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SUMMARY:CGHR Research Group: The Future in Mind: Aspirations and Forward-L
 ooking Behaviour in Rural Ethiopia - Kate Orkin\, Clare Hall. Discussant: 
 Dr Claudia Abreu Lopes\, CGHR
DTSTART:20141103T130000Z
DTEND:20141103T140000Z
UID:TALK53546@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:38366
DESCRIPTION:Poor people often do not make investments\, even when returns 
 are high. One possible explanation is that they have low aspirations and f
 orm mental models of their future opportunities which ignore some options 
 for investment. This paper reports on a field experiment to test this hypo
 thesis in rural Ethiopia. Individuals were randomly invited to watch docum
 entaries about people from similar communities who had succeeded in agricu
 lture or business\, without help from government or NGOs. A placebo group 
 watched an Ethiopian entertainment programme and a control group were simp
 ly surveyed. In addition\, the number of people invited was varied by vill
 age to assess the importance of peer effects in formation of aspirations. 
 Six months after screening\, aspirations had improved among treated indivi
 duals and did not change in the placebo or control groups.\nTreatment effe
 cts were larger for those with higher pre-treatment aspirations. We also f
 ind treatment effects on savings\, use of credit\, children's school enrol
 ment and spending on children's schooling\, suggesting that changes in asp
 irations can translat into changes in a range of forward-looking behaviour
 s. There are also treatment effects on measures from psychology and sociol
 ogy\, including locus of control\, which theory predicts should behave in 
 similar ways to aspirations. Most effects are robust to corrections for mu
 ltiple testing. Peer effects result in further impact on educational spend
 ing and induce more work and less leisure. The result that a one-hour docu
 mentary shown six months earlier induces actual behavioural change suggest
 s a challenging\, promising avenue for further research and poverty-relate
 d interventions.\n\nJoin the CGHR mailing list: \nhttp://bit.ly/1DHlhkS\n
LOCATION:Room 138\, Alison Richard Building\, Sidgwick Site\, 7 West Rd\, 
 CB3 9DT
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