Research

Publications

• COVID-19 and extreme weather: Impacts on food security and migration attitudes in rural Guatemala (with Francisco Ceballos and Cynthia Paz), World Development 173, 106422, 2024. Also appeared as IFPRI Discussion Paper #2126. [link]

• Cultural and economic barriers and opportunities for the participation of women in agricultural production systems: A case study in Guatemala (with Constanza Alarcon, Maria Lucia Berrospi, Diana Lopera, Diana Quintero, Byron Reyes, and Francisco Olivet), Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems 7, 2023. [link]

• Large-scale school meal programs and student health: Evidence from rural China (with Guoying Deng and Jingxi Wang), China Economic Review 79, 101974, 2023. Also appeared as IFPRI Discussion Paper #2009. [link]

• Solar-powered cold-storage and agrifood market modernization in Nigeria (with Hiroyuki Takeshima, Futoshi Yamauchi and Hyacinth O. Edeh), Agricultural Economics 54(2), pp. 234-255, 2023. Previously circulated as Solar-powered cold-storages and sustainable food system transformation: Evidence from horticulture markets interventions in northeast Nigeria, IFPRI Discussion Paper #2047. [link]

• The unintended consequences of confinement due to Covid-19: Evidence from the rural area in Guatemala (with Jose G. Castillo), Journal of Economic Psychology 95, 102587, 2023. [link]

• Group lending with peer selection and moral hazard (with Li Gan and Yanyan Liu) , Theoretical Economics Letters 12(5), pp. 1351-1361, 2022. [link]

• Land market distortions and aggregate agricultural productivity: Evidence from Guatemala (with Braulio Britos, Miguel Robles and Danilo Trupkin), Journal of Development Economics 155, 102787, 2022. Also appeared as IFPRI Discussion Paper #1969. [link]

• Insurance or deliberate use of the bankruptcy law for financial gain? Testing for heterogeneous filing behaviors in the United States (with Li Gan and Shuoxun Zhang), Economic Modelling 105, 105673, 2021.  [link]

• Short-term impacts of COVID-19 on food security and nutrition in rural Guatemala: Phone-based farm household survey evidence  (with Francisco Ceballos and Cynthia Paz), Agricultural Economics 52(3), pp. 477-494, 2021. [link]

• Asset maintenance as hidden investment among the poor and rich: Application to housing (with Danilo Trupkin), Review of Economic Dynamics 40, pp. 128-145, 2021. [link]

• When power plants leave town: Environmental quality and the housing market in China (with Guoying Deng and Shu Xu), Environmental and Resource Economics 77, pp.751-780, 2020.  [link]

• Assessing the use of cell phones to monitor health and nutrition interventions: Evidence from rural Guatemala (with Francisco Ceballos, Francisco Olivet and Cynthia Paz), PLoS ONE 15(11): e0240526. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240526, 2020. [link]

• Aid, policies and growth: A nonlinear reassessment (with Xin Geng), Applied Economics 52(15), pp. 1617-1633, 2020. Also appeared as IFPRI Discussion Paper #1699. [link]

• Separating between unobserved consumer types: Evidence from airlines (with Diego Escobari), Economic Inquiry 57(2), pp. 1215-1230, 2019. [link]

• A poverty-sensitive scorecard to prioritize lending: Evidence from Central America (with Maximo Torero), Food Policy 77, pp. 81-90, 2018. Also appeared as IFPRI Discussion Paper #1518. [link]

• Group lending with heterogeneous types (with Li Gan and Yanyan Liu), Economic Inquiry 56(2), pp. 895-913, 2018. Also appeared as NBER Working Paper #18847, IFPRI Discussion Paper #1268 and PERC Working Paper #1309. [link]

• Anchoring bias in recall data: Evidence from Central America (with Susan Godlonton and Michael Murphy), American Journal of Agricultural Economics 100(2), pp. 479-501, 2018. Also appeared as IFPRI Discussion Paper #1534. [link]

• Linking smallholder farmers to markets on extensive and intensive margins: Evidence from Nicaragua (with Ayako Ebata), Food Policy 73, pp. 34-44, 2017. Also appeared as IFPRI Discussion Paper #1539. [link]

