I am currently working on publishing work from my doctoral dissertation. My papers are aimed at understanding the salient effects of emotions (positive) on the ability to decipher rational choice. My dissertation has a broad application to social policy and governance. When the social structure presents conditions that foster permanent beliefs that largely define people's intermittent emotions, these attributes have far reaching effects with the potential of dictating how people interact economically. First, I present evidence on the orthogonality of emotions to decision making. On a second paper, I non-parametrically test this hypothesis against the axioms of revealed preferences as an economic tool to measuring rationality.

On an ongoing collaboration with the Busara Center for Bahavioral Economics, I am interrogating why poor people, within minimal groups abandon a near Nash equillibrium of insurance uptake against household shocks but religiously settle for social and mostly informal community insurance. Poor people comprise the most informerly insured populations against natural and artificial calamities. However, when one of them experiences negative shocks (loss of a loved one, tragic and terminal illnesses) they contribute resources towards mitigating this shock. Whereas taking up formal insurance could be argued to not only be acturially efficient (High number of insured against claims at a given point in time) but also cheaper, poor people settle for an expensive outside option. Thus, in this study we seek to unravel the mechanisms through which charitable donations withing poor communities can be identified. The study shall provide insights for effective altruism.

During the current crisis of the global pandemic, a colleague at the University of Oxford's Center for the Study of African Economies (CSAE) and I are concerned by the devastating effects of Covid-19 pandemic on local market value chains. Distressed markets owing to the effects of the Pandemic and the containment measures taken by governments manifest their effects through prices of goods. Since this will have direct effects to the majority of poor people particularly in Subsaharan Africa, we are currently tracking prices of consumer goods (mostly domestic foodstuffs) in Kenya and Uganda. With the support of a global network of researchers, we have been able to roll out the survey in Kenya and Uganda. While my colleague is most interested on the behavior of markets at such a time, I am enthusiastic to draw lessons for the changing ways of doing research from traditional contact surveying to delivering survey tools online. Few studies have documented best practices to behaviorally nudge efforts from people. Since completing a survey online requires time, a financial resource aspect as well as personal effort, we are working under delicate ethical stadards to nudge respondents using varied textual vignettes, information packs and a small financial token. Over and above the current study objectives, in the end we hope to present what worked best behaviorally to improve survey response under the current circumstances.