Open Collections

Brown, Gabriel

University of British Columbia

In Chapter 2, I study the long-run effects of missionary Bible translations on education and child health outcomes in Africa. I assemble data on the site, year and extent of Bible translations, the activity of missionaries from multiple missionary atlases and contemporary surveys. Areas with historical Bible translations show improved education especially among women even after controlling for a host of geographical, historical, and even missionary characteristics. Moreover, fertility is significantly lower as well as rates of stunting and underweight. To lend causal interpretation, I predict Bible translation using the proclivity of missionary societies to translate scripture throughout the world. Turning to mechanisms, I find that translation increased the presence of foreign missionaries, who then invest in infrastructure such as printing presses, high schools, and hospitals. I also find that Bible translations increased the use of indigenous languages as media of instruction in post-independence schools. In Chapter 3, we use a field experiment to test whether financial incentives can improve the quality of apprenticeship training. Trainers (firm owners) in the treatment group participated in a tournament incentive scheme where they received a payment based on their apprentices’ rank-order performance on a skills assessment. Trainers in the control group received a fixed payment based on their apprentices’ participation in the assessment. Performance on the assessment was higher in the treatment group. Two years later, treated apprentices scored 0.15 standard deviations higher on a low-stakes oral skills test and earned 24 percent more in total earnings, driven by higher self-employment profits. In Chapter 4, we investigate how individuals under authoritarian governments might come to disbelieve propaganda. We follow a sample of 604 Tanzanians through the COVID-19 pandemic. In June 2020, the president declared, without evidence, the virus conquered and required government approval on all COVID-19 related media content. Using an event study, we find that hospital visits increased disbelief in propaganda and adoption of health preserving behaviours. Further, we find that a warning from the Catholic church and information on the severity of COVID-19 in neighbouring countries increased health-preserving behaviours but only under a new government.

Text

2024-07-17

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/88653

Economics

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/