Can protests cause political change, or are they merely symptoms of underlying shifts in policy preferences? We address this question by studying the Tea Party movement in the United States, which rose to prominence through coordinated rallies across the country on Tax Day, April 15, 2009. We exploit variation in rainfall on the day of these rallies as an exogenous source of variation in attendance. We show that good weather at this initial, coordinating event had significant consequences for the subsequent local strength of the movement, increased public support for Tea Party positions, and led to more Republican votes in the 2010 midterm elections. Policy making was also affected, as incumbents responded to large protests in their district by voting more conservatively in Congress. Our estimates suggest significant multiplier effects: an additional protester increased the number of Republican votes by a factor well above 1. Together our results show that protests can build political movements that ultimately affect policy making and that they do so by influencing political views rather than solely through the revelation of existing political preferences.

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This paper studies the effects of gender interactions on the supply of and demand for credit using data from a large Albanian lender. We document that first-time borrowers assigned to officers of the opposite sex are less likely to return for a second loan. The effect is larger when officers have little prior exposure to borrowers of the other gender and when they have more discretion to act on their gender beliefs, as proxied by financial market competition and branch size. We also find that first-time borrowers matched with opposite-sex officers pay higher interest rates and receive smaller and shorter-maturity loans, but do not experience higher arrears. Our results are consistent with the existence of a gender bias and learning effects that lead to the disappearance of the bias.

ObjectiveThe objective of the present study is to calculate the cost-effectiveness of early medical abortion performed by nurse-midwifes in comparison to physicians in a high resource setting where ultrasound dating is part of the protocol. Non-physician health care professionals have previously been shown to provide medical abortion as effectively and safely as physicians, but the cost-effectiveness of such task shifting remains to be established.Study designA cost effectiveness analysis was conducted based on data from a previously published randomized-controlled equivalence study including 1180 healthy women randomized to the standard procedure, early medical abortion provided by physicians, or the intervention, provision by nurse-midwifes. A 1.6% risk difference for efficacy defined as complete abortion without surgical interventions in favor of midwife provision was established which means that for every 100 procedures, the intervention treatment resulted in 1.6 fewer incomplete abortions needing surgical intervention than the standard treatment. The average direct and indirect costs and the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) were calculated. The study was conducted at a university hospital in Stockholm, Sweden.ResultsThe average direct costs per procedure were EUR 45 for the intervention compared to EUR 58.3 for the standard procedure. Both the cost and the efficacy of the intervention were superior to the standard treatment resulting in a negative ICER at EUR -831 based on direct costs and EUR -1769 considering total costs per surgical intervention avoided.ConclusionEarly medical abortion provided by nurse-midwives is more cost-effective than provision by physicians. This evidence provides clinicians and decision makers with an important tool that may influence policy and clinical practice and eventually increase numbers of abortion providers and reduce one barrier to women’s access to safe abortion.

SummaryI study the coexistence of formal and informal finance in underdeveloped credit markets. While weak institutions constrain formal banks, shallow pockets hamper informal lenders. In such economies, informal finance has two effects. By increasing the investment return it decreases borrowers' relative payoff following default, inducing banks to lend more liberally (disciplinary effect). By channeling bank capital it reduces banks' agency costs from lending directly to borrowers, limiting banks' extension of borrower credit (rent-extraction effect). Among other things, the model shows that informal interest rates are higher, borrower welfare lower, and informal finance more prevalent when the rent-extraction effect prevails, consistent with stylized facts in poor societies. Keywords July 2010Abstract I study the coexistence of formal and informal finance in underdeveloped credit markets. Formal banks have access to unlimited funds but are unable to control the use of credit. Informal lenders can prevent non-diligent behavior but often lack the needed capital. The model implies that formal and informal credit can be either complements or substitutes. The model also explains why weak legal institutions raise the prevalence of informal finance in some markets and reduce it in others, why financial market segmentation persists, and why informal interest rates can be highly variable within the same sub economy.JEL classification: O12; O16; O17; D40.