Research
Job Market Paper
Lasting Effects of Gender Apartheid on Attitudes Toward Women
This paper examines the lasting impact of gender apartheid on cultural norms and attitudes toward women. Using a difference-in-differences framework and data from the Survey of the Afghan People, we find that individuals who experienced the Taliban’s strict gender segregation during their formative years exhibit negative attitudes and conservative opinions regarding women’s roles. They showed support for conservative practices such as face-covering and early marriage and displayed reduced endorsement of women’s employment in mixed-gender workplaces. Our research contributes to the understanding of institutional influence on social attitudes.
Latest draft is available here.
Publications
Harmony in Diplomacy, Convergence in Choices: Low-Low Fertility Diffusion through Sino-Korean Normalization (with Seung-Hun Chung), accepted for publication at Southern Economic Journal
Cultural influences on gender gap in test scores: findings from Afghanistan’s university entrance examination (with Shishir Shakya), Applied Economic Letters (2024).
Working Papers
Heritage of Islamic Extremists: Impact of Mothers Exposed to First Taliban Rule on School Attendance of Children (with Seunghun Chung), under review
We examine the effects of maternal exposure to the Taliban rule in Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001 on children’s school attendance and years of education. By leveraging the geographical variations resulting from the Taliban’s unforeseen expansion and subsequent collapse, we find that children whose mothers lived under Taliban rule exhibit lower rates of school attendance and receive less formal education. The curtailment of mothers’ education, resulting from the Taliban’s ban on women’s access to education, is the main factor that elucidates the adverse impact on children’s schooling outcomes. This impact is consistent for both boys and girls across rural and urban regions.
Income Shock and Demand for Higher Education, under review
This paper investigates the impact of income shocks on demand for higher education in the context of the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan, which disrupted the local economy. My study leverages geographic barriers for the shipment of military equipment as an exogenous source of variation. I use the least-cost travel distance between districts and the nearest logistic hubs to instrument the departure of forces. Evacuation of foreign forces reduced income, which in turn drove an increase in university enrollment. I explore gender differences and mechanisms.
Exam Preparation and Access Inequalities in Higher Education: Evidence from Rural Afghanistan (with Arya Gaduh)
Rural/urban and gender gaps in access to higher education are persistent challenges facing low-income countries like Afghanistan. We evaluate a private outreach program that addressed these gaps by recruiting high-performing undergraduates from Afghanistan’s top universities as tutors to help rural high school students prepare for the university entrance examination. Using the complete enumeration of university entrance exam scores between 2003 and 2019, we estimate the impact of the program on exam scores, enrollment by university ranking, and passing rate. We employ a heterogeneity-robust difference-in-differences approach to estimate the treatment effects. Overall, the program increased the university exam scores, enrollment in top universities, and overall passing rate. Its impacts differ by gender: for male students, the program did not increase participation in the entrance exam, but improved the overall score; for females, it increased participation but did not improve the overall score.
Work in Progress
Long-term Impacts of Gender-Balanced Local Development Councils on Female Education (with Andrew Beath)
We exploit a randomized experiment and administrative data to examine the long-term effect of gender-balanced development councils on female education. An evaluation of Afghanistan's National Solidarity Program (NSP) randomly allocated 250 villages to receive NSP and another 250 villages to the control group that would receive the program at a later time. NSP villages established village councils and received block grants to implement projects prioritized by the village council. We use education data from the Ministry of Education to study the long-term impact of the intervention on female education. In our preliminary results, we do not find conclusive evidence for the effects of the program on female education in the short and long run.
Climate, Opium and Insurgency: Evidence from Afghanistan (with Pengshan Pan and Liyang Zhou)
The drug economy is deemed to play an important role in the conflicts in Afghanistan. Yet not much is known about the relationship between opium cultivation and conflict intensity. In this paper, we investigate the seasonal patterns of violence among Afghan insurgent groups and provide new explanations for the relationship between climate, opium cultivation, and conflict. Combining datasets of opium, rainfall, conflicts, and household surveys, we find that extreme climate increases opium production and conflict. Deviation from an average rainfall in planting seasons leads to reductions in traditional crops such as wheat and maize and is associated with more violence in the subsequent year. To lower the risk, farmers switch to opium to reduce the potential loss from climate shock, since the growth of poppy seeds is less vulnerable to extreme rainfall and temperature change. Our findings highlight the negative impact of climate change on conflicts in developing countries.