Research

Working Papers

Breadwinner’s Burden: The Effect of Financial Concerns on Sleeplessness  (with Maulik Jagnani). Accepted. American Economic Review: Insights. 

Abstract: Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that eligible household heads surveyed just after an unconditional cash transfer in Indonesia report a 0.4 standard deviation improvement in sleep quality compared to those surveyed just before, and they perform better on cognitive tasks sensitive to sleep deprivation. The cash transfer appears to alleviate financial concerns for household heads—typically the breadwinners—improving their sleep. Post-disbursement, eligible households increase savings, reduce debts, and household heads feel less worried, frustrated, and tired. These effects are not observed in ineligible household heads or other members of eligible households. 

Media: VoxDev 

Casting roles, casting votes: Lessons from Sesame Street on media representation, racial biases, and voting (with Jiangnan Zeng). 

Abstract: There is little evidence on whether media exposure, particularly in childhood, can reduce prejudice and impact decisions in the long-run. Sesame Street’s representation of minority characters, egalitarian minority-white interactions and portrayal of working women was distinctive in the mass media landscape of 1969, when it started airing. By exploiting both age variation and technological variation in broadcast reception, this paper contributes to the media and contact theory literatures by showing that positive representations of minorities and working women via mass media can reduce long-run prejudice and impact voting, an important societal outcome. First, we find that for preschool-age children, a 20 percentage point (1 standard deviation) increase in Sesame Street coverage induced a 4.4% increase in voter turnout. Second, we show that exposure to the show’s coverage reduced adulthood measures of racial biases, and increased reported voting for minority and women candidates to the U.S. House of Representatives by 13% and 9.7% respectively. Voting for Democratic candidates increased because of the increase in voting for diverse candidates. On ballots featuring white men, turnout gains are split between parties.

Media: VoxDev 

Changing rural labor markets and welfare in Malawi (with Joachim De Weerdt and Adriana Oliveres-Mallol). 

Abstract: Labor is a critical asset for rural populations in sub-Saharan Africa yet underemployment is common with important welfare implications. This study analyzes shifts in working hours allocated to income-generating activities among Malawian rural residents from 2010 to 2019. Using temporally and nationally representative data we estimate weekly hours spent each month on household agriculture, non-farm household enterprises, casual labor, and wage employment for both years. We document small reductions in seasonality and an increase in mean working hours from 17.4 to 18.4 hours per week. We observe substantial changes in hour allocations across activities: weekly hours spent on household farm work have dropped by 1.6 hours while hours worked in casual labor and household non-farm enterprises increase by 2.6 and 0.7 hours respectively. Concurrently, though average consumption has increased by 22%, poverty rates remain high and food insecurity has increased by 43% as households rely more on purchased food making them vulnerable to fluctuating market prices. We document an increasingly strong correlation between casual labor and food insecurity, a worrisome trend given casual labor’s growing economic importance. Through an Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition, we show that the shift towards casual labor is experienced relatively more by men, the young, the less educated, those with small land holdings, and those residing near big cities. As Malawi navigates the complex transition from a subsistence-based to a market-oriented economy, targeted policies and interventions will be critical to prevent further entrenchment of poverty among vulnerable segments of its population.

Publications

Labor Calendars and Rural Poverty: A case study for Malawi (with Alain de Janvry and Elisabeth Sadoulet). Food Policy, 2022, 109.

Abstract: The persistence of rural poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa is a major challenge for meeting the Sustainable Development Goal on poverty eradication. Using detailed data for Malawi, we investigate the association between seasonality in labor calendars and low consumption. We find that (1) seasonality in rural labor calendars runs deep, accounting for 2/3 of total rural underemployment, (2) we do not observe activities with labor requirements that run clearly counter-cyclical to the main agricultural season, (3) gaps in rural-urban annual consumption are strongly associated with differences in time worked due to seasonality differentials. The implication is that reducing rural seasonality in labor calendars should be a major objective in seeking to increase rural consumption levels. Methodologically, we show that labor calendars can be constructed from standard annual rural household survey data with information on labor use by crop and task.

Climate change, agricultural production and civil conflict: Evidence from the Philippines (with Benjamin Crost, Joseph H. Felter and Daniel I. Rees). 

Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 2018, 88, pp 379-395.

Abstract: Using unique data on conflict-related incidents in the Philippines, we exploit seasonal variation in the relationship between rainfall and agricultural production to learn about the mechanism through which rainfall affects civil conflict. We find that an increase in dry-season rainfall leads to an increase in agricultural production and dampens conflict intensity. By contrast, an increase in wet-season rainfall is harmful to crops and produces more conflict. Consistent with the hypothesis that rebel groups gain strength after a bad harvest, we find that negative rainfall shocks lead to an increase in conflict incidents initiated by insurgents but not by government forces. These results suggest that the predicted shift towards wetter wet seasons and drier dry seasons will lead to more civil conflict even if annual rainfall totals remain stable. We conclude that policies aimed at mitigating the effect of climate change on agriculture could have the added benefit of reducing civil conflict.