Projects Under Development 

1. Infrastructure and Fiscal Capacity 

This paper shows that infrastructure investments enhance fiscal capacity. Drawing on a novel dataset combining information on the location and timing of all road upgrades in Rwanda with a decade of administrative tax and census records, we estimate significant and sizable positive effects of road upgrades on surrounding municipalities’ tax revenues. These effects are driven by firm entry as well as land value appreciation, captured through taxes on rental income at the local level. While the additional revenues are unable to finance the initial investments of the central government, they present a doubling of local municipalities’ revenues after 6 years.

2. Trade Integration and Firm Performance: Evidence from South Africa 

This study examines the 2013 South Africa–China Strategic Trade Agreement (STA) and its impact on firm performance and labor markets using microdata from 2009 to 2019 in South Africa. Exploiting the policy’s quasi-exogenous nature, we find that the STA triggered a significant reorientation toward Chinese capital goods, increasing firm-level capital-labor ratios. Notably, the resulting gains in sales and value-added generated a "scale effect" sufficiently robust to counteract potential labor displacement from capital-labor substitution. This led to aggregate employment stability, albeit with a modest and upward trend in wages. These findings suggest that lowering trade costs for capital intermediates facilitates expansion in manufacturing without necessarily triggering the negative labor market outcomes often predicted by traditional trade theory. 

3. Women Entrepreneurs

4.  Maternity Leave and Women Labor market

5. Labor Market Shocks and Behavior in Credit Markets