Economics

As increasingly frequent extreme weather events disrupt lives, institutions are turning to early-warning systems and advance preparation to accelerate aid delivery. We present evidence from a randomized controlled trial in Bangladesh and Nepal testing whether providing cash within days of a flood leads to greater benefits than delivering the same assistance months later—or if it simply shifts the timing of benefits without improving overall welfare. Results suggest that timely cash assistance leads to overall gains in food security and psychosocial well-being. This evidence supports efforts to forecast crises and release disaster relief quickly.

This paper studies the ideology of government officials and coercive policymaking by examining the Office of Indian Affairs, an institution that held broad authority over the land, education, and legal governance of Indigenous populations in the United States. We digitize the detailed reports of the agency's bureaucrats and use computational tools to measure the strength of their support for assimilationist policies during the 19th and early 20th centuries. We document major shifts in ideological commitments that coincide with the entry—and eventual exit—of social reformers nominated for high-level agency positions by religious organizations. We find that ideology within the bureaucracy ..