basic economic model of labor supply has a very clear prediction of what we should expect when an adult receives an unexpected cash windfall: they should work less and earn less. This intuition underlies concerns that many types of cash transfers, ranging from government benefits to migrant remittances, will undermine work ethics and make recipients lazy. We discuss a range of additional channels to this simple labor-leisure trade-off that c…
Reinterpreting between-group inequality
We evaluate observed inequality between population groups against a benchmark of the maximum between-group inequality attainable given the number and relative sizes of those groups under examination. Because our measure is normalized by these parameters, drawing comparisons across different settings is less problematic than with conventional inequality decompositions. Moreover, our measure can decline with finer sub-partitioning of population gro…
Not Separate, Not Equal
I examine the changes in poverty and inequality in South Africa during the first 5 years following the end of the apartheid era. First, I construct new, comparable consumption aggregates for 1995 and 2000. Second, using the “cost‐of basic‐needs” approach, I derive lower‐bound (R322, in South African rands) and upper‐bound (R593) poverty lines (per capita per month in 2000 prices, adjusted for provincial cost of living differences) for South Afric…
Combining pre-school teacher training with parenting education
Children on the move
Examining the reliability of self-reported data on school participation
Therapy, mental health, and human capital accumulation among adolescent girls in Uganda
Asset transfers and anti-poverty programs
Crime and Local Inequality in South Africa
Poverty Alleviation through Geographic Targeting
"Using recently completed "poverty maps" for Cambodia, Ecuador, and Madagascar, the authors simulate the impact on poverty of transferring an exogenously given budget to geographically defined subgroups of the population according to their relative poverty status. They find large gains from targeting smaller administrative units, such as districts or villages. But these gains are still far from the poverty reduction that would be possible had the…
On the Unequal Inequality of Poor Communities
Important differences exist between communities with respect to their needs, capacities and circumstances. As central governments are not able to discern these differences fully, they seek to achieve their policy objectives by relying on decentralized mechanisms that utilize local information. However, household and individual characteristics within communities can also vary substantially. A growing theoretical literature suggests that inequality…
Re-Interpreting Sub-Group Inequality Decompositions
The authors propose a modification to the conventional approach of decomposing income inequality by population sub-groups. Specifically, they propose a measure that evaluates observed between-group inequality against a benchmark of maximum between-group inequality that can be attained when the number and relative sizes of groups under examination are fixed. The authors argue that such a modification can provide a complementary perspective on the …
Poverty alleviation through geographic targeting
Reinterpreting between-group inequality
We evaluate observed inequality between population groups against a benchmark of the maximum between-group inequality attainable given the number and relative sizes of those groups under examination. Because our measure is normalized by these parameters, drawing comparisons across different settings is less problematic than with conventional inequality decompositions. Moreover, our measure can decline with finer sub-partitioning of population gro…
Not Separate, Not Equal
I examine the changes in poverty and inequality in South Africa during the first 5 years following the end of the apartheid era. First, I construct new, comparable consumption aggregates for 1995 and 2000. Second, using the “cost‐of basic‐needs” approach, I derive lower‐bound (R322, in South African rands) and upper‐bound (R593) poverty lines (per capita per month in 2000 prices, adjusted for provincial cost of living differences) for South Afric…
The short‐term impacts of a schooling conditional cash transfer program on the sexual behavior of young women
Recent evidence suggests that conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs for schooling are effective in raising school enrolment and attendance. However, there is also reason to believe that such programs can affect other outcomes, such as the sexual behavior of their young beneficiaries. Zomba Cash Transfer Program is a randomized ongoing CCT intervention targeting young women in Malawi that provides incentives (in the form of school fees and cash…
The Impact of Economics Blogs
There is a proliferation of economics blogs, with increasing numbers of economists attracting large numbers of readers, yet little is known about the impact of this new medium. Using a variety of experimental and non-experimental techniques, this study quantifies some of their effects. First, links from blogs cause a striking increase in the number of abstract views and downloads of economics papers. Second, blogging raises the profile of the blo…
Cash or Condition? Evidence from a Cash Transfer Experiment
This article assesses the role of conditionality in cash transfer programs using a unique experiment targeted at adolescent girls in Malawi. The program featured two distinct interventions: unconditional transfers (UCT arm) and transfers conditional on school attendance (CCT arm). Although there was a modest decline in the dropout rate in the UCT arm in comparison with the control group, it was only 43% as large as the impact in the CCT arm at th…
Examining the reliability of self-reported data on school participation
Effect of a cash transfer programme for schooling on prevalence of HIV and herpes simplex type 2 in Malawi
Global Development Network, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, National Bureau of Economic Research Africa Project, World Bank's Research Support Budget, and several World Bank trust funds (Gender Action Plan, Knowledge for Change Program, and Spanish Impact Evaluation fund).
