Parental Involvement Project: Group photo at the end of surveyors' training.
Activating Parental Managerial Capital: How Role Clarity Improves Education Outcomes
Parental involvement is widely seen as vital to student success, yet most interventions assume that parents understand their role and simply lack information about their child or school. This paper challenges that premise by introducing parental managerial capital—the capacity to structure time, monitor effort, and guide behavior—as a distinct input in the education production function. I evaluate a randomized experiment in Benin involving 2,094 students, where parents in the treatment group received ten structured phone calls with behavioral guidance, independent of financial or academic support. The intervention increased GPA by 0.11 SD, reduced absenteeism by 11\%, and raised grade completion by 6\%, with gains of 40\% among low-performing students. One year later, dropout rates fell sharply among girls and children of illiterate parents. Parental engagement at home and school improved, with no reduction in financial contributions. These findings are supported by a simple model in which parental managerial capital improves education by increasing both the time spent on schooling and the productivity of that time. Overall, these findings suggest that clarifying parental roles—rather than merely supplying information—can activate a latent margin of human capital formation, particularly in low-literacy households.
Crisis-Induced Learning Losses and Recovery: Evidence from School Closures in Nigeria During COVID-19 (Joint with Adeniran, A., Okoye, D. and Wantchekon, L.) RISE Working Paper Series. 22/120.
Millions of children worldwide are affected by school closures due to conflicts, disease outbreaks, and natural disasters, leading to learning losses and precarious future path for students in developing countries. There is an urgent need to provide possible policy options to get children back on track. This paper provides evidence from Nigerian schools during the COVID 19 pandemic suggesting that a full recovery from crisis-induced learning losses is possible. Using data from a random sample of schools, we find significant learning losses of about .6 standard deviations in English and Math. However, a program designed to slow down the curriculum and cover what was missed during school closures led to a full recovery of all learning losses within 2 months. Having an educated mother and access to learning at-home helps to minimize learning losses and speed up recovery. Students who participated in the program do not lag behind one year later and remain in school.
Regime Fall, Terrorism Activities, and Human Capital Accumulation: Evidence from NATO Intervention in Lybia (with Togbedji Gansey and Vinicius Okada da Silva)
Sahelian countries are experiencing record terrorist activities. Using detailed data on terrorist activities, we investigate how the fall of the Libyan regime in 2011 affected the Sahel region. Results show a significant increase in attacks, deaths, and injuries associated with terrorist activities in the following years after 2011. In ongoing analysis, we are investigating how this sudden increase in terrorist activities impacts children's human capital accumulation and health.
Other Ongoing Projects
Girls in STEM: Evidence from a Supplemental Math Lesson Program (with Horace Gninafon, Leonard Wantchekon): Data collection complete
Report Cards in Developing Countries (with Rebecca Thornton): Data collection complete
Improving School Financing: The Role of Digitizing Tuition Fees Payment (with Leora Klapper and Owen Ozier)—RCT & Data Collection to start in September 2025
Balancing the Scales: Gender Norms and Girls’ Educational Outcomes and Aspirations (with Augustin Tapsoba and Damien de-Walque)--Pilot to Start in September 2025
A New Perspective on Child Marriage: Evidence from Benin