NOVAFRICA
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NOVAFRICA is a knowledge center created by the Nova School of Business and Economics of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa in 2011. Its mission is to produce expertise that promotes business and economic development in Africa, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) defined by the United Nations. A particular focus is on Portuguese-speaking African countries, i.e., Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and Sao Tome and Principe.
In partnership with a number of public authorities, private companies and other local organizations in sub-Saharan Africa, NOVAFRICA has been pioneering social experimentation methodologies to measure the impact of policies aimed at reducing poverty, promoting employment, and providing equal opportunities for all.
As a result of this research, NOVAFRICA produces both academic publications of relevance to the development process, and publications that are more applied in nature – including publications that contribute to the design of public policies and to private sector development. The center also promotes local capacity building activities such as internships and training initiatives, and offers consulting services in its areas of expertise.
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- Socially responsible investing and multinationals’ environmental harmPublication . Gianinazzi, Virginia; Girard, Victoire; Lehlali, Mehdi; Porras Prado, Melissa; NOVA School of Business and Economics (NOVA SBE)This paper examines how Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) capital affects the environmental footprint of multinational enterprises. We exploit the inverse relationship between local pollution and high-frequency-and-precision satellite-based measurements of vegetation health, captured through the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). Combining NDVI with SRI ownership data for 52,806 facilities belonging to 911 multinationals in 124 countries between 2006 and 2020 allows us to leverage both cross-sectional and within-facility variation in SRI exposure over time. We find that, on average, greater SRI ownership is associated with improved vegetation health in surrounding areas, consistent with reductions in firm-induced environmental damage. Using mergers as a plausibly exogenous source of variation in SRI ownership corroborates these findings. However, exploiting the global structure of multinational production networks, we find a striking asymmetry: improvements near facilities located in OECD countries coincide with deterioration near the same firms’ facilities in non-OECD countries, consistent with pollution offshoring. Finally, we show that this asymmetry intensifies with more active investor oversight, suggesting that investor engagement alone is insufficient to mitigate environmental harm in the absence of strong domestic regulation or global coordinated monitoring.
- Keep it simplePublication . Batista, Cátia; Fafchamps, Marcel; Vicente, Pedro C; NOVA School of Business and Economics (NOVA SBE); Oxford University Press
- Is mobile money changing rural Africa?Publication . Batista, Cátia; Vicente, Pedro C.; NOVA School of Business and Economics (NOVA SBE)What is the economic impact of newly introducing mobile money in rural areas underserved by financial services? This study is the first to use a randomized controlled trial to answer this research question. Following a sample of rural communities in Southern Mozambique, our experimental results show that the availability of mobile money translated into clear adoption of these services, measured through administrative data on mobile money transactions. We find that mobile money improved consumption smoothing by treated households, i.e., they became less vulnerable to adverse weather and self-reported shocks. However, we also observe that mobile money led to reduced investment, especially in agriculture. We document increases in the number of migrants in a household and in the migrant remittances received by rural households particularly in presence of adverse shocks, while there are no clear effects on savings. We interpret these results as evidence that, by drastically reducing the transaction costs associated with migrant remittances and improving migration-based insurance possibilities, mobile money acted as a facilitator of migration from rural to urban areas.
- Understanding willingness to migrate illegallyPublication . Bah, Tijan L.; Batista, Cátia; NOVA School of Business and Economics (NOVA SBE)Illegal migration to Europe through the sea, though risky, remains one of the most popular migration options for many Sub-Saharan Africans. This study aims at improving our understanding of the determinants of the willingness to migrate illegally from West Africa to Europe. We implemented an incentivized lab-in-the field experiment in rural Gambia, the country with the highest rate of illegal migration to Europe in the region. Sampled male youths aged 15 to 25 were given hypothetical scenarios regarding the probability of dying en route to Europe, and of obtaining asylum or legal residence status after successful arrival. According to our data, potential migrants overestimate both the risk of dying en route to Europe, and the probability of obtaining legal residency status. The experimental results suggest that the willingness to migrate illegally is affected by information on the chances of dying en route and of obtaining a legal residence permit. Our estimates show that providing potential migrants with official numbers on the probability of obtaining a legal residence permit decreases their likelihood of migration by 2.88 percentage points (pp), while information on the risk of migrating increases their likelihood of migration by 2.29pp – although the official risk information provided may be regarded as a lower bound to actual mortality. Follow up data collected one year after the experiment show that the migration decisions reported in the lab experiment correlate well with actual migration decisions and intentions. Overall, our study indicates that the migration decisions of potential migrants are likely to actively respond to relevant information.
