Research

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Development Economics, Labor, Education, Apprenticeships, Impact Evaluation, Refugee Economics


PUBLICATIONS AND RESEARCH UNDER REVIEW

(i) Cognitive Achievement Production in Madagascar: a Value-added Model Approach 

Published in Education Economics (2021), with David E. Sahn (available here)


In this paper, we measure the contribution of an additional year of schooling on skills acquisition for a cohort of young adults in Madagascar. We estimate a value-added model of learning achievement that includes test scores measured at adolescence, thereby reducing the potential for omitted variable bias. We demonstrate that schooling increases cognitive skills among young adults. The value-added of a year of schooling during adolescence is 0.15 to 0.26 standard deviation. Our results show the skills gap widens in adolescence, as students with higher cognitive skills complete more grades, accumulating more skills in their transition to adulthood.

Africa Economic Brief (AfDB)



(ii) Making Ends Meet in Refugee Camps: Food Distribution Cycles, Consumption and Undernutrition (with Marie-Charlotte Buisson) Revised and resubmitted at Food Policy. 


Years after the initial settlement, food aid remains an essential component of humanitarian assistance for protracted refugees in managed camps. From data collected among refugee households in three camps in southern Chad and an exogenous variation of time between the latest food distribution and households’ interviews, we draw the time path of household’s consumption. Consistent with the literature on intertemporal choices in high-income countries, refugee households experience an average decline of 1.1 to 1.5 percent per day in their daily caloric intake between distributions. The short-term nutritional status of children under five also responds to the distance from food aid distribution and confirms the existence of food distribution cycles. Our results suggest that households don’t smooth consumption during the interval of time between two distributions, and face regular and frequent cycles of food shortage resulting in detrimental consequences on children’s health.



RESEARCH IN PROGRESS

(iii) Improving Skills Development and Employability through Traditional Apprenticeships: Evidence from Senegal (with John Giles, Karine Marazyan and Mame Mor Anta Syll)

Pre-analysis plan filed with the AEA Registry : AEARCTR-0013252.


This research project aims at evaluating the impact of the PEJA (“Improving Youth Employability through Informal Apprenticeships”), a project that seeks to facilitate skills transfer to apprentices by providing equipment grants to master craftspersons, along with providing additional training (technical skills, business skills and socio-emotional skills) to craftspersons and apprentices alike, and then introducing additional incentives for apprentices to complete formal certification of their skills. To do so, we are following a cohort of 6176 apprentices working in 2158 workshops. After completion of the baseline survey in January 2021, workshops were drawn from five trades (tailoring, metalwork, woodwork, mechanics and hairdressing) and randomized into two treatment groups of 763 and 700 workshops, and 695 control workshops. Two follow-up surveys are planned for early late 2023. 



(iv) Do Apprenticeships Provide Skills Beyond the Master’s Trade ? Evidence on Apprenticeships, Skills and the Transition to Work in Senegal (with John Giles and David E. Sahn) 


Apprenticeship training is a second chance to acquire skills for the youth who lacks of the general knowledge formal schooling provides. This informal form of training is based on the transmission of a sector specific knowledge from a master craftsman to an apprentice. We take advantage of a panel dataset designed to study the transition to adulthood in Senegal to explore the role of the Senegalese traditional apprenticeship training in the transition to work. We provide evidence that, while selection into apprenticeship is mostly driven by the lack of formal schooling and serious delays in educational progression by teenage years, apprenticeship experience is associated with positive returns on the labor market. Former apprentices are more likely to work outside of agriculture, especially the young men in the lower end of the skills distribution. Moreover, conditional on education, apprentice experience is associated with higher earnings. These positive returns cannot be attributed to the contribution of apprenticeship on the acquisition of general knowledge. We use value-added model methodology to estimate a production function of cognitive skills at teenage years. Apprenticeship experience does not contribute to the development of numeracy or literacy skills.  



(v) How Well Do Migrant Entrepreneurs Compete with Locals in Urban Ethiopia? (with Tom Bundervoet, John T. Giles, Jamele Rigolini, and Manex Yonis)


In terms of both sales and profits, microenterprises in urban Ethiopia that are owned by migrants tend to perform worse than those of local entrepreneurs. This paper uses a unique survey of microenterprises to examine factors behind differences in performance. Most of the performance gap is explained by the observable characteristics of firms and their owners. The gap reflects the fact that migrants are younger and less educated than locals, but access to capital (and more capital-intensive sectors) contributes to lower performance. Older enterprises owned by migrants show less of performance gap with locally owned enterprises, suggesting that after the exit of poor performers, surviving migrant-owned firms converge in performance to local firms. 


REPORTS TO WHICH I HAVE CONTRIBUTED