Research
Rural Roads, Farm Labor Exits, and Crop Fires. (Conditonally Accepted, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy)
with Teevrat Garg and Maulik Jagnani
Even as policymakers seek to encourage economic development by addressing misallocation due to frictions in labor markets, the associated production externalities – such as air pollution – remain unexplored. Using a regression discontinuity design, we show access to rural roads increases agricultural fires and particulate emissions. Farm labor exits are a likely mechanism responsible for the increase in agricultural fires: rural roads cause movement of workers out of agriculture and induce farmers to use fire – a labor-saving but polluting technology – to clear agricultural residue or to make harvesting less labor-intensive. Overall, the adoption of fires due to rural roads increases infant mortality rate by 5.5% in downwind locations.
Children's Time Use in India, 1998-2019. (Accepted, Research in Labor Economics)
with Matthew Gibson and Maulik Jagnani
Using the two waves of the India Time Use Survey, 1998-9 and 2019, we document a 110-minute (30-percent) increase in average daily learning time. The largest offsetting decrease was in work time: 61 minutes. The composition of leisure changed, with television rising by 19 minutes, while talking fell by 10 minutes and games by 17 minutes. We then implement a Gelbach decomposition, showing that 68 minutes of the unconditional learning increase are predicted by demographic covariates. Of these predictors the most important are a child's state of residence and usual principal activity, which captures extensive-margin transitions into schooling.
Soil Micronutrients Linked to Human Health in India. Scientific Reports (2023), 13(1), 1-11.
with Claire Morton, Leah Bevis, and David Lobell
Trace soil minerals are a critical determinant of both crop productivity and the mineral concentration of crops, therefore potentially impacting the nutritional status of human populations relying on those crops. We link health data from nearly 0.3 million children and one million adult women across India with over 27 million soil tests drawn from a nationwide soil health program. We find that soil zinc availability is positively associated with children’s linear height growth, and soil iron availability is positively associated with hemoglobin levels. The link between soil zinc and childhood stunting is particularly robust—a one standard deviation increase in satisfactory soil zinc tests is associated with approximately 11 fewer children stunted per 1000. We also find that this zinc-stunting relationship is strongest in wealthier households. Our results suggest that soil mineral availability impacts human nutritional status and health in at least some areas of India, and that agronomic fortification may be a beneficial intervention.
Global Biomass Fires and Infant Mortality. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2023), 120(23), e2218210120.
with Mustafa Zahid, Sam Heft-Neal, Vaibhav Rathi, and Marshall Burke
Global outdoor biomass burning is a major contributor to air pollution, especially in low- and middle-income countries. Recent years have witnessed substantial changes in the extent of biomass burning, including large declines in Africa. However, direct evidence of the contribution of biomass burning to global health outcomes remains limited. Here, we use georeferenced data on more than 2 million births matched to satellite-derived burned area exposure to estimate the burden of biomass fires on infant mortality. We find that each additional square kilometer of burning is associated with nearly 2% higher infant mortality in nearby downwind locations. The share of infant deaths attributable to biomass fires has increased over time due to the rapid decline in other important causes of infant death. Applying our model estimates across harmonized district-level data covering 98% of global infant deaths, we find that exposure to outdoor biomass burning was associated with nearly 130,000 additional infant deaths per year globally over our 2004 to 2018 study period. Despite the observed decline in biomass burning in Africa, nearly 75% of global infant deaths due to burning still occur in Africa. While fully eliminating biomass burning is unlikely, we estimate that even achievable reductions—equivalent to the lowest observed annual burning in each location during our study period—could have avoided more than 70,000 infant deaths per year globally since 2004.
The Economics of Reducing Food Losses: Experimental Evidence from Improved Storage Technology in India. Food Policy (2023), 117, 102442
with Pallavi Shukla and Kathy Baylis
Understanding the economics of food loss-reduction technologies is crucial to promote their adoption. We offer experimental evidence on returns to technology that studies a wide range of food security outcomes and accounts for the quality, quantity, and economic gains from adoption. Using two randomized experiments on improved storage with farmers in India, we find that food loss-reduction technology delivers large gains on multiple aspects of food security. The largest benefits of loss-reduction technology come from reduced quality and economic losses. Using a novel within-farmer experiment, we offer evidence of significant economic incentives for investing in loss-reduction technology in local rural markets. Our cost-benefit analysis shows that farmers recover the full unsubsidized cost of the reusable improved storage technology in one agricultural season.
Trouble with Zero: The Limits of Subsidizing Technology Adoption. Journal of Development Economics (2022), 158, 102920.
with Pallavi Shukla and Kathy Baylis
Do users value a free technology less than one they pay for? In a two-stage randomized trial of improved grain storage technology in India, we test whether subsequent user willingness-to-pay is affected by free distribution compared to a small positive price. We find paying an initial price of zero has a strong negative effect on users’ long-run willingness-to-pay but is not associated with differences in either reported use or benefits derived from the technology. The lower valuation implies a 20 to 30 percent decrease in long-run adoption, suggesting free distribution can stifle future markets for repeat-purchase goods.
