Victor Hugo Orozco-Olvera

Senior Economist Development Impact (DIME), Development Economics

Victor Orozco is a Senior Economist with the Development Impact (DIME) department in the World Bank. His research focuses on mechanisms to promote behavior change at scale and includes impact evaluations in the areas of health, education, gender and environment. He founded and leads the World Bank’s research program on Mass Media and Entertainment-Education, which he runs in close collaboration with researchers and practitioners from governments, the World Bank, development partners and academic institutions. He holds a Master’s in Public Policy and Economics from Princeton University and a PhD in Social Intervention from Oxford University.

Entertainment, Education, and Attitudes Toward Domestic Violence

Abhijit Banerjee, Eliana La Ferrara, and Victor Orozco
We experimentally measure the effectiveness of the edu-tainment TV series MTV Shuga on domestic violence outcomes, a secondary theme of the studied season. We find that MTV Shuga induced an improvement in men’s attitudes toward women eight months later. We also find that attitudes toward GBV significantly improve for men and women who report occasionally thinking about the characters and who remember specific facts about them. These findings call for a deeper analysis of the links between attention, empathy and the policy impact of edu-tainment programs.
Alix-Garcia, Jennifer M., Katharine R. E. Sims, Victor H. Orozco-Olvera, Laura E. Costica, Jorge David Fernández Medina, Sofía Romo Monroy
Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that payments for environmental services increased land cover management activities by ～50%. Increases in paid activities did not crowd out unpaid contributions to land management or other prosocial work. Community social capital increased by ～8–9%, and household-level measures of trust were not affected by the program.
Moving from efficacy to effectiveness: Using behavioral economics to improve the impact of water, sanitation and hygiene interventions

Aidan Coville and Victor Orozco
This paper explores cognitive and behavioural constraints identified in the behavioural economics literature and how interventions have successfully accounted for these constraints in their design to increase demand for services and positive habit formation.