• Market institutions and price relationships: The case of coffee in the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (with Shahidur Rashid, Solomon Lemma and Tadesse Kuma), American Journal of Agricultural Economics 99(3), pp. 683-704, 2017. Previously circulated as Institutions and market integration: The case of coffee in the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange, IFPRI Discussion Paper #1464. [link]

• Grain price and volatility transmission from international to domestic markets in developing countries (with Francisco Ceballos, Nicholas Minot and Miguel Robles), World Development 94, pp. 305-320, 2017. Also appeared as IFPRI Discussion Paper #1472 [link]

• Price discovery and dynamics across housing developers in China (with Guoying Deng and Yaoguo Wu), Economics Bulletin 36(4), pp. 1966-1974, 2016. [link]

• Co-movement of major commodity price returns: A time-series assessment (with Francesca de Nicola and Pierangelo De Pace), Energy Economics 57, pp. 28-41, 2016. Also appeared as The World Bank Policy Research Working Paper #6845 and IFPRI Discussion Paper #1354. [link]

• The higher costs of doing business in China: Minimum wages and firms' export behavior (with Li Gan and Shuang Ma), Journal of International Economics 100, pp. 81-94, 2016. [link]

• Market interdependence and volatility transmission among major crops (with Cornelis Gardebroek and Miguel Robles), Agricultural Economics 47(2), pp. 141-155, 2016. Also appeared as IFPRI Discussion Paper #1344. [link]

• Do natural disasters cause an excessive fear of heights? Evidence from the Wenchuan earthquake (with Guoying Deng and Li Gan), Journal of Urban Economics 90, pp. 79-89, 2015. Previously circulated as Do people overreact? Evidence from the housing market after the Wenchuan earthquake. NBER Working Paper #19515 and PERC Working Paper #1310. [link]

• How far do shocks move across borders? Examining volatility transmission in major agricultural futures markets (with Raul Ibarra and Danilo Trupkin), European Review of Agricultural Economics 41(2), pp. 301-325, 2014. Also appeared as IFPRI Discussion Paper #1109 and Banco de Mexico Working Papers Series #2011-15. [link]

• Parametric versus nonparametric methods in risk scoring: An application to microcredit (with Maximo Torero), Empirical Economics 46(3), pp. 1057-1079, 2014. [link]

• Nonlinear pricing strategies and competitive conditions in the airline industry (with Steven Wiggins), Economic Inquiry 52(2), pp. 539-561, 2014. [link]

• Market concentration and pricing behavior in the fertilizer industry: A global approach (with Maximo Torero), Agricultural Economics 44(6), pp. 723-734, 2013. [link]

• Do marketing margins change with food scares? Examining the effects of food recalls and disease outbreaks in the U.S. red meat industry (with Oral Capps Jr. and Sergio Colin-Castillo), Agribusiness 29(4), pp. 426-454, 2013 [link]. Also appeared as IFPRI Discussion Paper #1104.

• Do energy prices stimulate food price volatility? Examining volatility transmission between US oil, ethanol and corn markets (with Cornelis Gardebroek), Energy Economics 40, pp. 119-129, 2013. [link]

• Making friends with your neighbors? Agglomeration and tacit collusion in the lodging industry (with Li Gan), Review of Economics and Statistics 95(3), pp. 1002-1017, 2013 [link]. Also apeared as NBER Working Paper #16739 and PERC Working Paper #1005.

