Development and History
Development and Economic History
Members of the Development and Economic History Research Group combine archival data, lab-in-the-field experiments, randomized controlled trials, text analysis, survey and secondary data along with theoretical tools to study issues in development and economic history. Faculty and students work in the field in South Asia, China and Africa as well as doing archival work in libraries across Europe and Asia.
Almost all faculty are members of CAGE in the economics department and some are also members of Warwick Interdisciplinary Centre for International Development (WICID). There is a regular weekly external seminar, two weekly internal workshops, and high quality research students. We also organise international conferences on campus, or in Venice.
Our activities
Development and Economic History Research Group Workshop/Seminar
Monday: 1.00-2.00pm
For faculty and PhD students at Warwick and other top-level academic institutions across the world. For a detailed scheduled of speakers please follow the link below.
Organisers: Bishnupriya Gupta and Claudia Rei
People
Academics
Academics associated with the Development and Economic History Research Group are:
Research Students
Events
Economic History Seminar - Shari Eli (Toronto)
Shari will present the paper titled
Do Youth Employment Programs Work? Evidence from the New Deal
Abstract: We study the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) – the first and largest youth training program in
the U.S. in operation between 1933 and 1942 – to provide the first comprehensive assessment of
the short- and long-term effects of means-tested youth employment programs. We use digitized
enrollee records from the CCC program in Colorado and New Mexico and matched these records
to the 1940 Census, WWII enlistment records, Social Security Administration records, and death
certificates. We find that enrollees who spent more time in CCC training grew taller, lived longer
lives and had higher lifetime earnings as a result of their participation in the program. We also
find modest increases in the educational attainment of the participants and increases in short term
geographic mobility. In contrast, we find no evidence that their labor force participation or wages
increased in the short run. To assess the internal and external validity of the results, we compare
our estimates to those derived from a randomized evaluation of Job Corps, the modern version of
the CCC, conducted in the 1990s. The RCT’s results show that our empirical strategy delivers
estimates that are in line with the experimental estimates. Overall, we find significant long-term
benefits in both longevity and earnings, suggesting short and medium-term evaluations
underestimate the returns of training programs, as do those that fail to consider effects on
longevity.
Organisers: Bishnupriya Gupta & Claudia Rei