mihir080/Labor_Supply_in_Malawi

A replication of the study presented in the paper 'Kwacha gonna do? A study of labor elasticity in rural Malawi'. ## Replication of Labour Supply Elasticity in Malawi The data used for the project has been added to the repository. The citation to the paper for the project is as follows: Goldberg, J. (2016) “Kwacha Gonna Do? Experimental Evidence About Labor Supply In Rural Malawi.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 129–149. ### Link To The Paper The paper studies the wage elasticity of employment in the day labor market in rural Malawi. And attempts to answer the following empirical question. ***Empirical question: What is the probability of pursuing casual employment for a given wage?*** ***Policy question: Are public employment programs able to self-target and help mitigate the socioeconomic and gender disparity in developing agrarian countries?*** Understanding the impact of tailored public employment programs in developing agrarian countries is crucial for addressing socioeconomic and gender disparities. These programs offer stable income sources for a workforce largely engaged in self-employment or casual labor. Studying such experiments helps policymakers set wages that balance participation incentives with program costs. Recognizing that participants' decisions are influenced by immediate needs underscores the importance of timely payments. By incorporating these insights, policymakers can design more effective and inclusive interventions, promoting poverty reduction, gender equality, and overall socioeconomic development in a targeted manner. Furthermore, the previous literature shows a higher elasticity of labor for women than men in both developed and developing countries. However, the author, post the experiment has identified a characteristic of Malawi’s labor market, where we see equality in labor supply elasticity between men and women in the agricultural off-season. Developing agrarian countries with a defined wet and dry season have different gender and socioeconomic patterns than the previous literature and need to be f …