Work in Progress

• Medium run effects of stunting  (with Deon Filmer, Jed Friedman, Katherine Ryan Amato, and Kieran O'Donnell)

We use the exogenous variation in stunting resulting from the increases in food prices caused by the Philippine conditional cash transfer program to study the medium run effects of stunting on child health (including biomarkers), education, and cognitive and socioemotional skills. Our proposed study will contribute rigorously identified causal evidence on the impacts of early-life stunting on medium run outcomes by returning to the 130 treated and control communities that constituted the experimental sample used in our earlier work. This study will thus allow us to comprehensively assess the consequences of early life stunting using causally identified variation in stature.

• Social Networks and Women's Economic Empowerment (with S. Anukriti) 

This is a review paper documenting that women’s social networks differ fundamentally and substantially from men’s networks in terms of how they form and operate, especially in LMICs. We examine the existing literature in economics and related disciplines to identify potential causes and consequences of these gender differences and the factors that promote or constrain network formation and access to existing networks for women. We also present stylized facts from all Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), Family and Life Surveys (FLS), the Findex dataset to highlight the role of women’s networks in economic empowerment.