Ongoing Research
I am busy with ongoing research! My current working papers and works in progress are listed below.
Working Papers
“Double-Booked: Effects of Overlap between School and Farming Calendars on Education and Child Labor,” IFPRI Discussion Paper 2235, Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute, January 2024.
Synopsis: Overlap between school and farming calendars—pervasive in agrarian settings—constrains children’s time for both activities, potentially forcing trade-offs between schooling and child labor. Using shift-share estimation, I study an exogenous shift to overlap between school and crop calendars in Malawi, weighted and aggregated by communities’ pre-policy crop shares, matched to panel data on school-aged children. From pre- to post-policy, a five-day (i.e., one school-week) increase in overlap during peak farming periods decreases children’s school advancement by 0.14 grades—one lost grade for every seven children—while only resulting in 3.9 percent fewer children working on the household-farm. Policy simulations show how adapting the school calendar to minimize overlap with peak farming periods can be an effective strategy to increase school participation.
Links: World Bank Development Impact Blog, UM Article, IFPRI Discussion Paper version
“Would You Rather? Household Choice between Cash Transfers or an Economic Inclusion Program” (with Daniel Gilligan, Sikandra Kurdi, and Basma Yassa), MENA Working Paper 44, Washington, DC: IFPRI, November 2024.
Synopsis: We study households’ choice between continued cash transfers and a new economic inclusion program—two global prevalent social protection programs—offered by the Egyptian government. Lower-than-expected early adoption of the new program is correlated with differing perceptions on its design. We randomize official messaging to households describing the new program’s (i) consumption support duration and (ii) income-earning potential. Both treatments increase respondents’ likelihood of recommending the new program. A theoretical model estimated using households’ perceptions of program design predicts interest in the new program, and how it diminishes with increasing effort costs, asset loss probability, risk aversion and loss aversion.
Links: IFPRI Blog, MENA Working Paper version
Works in Progress
“Impact Evaluation of Egypt’s Forsa Graduation Program” (with Daniel Gilligan, Sikandra Kurdi, and Basma Yassa).
Status: Baseline and midline data collection complete. Analysis ongoing.
Policy outputs: Midline Report, Midline Policy Note
“Hiring Effective Health Promoters” (with Arlete Mahumane, James Riddell IV, Tanya Rosenblat, Dean Yang, Hang Yu, and Basit Zafar).
Status: Data collection ongoing.
Links: AEA Registry
“Integrating Socio-Economic and Environmental Interventions to Improve Well-Being in Vulnerable Communities” (with Chris Barrett, Nicolas Jouanard, Samba Mbaye, Gilles Riveau, Jason Rohr, Doudou Sow, and Faraz Usmani and others).
Status: Baseline complete. Midline data collection ongoing.
Working paper coming soon: “Do private incentives crowd out public good donations? Evidence from a lab-in-the-field experiment” (with Kira Lancker, Lakshmi Iyer, Faraz Usmani, Molly Doruska, Samba Mbaye, Amina Sylla, Binta Sow, Jason Rohr, and Christopher Barrett).
Links: AEA Registry
“World Vision PARES Evaluation on Phase-Out of School-Feeding in Mozambique” (with Naureen Karachiwalla and Jordan Kyle).
Status: Completed baseline data collection. Analysis ongoing.
“Decentralizing School Calendars in Madagascar” (with Almedina Musić).
Status: Proof-of-concept analysis using secondary data is ongoing.
Links: IFPRI Blog, Project Note
“Blood Taxes: The Development Effects of Military Conscription in Colonial French West Africa” (with Jon Denton-Schneider).
Status: Digitizing raw data collected at the Archives Nationales du Senegal.