• Nonlinear pricing and competition intensity in a Hotelling-type model with discrete product and consumer types, Economics Letters 110(3), pp. 174-177, 2011. [link]

Working Papers

• Can survey design reduce anchoring bias in recall data: Evidence from Malawi (with Susan Godlonton and Cynthia Paz), under review. [paper]

• Conditional cash transfers and high school attainment: Evidence from a large-scale program in the Dominican Republic (with Jose A. Pellerano and Gonzalo E. Sanchez), under review. [paper]

• COVID-19 and rural livelihoods: Lessons from a long-term assessment and the path to recovery (with Maria Lucia Berrospi, Francisco Ceballos and Cynthia Paz), under review. [paper]

• Corporate taxes and labor market informality (with Guoying Deng , Pengcheng Du and Shu Xu), under review. [paper]

• The role of market concentration in the agri-food industry (with Alvaro Espinoza, Maria Lucia Berrospi, Koen Deconinck, Johan Swinnen and Rob Vos). [paper]

Work in Progress

• Price and volatility transmission from international to domestic food and fertilizer markets in Central America (with Francisco Ceballos, Maria Lucia Berrospi, Viviana Perego, Melissa Brown and Elena Mora Lopez).

• Supporting farmers in a context of recurrent shocks: Evidence from Guatemala (with Francisco Ceballos, Alvaro Espinoza and Cynthia Paz).

• Agricultural distortions and emigration (with Braulio Britos and Danilo Trupkin).

• Weather shocks and rural emigration (with Braulio Britos).

• Emigration and development policies (with Li Gan and Danilo Trupkin).

• Superstitious beliefs and extreme events (with Guoying Deng and Li Gan).

• Persistence of individual and social preferences in rural contexts (with Jose Gabriel Castillo).

Other Publications

• Internal Migration Propensity Index (i-MPI) for Guatemala and Honduras: A tool to estimate the household-level likelihood of domestic migration (with Francisco Ceballos and Alvaro Espinoza), Fragility, Conflict, and Migration Working Paper, December 2023. [link]

• Feed the Future Guatemala Value Chains Project: Summary of impact evaluation study (with Francisco Ceballos, Alvaro Espinoza and Cynthia Paz), IFPRI Brief, December 2023. [link]

• Climatic stresses and rural emigration in Guatemala (with Braulio Britos, Estefania Puricelli and Ritvik Sahajpal). IFPRI Project Note, October 2023. [link]

• Mapeo de intervenciones en seguridad alimentaria y nutricion en Guatemala: Analisis a nivel municipal (with Cynthia Paz and Constanza Alarcon). IFPRI Project Note, December 2022. [link]

• COVID-19 study in rural areas of Guatemala: Long-term impacts on food security and nutrition in the Western Highlands (with Francisco Ceballos, Cynthia Paz, and Maria Lucia Berrospi). IFPRI Brief, December 2022. [link] 

• Short-term impacts of COVID-19 in rural Guatemala: Call for a closer, continuous look at the food security and nutritional patterns of vulnerable families (with Francisco Ceballos and Cynthia Paz). Chapter 8 in John McDermott and Johan Swinnen (eds.), COVID-19 and global food security: Two years later, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), 2022. [link]

• Assessing the impacts of COVID-19 on the coffee value chain in Guatemala: Evidence from coffee growers in the Midwest and East (with Francisco Ceballos, Cynthia Paz, and Maria Lucia Berrospi). IFPRI Note, December 2021. [link] 

• Excessive food price variability early warning system: Incorporating exogenous covariates (with Xin Geng and Carlos Martins-Filho). IFPRI Technical Note, September 2021. [link] 

• Show me what you eat? Assessing diets remotely through pictures (with Francisco Ceballos). IFPRI Project Note, May 2021. [link]

• Urban food systems and diets, nutrition, and health of the poor: Challenges, opportunities, and research gaps (with Marie T. Ruel, Jef L. Leroy, Olivier Ecker, Danielle Resnick and James Thurlow), Chapter 19 in Jonathan Crush, Bruce Frayne and Gareth Haysom (eds.), Handbook on Urban Food Security in the Global South, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2020. [link]

• The Migration Propensity Index: An application to Guatemala (with Francisco Ceballos). IFPRI Discussion Paper #1953,  2020. [paper]

• Volatile coffee prices: COVID-19 and market fundamentals (with Rebecca Pandolph, Christoph Sanger and Rob Vos). International Coffee Organization Coffee Break Series No. 2. May 2020. [link]

