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No Lean Season 2017-2019 Evaluation

Last registered on January 19, 2018

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
No Lean Season 2017 Evaluation
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0002685
Initial registration date
January 18, 2018

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
January 19, 2018, 11:24 AM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Region

Primary Investigator

Affiliation

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
University of California Davis
PI Affiliation
Evidence Action/Yale University
PI Affiliation
Yale University
PI Affiliation
London School of Economics

Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2017-06-01
End date
2018-05-31
Secondary IDs
Abstract
This is a randomized trial evaluating a seasonal migration incentivization program, No Lean Season, implemented in partnership by Evidence Action and RDRS. The program aims to mitigate seasonal hardship in rural agricultural areas but providing loans to rural laborer, incentivizing them to seek temporary employment in nearby cities. The evaluation aims to (a) update findings from previous research studies, and in particular, to investigate whether the program's positive impact will be replicable at scale; and (b) investigate the program’s spillover effects on workers at the migration destination who are not offered migration incentives. Welfare outcomes (expenditure, caloric intake, income, and food security) will be measured in a manner consistent with previous evaluations of this program.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Bryan, Gharad et al. 2018. "No Lean Season 2017 Evaluation." AEA RCT Registry. January 19. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.2685-1.0
Former Citation
Bryan, Gharad et al. 2018. "No Lean Season 2017 Evaluation." AEA RCT Registry. January 19. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/2685/history/25071
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Intervention Start Date
2017-06-01
Intervention End Date
2018-05-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Migration, food expenditure, non-food expenditure, caloric intake, income, food security
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
RDRS is organized administratively into branch offices. Each branch has a set of villages in its catchment area defined by the geographic road) distance to the branch. Branch catchment areas are non-overlapping so each village in the experiment can be allocated to a single branch.

Treatment, defined as the offer of a migration subsidy (incentivization), occurs at the village level. Every eligible household in a treated village is offered the migration subsidy. Our randomization strategy places villages into four categories:

1. Incentivized: Villages in which the migration subsidy offer is made.
2. Spillover: An untreated village geographically in the middle of a group of treated villages.
3. Spillover-control: An untreated village that belongs to a branch that includes treated villages, but is surrounded by other untreated villages.
4. Pure-control: An untreated village that belongs to a branch that has no treated villages.

To achieve this classification, we randomize at two levels. First, we randomly divide branches into treated and control. Branches assigned to be control contain only pure-control villages. Branches assigned to be treated contain the other three types of villages.

Within treated branches, our randomization strategy generates a treated sector (designated as incentivized), a single untreated village within the treated sector (designated as spillover), and an untreated sector (designated as spillover-control). In accordance with the RDRS workplan, the treated sector comprises one third of the villages in a treated branch. For assignment, we identify the centroid of the branch catchment area and then project each village onto a circle around the centroid. We randomly select one village on this circle and designate it as spillover. We then define the incentivized sector as the third of the circle surrounding the spillover village. In effect, we create a “pie slice” (designated as the incentivized sector), with one village in the middle left untreated as spillover.

This strategy stems from the fact that incentivization may generate spillovers onto nearby villages. Spillovers come from three main sources. First, we find in previous work that migrants generally travel in groups and migrants from geographically close sources tend to go to geographically similar destinations. Therefore, inducing migration in one village may lower the returns to migration from nearby villages through the destination labor market. Second, labor markets may be locally integrated. Out-migration from an incentivized village may lower labor supply, raise wages, and induce in-migration from nearby villages. Third, household risk sharing networks may extend beyond village boundaries. An incentivized household may share the benefits of migration with others in nearby villages.

Our randomization strategy creates multiple types of non-incentivized villages to evaluate the geographic extent of these spillovers. The spillover village in a treated branch is on average closest to incentivized villages and therefore most exposed to treatment spillovers. At the other extreme, we believe pure-control villages are sufficiently far from treated regions that their workers are no more exposed to treatment spillovers than workers from anywhere else in the country. Spillover-control villages falls between these extremes and allow us to estimate how quickly the spillovers dissipate with distance.

For evaluation, we plan to survey (record) households in only a subset of incentivized, spillover-control, and pure-control villages. Survey villages are selected as follows:

1. Incentivized: One randomly selected village in the incentivized sector per branch.
2. Spillover: The village in the middle of the incentivized sector, designated as spillover in each treated branch.
3. Spillover-control: The village diametrically opposite the spillover village on the circle projection.
4. Pure-control: One randomly selected village in each untreated branch.

The randomization design generates the four experimental categories while ensuring that the status of a village is uncorrelated with other geographic characteristics. In particular, treatment status is orthogonal to the geographic density of villages and their proximity to a branch’s boundary. The survey design preserves orthogonality between likelihood of being surveyed and geographic characteristic as well. Unfortunately,
in maintaining this orthogonality, we cannot guarantee that spillover villages are closer to the incentivized sector than spillover-control in every treated branch. We do not account for proximity to the centroid in randomization, meaning that a very central spillover-control village may be closer to the treated region than a peripheral spillover village. However, on average, spillover villages are closer to incentivized villages
than spillover-control villages. Similarly, an incentivized village in our sample is on average closer to the incentivized sector than a spillover-control village, but slightly father on average than a spillover village.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Randomization done in office by computer.
Randomization Unit
Two levels:
1. RDRS branch
2. Village
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
221 villages in 121 branches
Sample size: planned number of observations
5420 households
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
50 treated branches and 71 control branches: 3 villages (incentivized, spillover, and spillover-control villages) per treated branch and 1 pure-control village per control branch.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Yale University, Human Investigation Committee
IRB Approval Date
2018-01-03
IRB Approval Number
IRB Protocol ID 1010007571
Analysis Plan

Analysis Plan Documents

nls_pap.pdf

MD5: 8361292a90385b5fddcfdfd56d352561

SHA1: fa73171ea208716600599a519c2f0ae0c33dd89e

Uploaded At: January 18, 2018

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials