Ashagrie Demile Moges
Title: "Liquidity shock and bank lending: Evidence from a natural experiment in Ethiopia"
Abstract: his paper provides new evidence on how a liquidity shock induced by regulation affects banking lending behavior in a developing country, exploiting the mandatory regulatory requirement of bill purchase as a natural experiment. We find that the effect of the policy change on the bank's most liquid asset, cash on hand, is immediate, stronger, and persisted for quite some time for banks that are larger and more liquid. The effects of the shock, however, propagated to the bank's loan supply five months after the implementation of the regulation. The result is robust even after controlling for credit demand that may vary by borrowers' industry, region, and loan types for some banks relative to others. The study further shows that banks' response to the liquidity shock varies by borrowers’ industries suggesting that banks adjust their loan portfolio towards less risky loans.
Eugenie Rose Fontep, https://sites.google.com/site/fonteproseeinfo
Title: “Lasting effects of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) on education and labor market outcomes in Sierra Leone”
Abstract: The current study aims to assess the lasting impact of quarantine measures on school dropout and completion, languages literacy and labor force dynamics after the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone. By exploiting variation in the length of quarantine across districts, findings suggest that the quarantine measures implemented during Ebola have lasting negative impacts on education achievements and labor market outcomes of school age children nearly four years after the epidemic ended. Compared to the youngest birth cohort (children aged [10-15] after EVD outbreak in 2014) post-Ebola primary school completion is lower among the older birth cohort (children aged [16-21] in 2018) who lived in districts under quarantine. Results also show a decline in the labor market participation, the share of wage-earners, and the weekly working hours among the older age cohort. For the overall labor force, we observe a shift from high-paid jobs (wage earners) to low-paid ones (self-employed) in 2018. The impact is more pronounced among girls who experience teenage pregnancy and lived in districts who went under quarantine for at least three months. When the number of Ebola cases per 1000 individuals is used to proxy the EVD, findings suggest no lasting significant effect of Ebola on labor market outcomes. This means that the lockdown of districts might be the only channel through which Ebola has lasting impact on the labor market outcomes in Sierra Leone.
Halefom Yigzaw Nigus, https://sites.google.com/view/halefom-yigzaw-nigus/home
Title: "Leveraging Technology to Improve Youth Employment in Ethiopia"
Abstract: This study aims to investigate the impact of two labor market interventions on youth's job search behavior and employment outcomes. Specifically, using a randomized control trial (i) it aims to examine the impact of connecting job seekers to job vacancy information, with the aid of a job aggregator website, on their job search behavior and employment (ii) it will investigate the impact of helping job seekers signal their skills to prospective employers by providing a job application workshop and certifying their cognitive & non-cognitive skills that are hard to observe for employers on their job search behavior and employment. The intervention targets unemployed university graduates in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