• Promoting competition in the fertilizer industry and efficiency in the fertilizer use to improve land productivity and sustainability (with Maximo Torero). Food Security and Sustainable Development, T20 Argentina Policy Brief, September 2018. [link]

• Overview of the fertilizer supply chain and market structure in Africa: A cross-country assessment (with Flor Paz, Adetola I. Adeoti, Annet Adong, Charles B.L. Jumbe, Kiplimo Araat Lagat and Stevier Kaiyatsa). IFPRI Project Note, August 2018. [link]

• Promoting competition in the fertilizer industry in Africa: A global and local approach (with Maximo Torero). IFPRI Issue Brief, March 2018. [link]

• Transmission of food price volatility from international to domestic markets: Evidence from Africa, Latin America and South Asia (with Francisco Ceballos, Nicholas Minot and Miguel Robles), Chapter 13 in Matthias Kalkuhl, Joachim von Braun and Maximo Torero  (eds.), Food Price Volatility and Its Implications for Food Security and Policy, Springer, 2016. [link]

• Poverty-sensitive scorecards to prioritize lending and grant allocation with an application in Central America (with Maximo Torero), Chapter 12 in Doris Köhn (ed.), Finance for Food: Towards New Agricultural and Rural Finance, Springer, 2014. [link]

• La seguridad alimentaria en Guatemala (with Miguel Robles and Cristina Chiarella), Capitulo 1 en E. Armendariz, R. de Michele, O. Manzano y P. Martel (cord.), Reflexiones sobre el desarrollo de la economia rural en Guatemala, Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo, 2013. [link]

• Examining the effect of low cost carriers on nonlinear pricing strategies of legacy airlines (with Anirban Sengupta and Steven Wiggins), Chapter 2 in James Peoples (ed.), Pricing Behavior and Non-price Characteristics in the Airline Industry (Advances in Airline Economics, Vol. 3), Emerald, 2012. [link]

• A framework for sustainable food security for Latin America and the Caribbean (with Cesar Falconi, Maximo Torero, Eduardo Maruyama and Miguel Robles), Technical Note No. IDB-TN-441, IADB, 2012. [note]

• Fertilizer Market Situation: Market Structure, Consumption and Trade Patterns, and Pricing Behavior (with Maximo Torero), IFPRI Discussion Paper #1058, 2011. [paper]

• Beyond the numbers. How urban households in Central America responded to the recent global crises (with Miguel Robles and Maximo Torero), IFPRI Issue Brief #67, 2011. [brief]

• Examining the Dynamic Relationship between Spot and Futures Prices of Agricultural Commodities (with Maximo Torero), Commodity Market Review 2009-2010, FAO, pp. 47-86, 2010. Also appeared as IFPRI Discussion Paper #988. [paper]

• Estimating the Size of the Hidden Economy in Peru: A Currency Demand Approach, Revista de Ciencias Sociales y Economía 8, pp. 85-104, Universidad de Montevideo, 2009. [paper]

• Abriendo la caja negra de las privatizaciones (with Maximo Torero and Jose Deustua), en Investigación, Políticas y Desarrollo en el Perú, GRADE, Lima, Perú, 2007. [chapter]

• The Informal Sector in Jamaica (with Maximo Torero, Miguel Robles, Jorge de la Roca, Maureen Webber and Desmond Thomas), RE3-06-010, Economic and Sector Study Series, IADB, 2006. [paper]

• Evasión tributaria e informalidad en el Perú (with Jorge de la Roca), Revista Economía y Sociedad N. 62, CIES, Lima, Perú, 2006. [paper]

• Servicios de Desarrollo Empresarial y desempeño de la micro y pequeñas empresas en el Perú: el caso de los sectores confecciones y metalmecánica (with Juan Manuel Garcia), Revista Economía y Sociedad N. 57, CIES, Lima, Perú, 2005. [paper]

• Economic Integration, Trade and Industrial Structure in the Andean Economies: The Peruvian Case (with Carlos Carrillo), in Nobuaki Hamaguchi (ed.) Peru’s New Perspectives on Trade and Development: Strategic Integration with the Global Economy, IDE-JETRO, Chiba, Japan, 2000. [link]