Research
Women’s Position in Ancestral Societies and Female HIV: The Long-Term Effect of Matrilineality in Sub-Saharan Africa (Working Paper, 2023) - Submitted
Abstract: Can contemporary female HIV rates be traced back to women's position in ancestral societies? In matrilineal kinship organizations, lineage and inheritance are traced through female members and children integrate the kin group of their mother rather than their father. Ethnographic accounts suggest that in matrilineal kinship structures, women benefit from greater autonomy and spousal cooperation is reduced. I test the hypothesis that, by affecting women's sexual and contraceptive behaviours, ancestral matrilineality has a causal impact on the prevalence of female HIV. Using variation in ethnic groups' ancestral kinship organizations within Sub-Saharan African countries, I find that females originating from ancestrally matrilineal ethnic groups are today more likely to be infected by HIV. This finding is robust to the inclusion of subnational fixed effects, as well as a large set of cultural, historical, geographical, and environmental factors. I find consistent results using a number of alternative estimation strategies, including a geographic regression discontinuity design at ethnic boundaries and an instrumental variable strategy. Matrilineal females' riskier sexual and contraceptive behaviours constitute the main explanatory mechanisms. These results call for policies moving beyond the "one-size-fits-all" strategy and taking local cultural contexts into account.
Access to Divorce and Women's Empowerment: How Traditional Norms mitigate Legal Reforms, joint with Olivier Bargain & Roberta Ziparo (Working Paper, 2022) - Submitted
Abstract: Social norms can mitigate the effectiveness of policies. We examine this question in the context of a major legal reform that exogenously fostered women’s access to justice and their ability to divorce in Indonesia. We focus on the role of ethnic norms regarding post-marital cohabitation, i.e. matrilocality versus patrilocality. We theoretically establish that, compared to women of patrilocal tradition, matrilocal women should divorce relatively more after the reform and, for those in stable marriages, experience a relative increase in empowerment. We test and confirm these predictions using double- and triple- difference estimations with fixed effects. Regarding empowerment, results are consistent across a wide range of women’s and children’s outcomes. Triple-difference estimates show higher benefits of the reform for matrilocal women who live far from courthouses and experience a relatively stronger decrease in divorce costs. Our results encourage tailored policies that may transcend cultural contexts and overcome the adherence to informal laws.
Women’s Empowerment and Husband’s Migration: Evidence from Indonesia, joint with Olivier Bargain & Roberta Ziparo (Working Paper, 2024) - Submitted
Abstract: Migration is an important risk-coping mechanism for poor households in developing countries. However, migration decisions may be sub-optimal in the presence of limited commitment between spouses. In this paper, we examine the link between the distribution of power in marriage and the decision to split-migrate (one spouse migrates alone) in Indonesia. We exploit a national policy experiment that exogenously increased women's bargaining power among ethnic groups of matrilocal tradition - the couple lives with the bride's relatives - relative to patrilocal groups. The propensity of matrilocal husbands to split-migrate, relative to patrilocal husbands, increases by 2-3.4 percentage points, i.e. a rise of 41-76%, following the reform. We suggest that empowered women may have gained control ex ante over outcomes that are costlier to monitor for husbands once they migrate. Hence, empowerment restores some effciency in migration decisions by reducing the anticipated information asymmetry and the moral hazard associated with migration. Consistently, we show that households with empowered women are more able to cushion shocks due to natural disasters and, among all households experiencing split-migration, matrilocal women are better off than their patrilocal counterparts. We provide a theoretical framework that rationalizes the intra-household mechanisms behind these intuitions.
Migration and the epidemiological approach: time and self-selection into foreign ancestries matter, joint with Simone Bertoli, Melchior Clerc & Eric Roca Fernandez (Working Paper, 2024) - Submitted
Abstract: Data on individuals of immigrant origin are used in the epidemiological approach in comparative development for understanding the determinants of cultural traits, and the effects of genetic factors. A widespread presumption in the literature is that this approach is exposed to attenuation bias. We discuss three dimensions of unobserved heterogeneity that are typically overlooked and which can confound the estimation and counteract the attenuation bias. Focusing on the United States, a key context in this literature, we highlight the heterogeneity among natives reporting different foreign ancestries with respect to the average time elapsed since ancestral migration, their spatial concentration, and their attachment to their ancestral identity. These dimensions of heterogeneity vary smoothly across space, oftentimes mirroring the general trend of the variables of interest in this literature, creating a threat to identification. We propose proxies that can be controlled for by the researcher as a bias-reducing strategy.
Connecting the Unconnected: Facebook Access and Female Political Representation in Sub-Saharan Africa, joint with Sophie Hatte & Thomas Taylor (Work in progress) - Draft coming soon
Abstract: Can social media promote female access to political positions? By providing a platform for direct communication between politicians and voters, social media may support the breakthrough of under-represented politicians. This paper focuses on the sub-Saharan African context, where women political under-representation is particularly salient, while the continent experienced a rising penetration of Facebook over the past decade. We (i) build a panel dataset of constituency-election level electoral results from 63 parliamentary elections in 17 countries, and (ii) exploit the within-countries staggered coverage of Facebook's Free Basics (i.e. free access to Facebook through partner mobile phone operators) across constituencies and time. We find that Facebook's Free Basics fosters the election of female candidates. This effect is driven by female candidates being supported by big political parties. Finally, we uncover several mechanisms. Using survey data, we highlight a political demand mechanism: we find that social media users have more favourable attitudes towards female politicians. Exploring the universe of candidates' public Facebook posts, we document a political supply mechanism: content analysis suggest clear gendered differences in online campaigning practices.
Fighting Climate Change: Private Politics and Public Regulation, joint with Michela Limardi & Alexandre Volle (Work in progress)
Abstract: Egorov & Harstad (2017) theoretically predict that NGOs activism (i.e. "private politics") and public regulation are strategic substitutes to regulate firms' activities aggravating climate change. This paper provides the first empirical test of this theoretical prediction. Our findings are supportive: building a unique panel dataset at the NGO-campaigns level, we find that NGOs tend to redirect their climate related campaigns towards industries that have lower climate related public regulations. Using within country x year variation across industries, we show that this result is robust to the inclusion of NGO, industry and country x year fixed effects, as well as NGOs' lagged campaigns dynamics. We further perform additional robustness checks that support this finding. In an extension, we provide evidence that private politics are intimately linked to the public regulation agenda. This finding suggests that NGOs strategically schedule the disclosure of hard evidence. These results enlighten the debate about the optimal regulatory framework aimed at curbing firms' activities aggravating climate change.