Publications

Women's Land Rights and Village Institutions in Tanzania (with Garance Genicot) (World Development, 153, p.105811) Pre-print; Policy Brief ; VILART Survey

Working Papers

This is a Man's World: Crime and Intra-Household Resource Allocation (Submitted) 

Exposure to community violence is a pervasive development challenge. Using a nationally representative longitudinal dataset, I study the effects of violent crime on intra-household resource allocation and bargaining power exploiting the onset of the Mexican drug war. I estimate a system of demand equations and find the escalation in violence reallocated expenditures toward male goods, at the expense of food and other necessities. These findings are consistent with a deterioration in women's bargaining power. To provide further evidence, I document declines in women’s intra-household decision-making power, structurally estimate women’s resource shares, and analyze single households' expenditures.    

HICN Working Paper. Blogs/Press: Development Impact Blog, Nada es Gratis, Policy Dialogue, Foco Economico. Awards:  III Premio Nada es Gratis to Job Market Papers in Economics , 2021 Georgetown Razin Prize

Persistent yet Ameliorable Shocks to Female Entrepreneurship: Experimental Evidence from Kenya  (with Francisco Campos,  Julian Jamison, Abla Safir, and Bilal Zia)  (Revise & Resubmit Journal of Development Economics)  Policy brief

While female entrepreneurs face multiple obstacles, it is unclear whether gender gaps worsen during economic crises: women may be more impacted than men due to those existing obstacles and restrictive social norms, but they may also be less exposed due to their specialized sectors of operation, or if a crisis flattens everyone together. In a large sample of partnered Kenyan youth microentrepreneurs, we document more severe consequences two years after the COVID-19 crisis for female entrepreneurs across various outcomes: business ownership; sales and profits; adaptability; time-use; and intra-household decision-making. However, the impact of randomized grants significantly offsets these declines, demonstrating a strong mitigating impact for both women and men. The grants increase women's labor supply, at the expense of domestic work, leisure time, and childcare hours, while they have no significant impacts on men's time allocation. 

Female Firstborn and Family Structure: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa (with Garance Genicot) (Draft Available upon request)

This paper studies the impact of son preference on family structure in sub-Saharan Africa. Using Demographic and Health Surveys, we show that having a firstborn daughter, as opposed to a son, has a distinct effect on women's family structure. Women with a female firstborn experience higher long-term marriage rates, a reduced likelihood of marrying the child's father if the birth occurred prior to any formal marital commitment, increased divorce rates, and more frequent polygamous unions. Additionally, they also tend to have more children. A geographic regression discontinuity design along matrilineal-patrilineal ancestral ethnic borders allows us to identify patrilineal tradition as a significant explanatory factor for these outcomes. Finally, we find consistent patterns on living standards and health for women with firstborn daughters.

Measuring psychological constructs in developing countries (with Clare Clingain and Aletheia Donald) (Draft Available upon request) 

Psychological constructs like goal-setting and self-efficacy are important components of agency and have implications for women's involvement in income-generating activities, as well as their overall economic well-being. Yet measures of these constructs either don't exist or only demonstrate evidence of reliability and validity in Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) contexts. Our paper introduces four new scales to measure goal-setting, locus of control, livelihoods self-efficacy, and agricultural self-efficacy, which we developed and tested across Sub-Saharan Africa. All scales demonstrated evidence of reliability and validity, though this evidence was weaker for locus of control. Relationships to income-generating capacity, empowerment and well-being outcomes were stronger for women than for men.


Selected Work in Progress

Grants, Fellowships, and Awards