Air Pollution from Agricultural Fires Increases Hypertension Risk. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management (2022), 115, 102723.
with Mateus Souza
In many parts of the developing world, farmers widely use deliberate fires to burn vegetation and clear land to plant crops. These agricultural fires, however, are known to be associated with health costs due to increased air pollution. We contribute to underpinning the associated health cost estimates by studying the effects of these fires on hypertension risk. Despite being one of the leading causes of mortality globally, there is little direct evidence on how hypertension risk changes with exposure to pollution from agricultural fires. To overcome common data and empirical challenges in this setting, we match blood pressure readings from nearly 784,000 individuals across India with satellite data on 1.2 million agricultural fires, wind direction realizations, and local ambient air pollution. We find that the incidence of hypertension increases by 1.8% for each standard deviation increase in the number of upwind fires observed one day before the blood pressure readings. We find that the impact is stronger among older males, smokers, individuals that were already on blood pressure medication, and individuals belonging to socially marginalized groups. Our estimates suggest that agricultural fires in India lead to hypertension-related additional mortality, associated with USD 9 billion annually in costs.
Choosing Plan B Over Plan A: Risk Compensation Theory and Contraceptive Choice in India. Demography (2021) 58 (1): 273–294.
with Pallavi Shukla and Mary Arends-Kuenning
Can women's contraceptive method choice be better understood through risk compensation theory? This theory implies that people act with greater care when the perceived risk of an activity is higher and with less care when it is lower. We examine how increased over-the-counter access to emergency contraceptive pills (ECPs) accompanied by marketing campaigns in India affected women's contraceptive method choices and incidence of sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Although ECPs substantially reduce the risk of pregnancy, they are less effective than other contraceptive methods and do not reduce the risk of STIs. We test whether an exogenous policy change that increased access to ECPs leads people to substitute away from other methods of contraception, such as condoms, thereby increasing the risk of both unintended pregnancy and STIs. We find evidence for risk compensation in terms of reduced use of condoms but not for increases in rates of STIs.
Impact of Grain Trade Policies on Prices and Welfare: Evidence from Malawi. Policy Research Working Paper No. 9436. World Bank, Washington, DC (2020)
with Habtamu Fuje
Restricting cross-border trade through export bans in an attempt to stabilize domestic prices has been a particularly popular policy tool used by many sub-Saharan countries in recent years. However, little is known about how the variability in harvests and seasonality -- two critical dimensions of smallholder agriculture in Africa -- mediate the effects of export bans on household welfare. This study assesses the short-term impact of export bans on prices and welfare of households in Malawi, accounting for these heterogeneities. It uses monthly panel data on maize prices from 152 markets in Malawi and neighboring countries. To identify the impacts of the bans, the study compares the change in price dispersion between a domestic market in Malawi and another market in a neighboring country, relative to the price dispersion between the domestic market and other markets within Malawi that are at a similar distance as the domestic-foreign market pair. The findings show that export bans, in the short run, are associated with lower domestic prices, lower relative prices, and less seasonality in prices in Malawi. This is after accounting for harvest levels and the existence of trade restrictions in neighboring countries. The short-run effects of the export bans help explain why policymakers are likely to engage in the use of such policies. However, the welfare analysis shows that the welfare gains and poverty reduction effects are small in magnitude and likely to be offset by the long-run distortionary effects of restrictive trade policies.
Who Wins and Who Loses from Staple Food Price Spikes? : Welfare Implications for Mozambique. Policy Research Working Paper No. 8612. World Bank, Washington DC (2018)
with Javier Baez and German Caruso
With a large share of the population dependent on agriculture and high exposure to natural disasters and other food price shocks, the welfare impacts of food price inflation in Mozambique cannot be ignored. This paper performs incidence analysis exploiting the spatial location of households to match data on consumption with production from agricultural activities to simulate the welfare effects of food price changes. The analysis focuses on maize, rice, and cassava, which form a substantial part of the Mozambican diet, as a source of calories and budgetary allocation. The results show large net negative welfare effects of food price rises in rural areas and small, negative effects in urban areas. A 10 percent increase in maize prices is associated with a reduction of 1.2 percent in consumption per capita in rural areas and 0.2 percent in urban areas. The effects from changes in the prices of rice and cassava are lower but qualitatively equal. Overall, the negative effects are larger for the bottom half of the distribution and imply that the price spike in 2016–17 may have translated into a poverty increase of 4-6 percentage points, with some of the poorest provinces bearing much of the brunt. The results hold to changes in some of the underlying assumptions of the simulations.
More information on my research can be found on my Google Scholar page here