Relative Effectiveness of Conditional and Unconditional Cash Transfers for Schooling Outcomes in Developing Countries
Conditional, unconditional and everything in between
Inequality of Opportunity and Economic Growth
Income differences arise from many sources. While some kinds of inequality, caused by effort differences, might be associated with faster economic growth, other kinds, arising from unequal opportunities for investment, might be detrimental to economic progress. This study uses two new metadata sets, consisting of 118 household surveys and 134 Demographic and Health Surveys, to revisit the question of whether inequality is associated with economic…
Designing Experiments to Measure Spillover Effects
This paper formalizes the design of \n experiments intended specifically to study spillover \n effects. By first randomizing the intensity of treatment \n within clusters and then randomly assigning individual \n treatment conditional on this cluster-level intensity, a \n novel set of treatment effects can be identified. The paper \n develops a formal framework for consistent estimation of \n these effects, provides explicit expressions for power…
Quantifying Some of the Impacts of Economics Blogs
Economics blogs represent a significant change in the way research on development economics is discussed and disseminated, yet little is known about the impact of this new medium. Using surveys of development researchers and practitioners, along with experimental and nonexperimental techniques, we try to quantify some of the blogs’ effects. We find that links from blogs cause a striking increase in the number of abstract views and downloads of ec…
Conditional Cash Transfers
Transactional Sex in Malawi
This chapter examines transactional sex as a distinctive feature of traditional “dating” in Malawi. It begins with a review of the existing literature on transactional sex in sub-Saharan Africa, with particular emphasis on the distinction between commercial sex work, informal sex work, and transactional sex. It then analyzes transactional sex among a sample of 13- to 22-year-old, initially never-married females in southern Malawi. It also conside…
Optimal Design of Experiments in the Presence of Interference
We formalize the optimal design of experiments when there is interference between units, i.e. an individual's outcome depends on the outcomes of others in her group. We focus on randomized saturation designs, two-stage experiments that first randomize treatment saturation of a group, then individual treatment assignment. We map the potential outcomes framework with partial interference to a regression model with clustered errors, calculate standa…
Combining pre-school teacher training with parenting education
The effects of cash transfers on adult labor market outcomes
ᅟThe basic economic model of labor supply has a very clear prediction of what we should expect when an adult receives an unexpected cash windfall: they should work less and earn less. This intuition underlies concerns that many types of cash transfers, ranging from government benefits to migrant remittances, will undermine work ethics and make recipients lazy. We discuss a range of additional channels to this simple labor-leisure trade-off that c…
Girl Empower – A gender transformative mentoring and cash transfer intervention to promote adolescent wellbeing
We evaluated Girl Empower – an intervention that aimed to equip adolescent girls with the skills to make healthy, strategic life choices and to stay safe from sexual abuse using a cluster-randomized controlled trial with three arms: control, Girl Empower (GE), and GE+. GE delivered a life skills curriculum to girls aged 13–14 in Liberia, facilitated by local female mentors. In the GE + variation, a cash incentive payment was offered to caregivers…
When the money runs out
Children on the Move
This paper evaluates the impact of the Emergency Social Safety Net (ESSN) in Turkey, the largest cash transfer program for international refugees in the world. The paper provides prima facie evidence that the program quickly caused substantial changes in household size and composition, with a net movement of primarily school-age children from larger ineligible households to smaller eligible ones. A sharp decline in inequality is observed in the e…
Economics (19 works) · Poverty, Education, and Child Welfare (16 works) · Economic growth (13 works) · Cash (10 works) · Income, Poverty, and Inequality (10 works) · Medicine (10 works) · Population (10 works) · Poverty (10 works) · Psychology (10 works) · Sociology (10 works)