Work in progress
Measuring Racial Bias in Employment Services in Colombia, with Suzanne Duryea, Judith Morrison, and Yanira Oviedo. (submitted)
In this paper, we document de facto, implicit, and explicit racial biases within the public employment service in Colombia. By combining administrative data about job seekers and job openings with direct surveys to job counselors, including a Race Implicit Association Test, we compute different types of racial bias. We find that while job counselors do not self-report biased attitudes against Afro-descendant individuals, the majority exhibit high levels of implicit bias, which also correlates strongly with observed lower referral rates of Afro-descendants to job openings. In addition, we randomly provide information to job counselors about their implicit bias and test if this information changes their referral behavior. While we demonstrate that the implicit bias of counselors is a major contributor to racial gaps in labor outcomes, we do not find that providing feedback on this unconscious bias changes their referral behavior.
Keywords: Implicit stereotypes, labor market discrimination, developing countries.
JEL classification: J15, J21, J71
Tokyo, Japan (2018)
How do Labels and Vouchers Shape Unconditional Cash Transfers? Experimental Evidence from Georgia, with Miguel Angel Borella and Anastasia Terskaya. (under review)
We implemented a randomized control trial in Georgia to study how labels and food vouchers affect household expenditure among low-income recipients of unconditional cash transfers. Households were randomly assigned to receive only an unconditional cash transfer, a label indicating an amount intended for children’s expenses in addition to the transfer, or a portion of the transfer as a food voucher usable exclusively at designated stores. We find that labeling increases the share of expenditure on children. Meanwhile, food vouchers reduce total consumption, this being likely due to the increased cost associated with shopping at voucher-accepting shops.
Keywords: Cash transfers, Labeling effect, Food vouchers, Randomized control trial.
JEL: D04, I24, I38, O12
Welfare Eligibility Manipulation: Evidence From Georgia, with Brendon McConnell
Optimal targeting of social aid is a fundamental issue in public policy design. A key aspect is to create welfare systems that are manipulation-proof. Using a rich tapestry of administrative and survey data, we study household-driven manipulation of a nationwide welfare program in Georgia. We start by documenting sizable bunching at a benefit discontinuity. Next, we build a Becker (1968)-style model of manipulation, which we use to inform our empirical strategy -– a fuzzy difference-in-discontinuity design. Our estimation strategy and rich data allow us to (i) characterize those households who manipulate at a key welfare score threshold, (ii) document how these households manipulate their eligibility scores, and (iii) provide evidence on the downstream consequences of manipulation – in the labor market, in household expenditure patterns, and for a raft of child outcomes. We document that manipulation of scores appears to be needs-driven – it is rural and marginally poorer households who are more likely to manipulate. These households do so primarily by hiding rural assets prior to inspection. We find meaningful increases in the labor supply of women in manipulating households, and a concomitant increase in expenditure on the children in the household, likely driven by an economically-driven increase in the bargaining power of women within the household. Our labor supply findings are driven by women in households with unsuccessful manipulation attempts – we do not document a labor supply response for this in households where manipulation succeeds. This suggests a crowd-out effect of welfare income on labor market participation for women. We estimate the cost to government coffers of manipulation and find the form of welfare manipulation that we study in this work leads to a cost that is 25% of the initial expenditure on our target households. We conclude the paper by comparing our approach to the standard alternative in the literature – bunching estimators – and show, that in our setting, bunching estimators are consistent with our approach of welfare eligibility manipulation.
Keywords: Welfare Eligibility, Manipulation, Public Policy Design, Child Skill Investment
JEL Codes: H53, I38
Do Homebuyers Value Energy Efficiency? Evidence From an Information Shock, with Arpita Ghosh and Brendon McConnell . (under review)
We study the housing market response to a country-wide policy that mandated the provision of energy efficiency information with all marketing materials at the time of listing. Using the near universe of housing sales in England and Wales, we match the energy efficiency status of the property from Energy Performance Certificates data. Wedevelopaconceptual framework that makes clear the key channels through which the policy may impact house prices – an information-driven salience channel and a market evaluation channel. We provide causal evidence of homebuyers' willingness to pay for a higher energy rated property, documenting a 1-3% premium to a higher energy efficiency rating at the national level, and a 3- 6% premium in the London market. We explore a set of key margins along which homebuyers can respond, ruling out as explanations both a consumption channel and an information channel. We conclude that the elevated EPC-rating premiums are driven by a market valuation channel, a conclusion for which we provide empirical support. Such a conclusion is of key policy importance, as it suggests market-facing energy efficiency regulations can increase demand for more energy-efficient housing, even in absence of any discernible demand-side consumption or information effects.
Keywords: Hedonic Price Models, Energy Performance Certificates, Information Shocks.
JEL: R38, Q48, K32
Old working papers
Drugs, guns, and early motherhood in Colombia
This paper examines the effect of violent crime on the prevalence of early motherhood in Colombia. To instrument for the predominance of violent crime I use geographical and temporal variation in drug trafficking networks. My results suggest that one standard deviation increase in the homicide rate induces a 2.55 percentage points increase in the probability of early motherhood.
JEL: D74, K42, J13, C41