Browsing by Author "Depetris-Chauvin, Emilio"

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    (De facto) historical ethnic borders and land tenure in Sub-Saharan Africa
    (2024) Depetris-Chauvin, Emilio; Ozak, Omer
    We study the role of proximity to historical ethnic borders in determining individual land ownership in Sub-Saharan Africa. Following an instrumental variable strategy, we document that individuals have a lower likelihood of owning land near historical ethnic borders. In particular, the likelihood of owning land decreases by 15 percentage points, i.e., about 1/3 of the mean rate of landownership, for rural migrants who move from 57 km (90th percentile) to 2 km (10th percentile) from the border. This result aligns with the view that competition for land is stronger and property rights are weaker close to historical ethnic borders in Sub-Saharan Africa.
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    The origins of the division of labor in pre-industrial times
    (2020) Depetris-Chauvin, Emilio; Ozak, Omer
    This research explores the historical roots of the division of labor in pre-industrial societies. Exploiting a variety of identification strategies and a novel ethnic level dataset combining geocoded ethnographic, linguistic and genetic data, it shows that higher levels of intra-ethnic diversity were conducive to economic specialization in the pre-industrial era. The findings are robust to a host of geographical, institutional, cultural and historical confounders, and suggest that variation in intra-ethnic diversity is a key predictor of the division of labor in pre-industrial times.
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    When a strike strikes twice: Massive student mobilizations and teenage pregnancy in Chile
    (2024) Celhay, Pablo A.; Depetris-Chauvin, Emilio; Riquelme, Cristina
    This paper empirically studies the impact of massive and sudden school closures following the 2011 nationwide student strike in Chile on teenage pregnancy. We observe an average increase of 2.7% in teenage pregnancies in response to temporary high school shutdowns, equal to 1.9 additional pregnancies per lost school day. The effect diminishes after three quarters since the strike's onset. The effects are predominantly driven by first-time mothers aligned with high-school absenteeism periods and are unrelated to the typical seasonality of teenage fertility or pregnancies in other age groups. Additionally, we document that the strike had a larger disruptive role by affecting students' educational trajectories, evidenced by a persistent increase in dropout rates and a reduction in college admission test take-up for both female and male students.