Person:
Orozco-Olvera, Victor Hugo
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Public Policy,
Gender,
HIV AIDS,
Health,
Water
Degrees
Departments
Development Impact Evaluation unit, World Bank Development Research Group
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
January 31, 2023
Biography
Victor Orozco is an Economist with the Development Impact Evaluation (DIME) unit of the World Bank’s Development Research Group. His research focuses on mechanisms to promote behavior change and includes several impact evaluations in the areas of health, education, gender and environment. He recently launched the DIME research program on Mass Media and Entertainment-Education. Before joining DIME, Victor worked at the World Bank's Independent Evaluation Group and the Statistics Division of the Jalisco State Ministry of Economy (Mexico).He holds a Master’s in Public Policy and Economics from Princeton University and a PhD in Social Intervention and Evaluation from Oxford University.
Publication Search Results
1 - 4 of 4
-
Publication
Gender Differences in the Effects of Vocational Training : Constraints on Women and Drop-out Behavior
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-07)This paper provides experimental evidence on the effects of vocational and entrepreneurial training for Malawian youth, in an environment where access to schooling and formal sector employment is extremely low. It tracks a large fraction of program drop-outs -- a common phenomenon in the training evaluation literature -- and examines the determinants and consequences of dropping out and how it mediates the effects of such programs. The analysis finds that women make decisions in a more constrained environment, and their participation is affected by family obligations. Participation is more expensive for them, resulting in worse training experience. The training results in skills development, continued investment in human capital, and improved well-being, with more positive effects for men, but no improvements in labor market outcomes in the short run. -
Publication
Entertainment, Education, and Attitudes Toward Domestic Violence
(American Economic Association, 2019-05)We study attitudes towards domestic violence in a sample of young women and men exposed to the edutainment TV series MTV Shuga 3, which features a sub-plot on this theme, and in a sample that was not. We measure viewers' memory of the characters and identification with them. Eight months after the show, male viewers of Shuga report improved attitudes and are 21 percent less likely to justify violence than men in the control group. Attitudes improve among women and men who remember the characters associated with the violence plot, though not among those who identify with the characters. -
Publication
Can Environmental Cash Transfers Reduce Deforestation and Improve Social Outcomes? A Regression Discontinuity Analysis of Mexico’s National Program (2011-2014)
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-01)Environmental conditional cash transfers, or "payments for ecosystem services" are a centerpiece of global efforts to protect biodiversity, safeguard watersheds, and mitigate climate change by reducing forest loss. This paper evaluates the impacts of Mexico's national payments for ecosystem services program, which provides five years of payments to landowners in exchange for maintaining and managing natural land cover. Using a regression discontinuity design, the paper studies impacts on environmental, socioeconomic, and social capital outcomes for the 2011-14 program cohorts. The analysis finds that treated communities increased management activities to protect land cover, such as patrolling for illegal conversion or combatting soil erosion (by 48 percent compared to controls). The program reduced the loss of tree cover in areas at high risk of deforestation (by 29 percent compared to controls), with effects being larger for those that have been in the program the longest (38 percent compared to controls). These results are similar to estimates of impact for earlier program cohorts and continue to highlight the importance of targeting the program to areas of high risk of land cover loss to increase environmental effectiveness. The program continued to reach poor communities and households, but estimated impacts on household wealth indicators are small in magnitude and not statistically significant. These results indicate that community-level conditional payments did not harm household-level socioeconomic indicators, a key safeguard requirement of conservation policies of the United Nations Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation. The data also show that payments for ecosystem services significantly increased community social capital -- the institutions, attitudes, and values that govern human interactions -- (by 9 percent compared to controls), and these externally provided incentives did not crowd out household contributions to other community work. -
Publication
Paying Attention to Technology Innovations: Experimental Evidence from Renewable Energy Markets in Africa
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-05-15)This paper presents results from a randomized field experiment that examined the effects of mass media campaigns informing about a new technology on the adoption decisions of households in rural Senegal. While some communities were exposed to a campaign broadcasted on national radio that informed households about the general benefits and quality of solar lamps, other communities were exposed to the same radio campaign complemented with information that singled out the most suitable lamp type for all main technological applications. The authors exploit the difference between the two campaigns to examine the extent to which certain information characteristics matter for the uptake of the technological innovation. Results from our experiment show that information on optimal lamp types was required to increase adoption of solar lamps on the extensive margin (more people investing in lamps). However, the type-unspecific information increased adoption on the intensive margin (existing users investing in more lamps). These findings can be explained by a simple learning model of selective attention that the authors adjusted to the study setting, where households engage in home production and spend time as well as mental energy to learn about technological features that maximize returns.