- Exchange rate pressure in AngolaPublication . Franco, Francesco; Delgado, Júlio António Rocha; Monteiro, Suzana Camacho; Silva, Pedro Castro eThe objective of this work is to develop an operational tool to analyze exchange rate pressure in the context of Angola. The Angolan economy exhibits a number of relevant characteristics: a closed financial account, a partially controlled current account, a highly dollarized economy and exports (oil) price determined in World markets. These features have a direct effect on the demand of foreign currency and motivate their inclusion in the specification of a model for Angola. The model provides the rational for a measure of an exchange market rate pressure (EMP) index that contains exports changes, imports changes, the foreign interest rate and inflation and the change in foreign reserves corrected for a measure dollarization. The empirical performance new measure is comparable (slightly better) to the performance of the EMP indexes obtained in Eichengreen Rose and Wyplosz (1994) and Klassen and Jager (2011).
- Assessing the role of social networks on migrant labor market outcomes: evidence from a representative immigrant surveyPublication . Batista, Cátia; Costa, Ana IsabelWhat role do social networks play in determining migrant labor market outcomes? We examine this question using data from a random sample of 1500 immigrants living in Ireland. We propose a theoretical model formally predicting that immigrants with more contacts have additional access to job offers, and are therefore better able to become employed and choose higher paid jobs. Our empirical analysis confirms these findings, while focusing more generally on the relationship between migrants’ social networks and a variety of labor market outcomes (namely wages, employment, occupational choice and job security), contrary to the literature. We find evidence that having one more contact in the network is associated with an increase of 11pp in the probability of being employed and with an increase of about 100 euros in the average salary. However, our data is not suggestive of a network size effect on occupational choice and job security. Our findings are robust to sample selection and other endogeneity concerns.
- Leadership paradoxes in Angolan organizations: Emic paradoxes, etic paradoxes, and paradox workPublication . Cunha, Miguel Pina e; Fortes, Armanda; Rodrigues, Filipa; Rego, ArménioThe study departs from two assumptions. First, it considers that organizations and their leadership are inherently paradoxical and that, in that sense, dealing with paradox is a necessary component of the leadership process. Second, it explores whether the paradoxes of leadership may manifest differently in different contexts. We explore the emergence of paradox in the leadership of Angolan organizations. Angola is an economy transitioning from a centrally-planned to a market mode, and this makes it a rich site for understanding the specificities of paradoxical processes in an under-researched, “rest of the world”, context. The findings of our inductive study led to the emergence of four interrelated paradoxes and highlight the importance of paradoxical work as a management requirement.
- Do Migrants Send Remittances as a Way of Self-Insurance?Publication . Batista, Catia; Umblijs, JanisHow do risk preferences affect migrant remittance behaviour? Examination of this relationship has only begun to be explored. Using a tailored representative survey of 1500 immigrants in the Greater Dublin Area, Ireland, we find a positive and significant relationship between risk aversion and migrant remittances. Risk-averse individuals are more likely to send remittances home and are, on average, likely to remit a higher amount, after controlling for a broad range of individual and group characteristics. The evidence we obtain is consistent with a “purchase of self-insurance” motive to remit in that we also find support for more remittances being sent by risk-averse immigrants who face higher wage risks and to individuals with more financial resources.
- Return Migration, Self-Selection and Entrepreneurship in MozambiquePublication . Batista, Catia; McIndoe-Calder, Tara; Vicente, PedroDoes return migration affect entrepreneurship? This question has important implications for the debate on the economic development effects of migration for origin countries. The existing literature has, however, not addressed how the estimation of the impact of return migration on entrepreneurship is affected by double unobservable migrant self-selection, both at the initial outward migration and at the final inward return migration stages. This paper uses a representative household survey conducted in Mozambique in order to address this research question. We exploit variation provided by displacement caused by civil war in Mozambique, as well as social unrest and other shocks in migrant destination countries. The results lend support to negative unobservable self-selection at both and each of the initial and return stages of migration, which results in an under-estimation of the effects of return migration on entrepreneurial outcomes when using a ‘naïve’ estimator not controlling for self-selection. Indeed, ‘naïve’ estimates point to a 13 pp increase in the probability of owning a business when there is a return migrant in the household relative to non-migrants only, whereas excluding the double effect of unobservable self-selection, this effect becomes significantly larger - between 24 pp and 29 pp, depending on the method of estimation and source of variation used.
- Migrant Remittances and Information Flows: Evidence from a Field Experiment*Publication . Batista, Cátia; Narciso, GaiaDo information flows matter for remittance behavior? We design and implement a randomized control trial to quantitatively assess the role of communication between migrants and their contacts abroad on the extent and value of remittance flows. In the experiment, a random sample of 1,500 migrants residing in Ireland was offered the possibility of contacting their networks outside the host country for free over a varying number of months. We find a sizable, positive impact of our intervention on the value of migrant remittances sent. Our results exclude that the remittance effect we identify is a simple substitution effect. Instead, our analysis points to this effect being a likely result of improved information via factors such as better migrant control over remittance use, enhanced trust in remittance channels due to experience sharing, or increased remittance recipients’ social pressure on migrants.