Empirical essays on education and social cohesion in fragile settings.

Summary This dissertation consists of three essays on education and social cohesion in developing countries, specifically Egypt and Indonesia. The first chapter analyzes household behaviors in Egypt, including investment for education and health, following the 2011 revolution, which we interpret here as an unstable environment. To study the effects of the outbreak of the Egyptian revolution, we combine the representative household survey with a unique statistical record of all people arrested, injured, or killed during political protests in the country. Our results show that households significantly adapt their behavior in an unstable political context. The second chapter analyzes the impact of earthquakes on education and health measures for children in Indonesia. We find that children's education and health outcomes are negatively affected when a household experiences an earthquake, with some heterogeneity by child age and gender. The third chapter analyzes the effects of ethnic favoritism in the allocation of government transfers to households following a natural disaster. The results suggest that although all households in a village are affected, the households most likely to receive government transfers are those that share the same ethnicity as the community leader. My findings also show that in villages where ethnic favoritism is prevalent, trust between ethnic groups decreased between 2007 and 2014.