Working Papers/Works in Progress
Strategic Grain Reserves and Deforestation (Draft available upon request)
Summary: A number of countries in southern Africa have established strategic reserves and/or marketing boards to influence grain market outcomes. One such board, the Food Reserve Agency (FRA) in Zambia, has become one of the largest purchasers of small-scale maize in the region. In this paper, I examine the impact of the FRA on deforestation and agricultural household planting decisions. Using recently developed difference-in-differences estimators, I find that the introduction of the FRA in a district significantly increases deforestation, as measured through satellite imagery. A household-level analysis further suggests that this increase in deforestation is correlated with a rise in the amount of land Zambian farmers are dedicating to maize cultivation, as well as an overall expansion in the area under cultivation. These findings contribute to the growing literature on the environmental impacts of development programs and suggest that while large-scale staple crop market interventions may improve household welfare, they may also come with unintended environmental costs.
Health as Structural Transformation: Evidence from Guinea Worm Disease Eradication in Ghana (with Jon Denton-Schneider)
Summary: We estimate the impact of the successful eradication of Guinea worm disease by the Carter Center in the early 1990s in Ghana. Guinea worm (dracunculiasis) was one of the first neglected tropical diseases to be largely eradicated. It affected a significant portion of West Africa and caused severe mobility restrictions during peak harvest periods. To assess the impacts of eradication, we use historical data on case rates by district from 1984 and 1989 to create a treatment variable identifying districts with high disease prevalence prior to eradication. This data is combined with census data, Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data, and satellite imagery to examine the effects on schooling, health, employment, and agricultural productivity. We employ newly developed difference-in-differences estimators to compare outcomes in treated and control districts before and after eradication. Our results show significant increases in schooling, employment, and agricultural productivity, along with notable reductions in disability rates. This analysis contributes to the growing literature on the interconnectedness of health and economic activity in Sub-Saharan Africa. Additionally, we recently received a grant from the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) program on Inequality over the Life Course to support this project.
Health Impacts of Household Trash Burning in Sub-Saharan Africa (with Monica Harber Carney)
Summary: In Sub-Saharan Africa, many households resort to burning trash due to inadequate access to alternative waste management solutions. The burning of waste, particularly plastics, releases toxic particles that can severely damage the respiratory system. Additionally, waste fires may produce ash containing hazardous substances such as mercury, lead, and arsenic. Using household panel data, we employ a household fixed effects strategy to exploit changes in access to sanitation services within a household over time in South Africa, in order to estimate the effects of waste management services on health outcomes. Our results show that access to sanitation services significantly reduces the incidence of respiratory illnesses in children and the number of missed school days. Moreover, we find that the reduction in respiratory illness is driven by community-level access to trash collection services, while the reduction in missed school days is driven by household-level access. These findings suggest that expanding sanitation services could be an important channel through which development programs improve children's health in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Adaptation to Climate Change: Evidence from Tillage (with Jayash Paudel)
Summary: Climate change is expected to have significant impacts on agricultural production in the United States, including an increased frequency and severity of extreme weather events. Reduced tillage agricultural methods have been shown to be more resilient to these shocks, as well as to offer other benefits, such as improved soil health and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. However, the adoption of these methods has remained relatively low in the US. This paper investigates the relationship between climate shocks and the adoption of reduced tillage practices, with the goal of understanding the factors that influence farmers' decisions to adopt these methods.
Conservation Farming in Zambia: Understanding the Impact of Property Rights on Adoption
Publications
Abman, Ryan, and Conor Carney. "Agricultural productivity and deforestation: Evidence from input subsidies and ethnic favoritism in Malawi." Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 103 (2020): 102342. (Link)
Abman, Ryan, and Conor Carney. "Land rights, agricultural productivity, and deforestation." Food Policy 94 (2020): 101841. (Link)
Carney, Conor, and Monica Harber Carney. "Impact of soil conservation adoption on intra‐household allocations in Zambia." Review of Development Economics 22, no. 4 (2018): 1390-1408. (Link)
Carney, Conor. “The Conservation Agriculture Project: Data Monitoring and Evaluation Report and Recommendations,” Internal Report, Conservation Farming Unit Zambia (2011).
Carney, Conor and Schap, David. "Recoverable Damages for Wrongful Death in the States: A Decennial View," Journal of Business Valuation and Economic Loss Analysis : Vol. 3: Iss. 1, Article 2 (2008). (Link)