Big Push for the Rural Economy

Last registered on September 23, 2019
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Big Push for the Rural Economy
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0004745
Initial registration date
September 23, 2019

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
September 23, 2019, 3:59 PM EDT

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

Locations

Country
Pakistan
Region
Punjab

Primary Investigator

Name
Asim Khwaja
Affiliation
Harvard Kennedy School
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Jacob Shapiro
PI Affiliation
Princeton University
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PI Name
Farooq Naseer
PI Affiliation
Lahore University of Management Sciences
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PI Name
Joshua Gill
PI Affiliation
Michigan State University
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Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2010-01-01
End date
2020-12-01
Keywords
Agriculture
Additional Keywords
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Abstract
The Big Push for the Rural Economy (BPRE) program provides vocational skills training in the agriculture and livestock sectors in four high-poverty districts of South Punjab. By infusing frontier skills and practices simultaneously at multiple nodes of the value chains, BPRE presents an opportunity to rigorously evaluate the impact of “big push” intervention on village-level GDP, productivity, household income and the extent of spillovers.

This pre-analysis plan has been filed prior to analyzing results of the 2019 end-line survey, which occurred after pre-treatment surveys in 2013 and 2016, the treatment and a post-treatment tracker in 2018.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Gill, Joshua et al. 2019. "Big Push for the Rural Economy." AEA RCT Registry. September 23. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.4745-1.0
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Intervention Start Date
2016-11-01
Intervention End Date
2018-08-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Crop production, milk production, income, knowledge of best practices, input use and practice, animal mortality
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
Based on a close examination of the agri-livestock value chains and demand for skills, the BPRE intervention delivered skills trainings in synchrony with the production cycle. The Punjab Skills Development Fund (PSDF) recruited private companies with rich experience in the local agriculture and diary sectors to design and implement the intervention. Agriculture skills trainings focused on wheat and cotton, the most common crops in South Punjab, while livestock skills trainings concentrated on milk production.

Agriculture and livestock skills trainings rolled out on staggered and ongoing basis between late 2016 and mid-2018. Wheat training began in December 2016 and ended in May 2017, followed immediately by cotton training that concluded in November 2017. In the second half of 2017, BPRE also hosted trainings on kitchen gardening and farm food processing. Livestock training occurred between April 2017 and March 2018. Each training went through similar stages: facility setup, mobilization and invitation, application and registration, enrollment, enrollment confirmation and training. Noticeably, during the mobilization stage, CERP conducted multiple visits and distributed encouragement vouchers to households that engaged in crop or milk production (directly by owning land/animals or indirectly by working for others) because we expect these households to benefit more from the treatment. We refer to these households as “engaged” and the rest as “non-engaged”.

To infuse skills and knowledge in other nodes of the value chains, the following individuals also received trainings or attended information sessions over the course of 2017 and 2018: agriculture extension agents, agro dealers, farm machinery mechanics, electricians, farm supervisors, animal health workers, village milk collectors (VMC) and artificial insemination technicians (AIT).

The BPRE sample consists of 90 villages in four high-poverty Punjab districts (Bahawalnagar, Bahawalpur, Lodhran and Muzaffargarh). We first manually drew 15 grids to ensure that each grid has a group of similarly sized and geographically contiguous villages. Stratifying on the grids, we randomly assigned 30 villages to be control villages (“C” - where no program is offered) and the remaining 60 villages to one of two treatment arms – T1 and T2.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Randomization done by a computer
Randomization Unit
We randomized treatment at village level.
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
90 villages
Sample size: planned number of observations
12,710 households
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
4,188 control; 4,300 training only; 4,222 training and market linkage
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Harvard University
IRB Approval Date
2011-05-09
IRB Approval Number
F20704-101
Analysis Plan

Analysis Plan Documents

Big Push for the Rural Economy: Pre-Analysis Plan - II

MD5: 7b0baad466ce9815457b36cebc058f33

SHA1: f1737b2e7f12908487ec8d980aa1d6e97dbd202c

Uploaded At: September 23, 2019

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