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WORKING PAPERS
Mobile Money, Interoperability, and Financial Inclusion
2023 R&R Review of Economic Studies
with Markus Brunnermeier (Princeton) & Nicola Limodio (Bocconi)
This paper investigates the tradeoff between competition and financial inclusion resulting from the vertical integration between mobile network and money operators. Joining newly assembled data on mobile money fees through the WayBack machine, with sources on network coverage and financials, we examine the staggering across African operators and countries of platform interoperability – a policy that promotes transactions and competition across mobile money operators. Our results show that interoperability benefits users by lowering mobile money fees and their dispersion across operators. However, these positive effects are offset by a decrease in mobile towers and network coverage, especially in rural and poor districts, which, in turn, leads to a lower financial inclusion. We note that combining interoperability with subsidies for rural telecommunications delivers lower fees without hurting coverage.
Emigration Restrictions & Economic Development: Evidence from the Italian Mass Migration to the US
2023 Submitted
with Davide Coluccia (Northwestern)
This article studies the impact of immigration restriction policies on technology adoption in countries sending migrants. Between 1920 and 1921, the number of Italian emigrants to the United States dropped by 85% after Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act, a severely restrictive immigration law. In a difference-in-differences setting, we exploit variation in exposure across Italian districts to this large restriction on human mobility. Using novel individual-level data on Italian emigration to the US and newly digitized historical censuses, we show that this policy substantially hampered technology adoption and capital investment. This evidence is consistent with directed technology adoption theory: an increase in the labor supply dampens the incentive for firms to adopt labor-saving technologies. To validate this mechanism, we show that more exposed districts display a sizable increase in overall population and employment in manufacturing. We provide evidence that "missing migrants," whose migration was inhibited by the Act, drive this result.
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SELECTED WORK IN PROGRESS
Out of the network: link cost and risk sharing
with Adam Mugume (Bank of Uganda), Jimmy Apaa (Bank of Uganda) and Samuel Musoke (Bank of Uganda)
Back to Bank: digital currency, deposits' substitution and credit
with Jimmy Apaa (Bank of Uganda) and Samuel Musoke (Bank of Uganda)
Think-Manager Think-Male: The role of unconscious discrimination in the workplace