Working Papers
Information, Loss Framing, and Spillovers in Pay-for-Performance Contracts (with Sebastian Bauhoff)
Do incentives matter beyond the information conveyed by pay-for-performance contracts? Does loss framing matter? And do incomplete contracts generate spillovers on unincentivized tasks? We conduct a framed field experiment with 1,363 maternity care workers in 691 primary health facilities in Nigeria to answer these questions.
Unequal Households or Communities? Decomposing the Inequality in Nutritional Status in South Asia (with Caitlin Brown, Jean Lee, and Anaise Williams).
Across South Asia, within-community inequality explains 3.5 times as much of the variation as within-household inequality. Community sanitation and health facility quality are especially important correlates of nutritional status. We show that community sanitation is an effective, and possibly cost-effective, targeting alternative to household wealth, particularly in countries with a high degree of inequality in both outcomes and access.
The effect of cash transfers on women's productive activities and subjective well-being: evidence from an ultra-poor setting (with Pascale Schnitzer and Modeste Daye; draft coming soon)
Using a discontinuity in the eligibility rule for an unconditional cash transfer in Chad, we show that household consumption increases by 46.7 percent and chronic food insecurity decreases by 34 percent. Recipient households are 59.8 percentage points more likely to start a non-agricultural business, report a 300 percent increase in the value of non-agricultural business assets held, and a 240 percent increase in the value of harvest produced. These impacts are driven by women's entrepreneurial activities, including a 180 percent increase in profits from non-agricultural businesses. Concomitantly, we estimate an 11.6 percent increase in self-efficacy, a 20 percent reduction in depression, a 35 percent improvement in physical wellbeing, and a 19.4 percent improvement in perceived social status. While self-efficacy increases for both men and men, the mental and physical health impacts are concentrated among women and the social status impacts in men. Finally, we estimate a benefit-cost ratio of up to 1.34, suggesting that the program may be cost-effective after one year. The impact on women's business profits comprises the largest pecuniary benefit of the transfers.
Empowering Women Through Education and Influence: An Evaluation of the Indian Mahila Samakhya Program (with Kathy Baylis and Mary Arends-Kuenning)
This paper shows that participation in a community-level female empowerment program in India significantly increases participants' physical mobility, political participation, and access to employment. We also find significant spillover effects on non-participants relative to women in untreated districts.