Temperature's toll on decision-making
The Economic Journal, Volume 134, Issue 663, 2024, Pages 2746–2771
Does temperature affect people's decision-making abilities and rationality? Using data from Indonesia, we answer this question by estimating how risky choices, impatience and the occurrence of a rational choice violation vary with exposure to short-term temperature shocks. Our findings show that hot weather temporarily increases rational choice violations and impatience but does not affect risk-related decisions. These effects are primarily driven by nighttime rather than daytime temperatures. We provide suggestive evidence that a potential mechanism behind these effects could be a significant decrease in sleep quality, affecting cognition the following day, math skills in particular. These skills are in turn critical for economically rational and utility-maximizing decision-making. These effects are largest for the poor and for people living in areas with low rates of air-conditioning.
With: David Johnston, Rachel Knott and Rohan Sweeney
VoxDev Article | Sunday Times (London) Article | Monash Business School Impact Article | Economic Observatory Article
Maternal mental health responses to COVID-19 shocks and uncertainty in rural Pakistan
AEA Papers and Proceedings, Volume 114, 2024, Pages 407-411
In this paper, we investigate the association between a battery of mental health measures and (i) experienced morbidity and mortality due to COVID-19, (ii) worry about disease risk, (iii) experienced economic shocks, and (iv) economic uncertainty about the future. We find a striking positive relationship between worry and economic uncertainty and various measures of mental health including depression, anxiety, disability, stress and loneliness. Additional results suggest that an environment of heightened economic uncertainty might impact mental health, above and beyond the effects of realized shocks. For example, a 1 s.d. increase in economic uncertainty is associated with a 0.223 s.d. decrease in mental health scores, even after controlling for the experience of an economic shock in the same period. This association is strongest among women who were depressed at baseline. We also find that current uncertainty is associated with future economic shocks such as contracting debt and experiencing a decrease in one's socieconomic standing relative to other members in the community.
With: Victoria Baranov, Joanna Maselko, Pietro Biroli and Sonia Bhalotra
Flood disasters and health among the urban poor
Health Economics, Volume 31, Issue 9, 2022, Pages 2072-2089
Billions of people live in urban poverty, with many forced to reside in disaster-prone areas. Research suggests that such disasters harm child nutrition and increase adult morbidity. However, little is known about impacts on mental health, particularly of people living in slums. In this paper we estimate the effects of flood disasters on the mental and physical health of poor adults and children in urban Indonesia. Our data come from the Indonesia Family Life Survey and new surveys of informal settlement residents. We find that urban poor populations experience increases in acute morbidities and depressive symptoms following floods, that the negative mental health effects last longer, and that the urban wealthy show no health effects from flood exposure. Further analysis suggests that worse economic outcomes may be partly responsible. Overall, the results provide a more nuanced understanding of the morbidities experienced by populations most vulnerable to increased disaster occurrence.
With: David Johnston, Rachel Knott and Rohan Sweeney
The gender gap in children's educational time investments in informal settlements
Review of Economics of the Household, 2025
In a substantial reversal of the gender gap in educational attainment, boys now have lower school progression rates and test scores than girls across a wide cross-section of countries. We document one potential contributor to this trend: gendered differences in children’s time allocation and their elasticity to family disadvantage. We use novel time use data of children living in informal settlements in Indonesia and Fiji to estimate the gender gap in time use, employing within-neighbourhood and within-sibling comparisons. We find that boys spend significantly less time than girls on schooling and homework. This does not result from a substitution between education and labor, but rather from leisure being a large component of boys’ time. These gender gaps are highly elastic to family disadvantage. Boys whose parents have lower schooling and more financial constraints, spend even less time in educational activities than girls from similar backgrounds.
With: Nicole Black, David Johhnston, Rohan Sweeney, Fiona Barker, Rosnaena, Syaidah Syamsul and Taniela Waka
A Wake-Up Call for a Global Climate and Sleep Task Force
SLEEP, 2026 (forthcoming)
With: Kelton Minor, Christine Blume, Aric A. Prather, Jamie T. Mullins, Breanne Aylward, Joshua Wortzel, Godfred O. Boateng, Benedict Weobong, Jodi A. Mindell, Stephanie J. Crowley, Lara R. Dugas, Sherilee Harper, Susan D. Clayton, Paul Gringas and Thomas Penzel
Social Science & Medicine, 2025
With: Sarah Haight, Lisa Bates, Amina Bibi, Sugandh Gupta, Ashley Hagaman, Aparna Kachoria, Joanna Maselko, Atif Rahman, Kaitlin Shartle and Siham Sikander
BMC Public Health, 2025
With: Joanna Maselko, Amanda Collins, Victoria Baranov, Sonia Bhalotra, Allison Frost, Sarah Haight, Amina Bibi and Siham Sikander
BMC Psychology, 2024
With: Allison Frost, Amanda Collins, Esther Chung, Ashley Hagaman, Sugandh Gupta, Amina Bibi and Joanna Maselko
Environment International, 2021
With: French, M., Barker, S. F., Taruc, R., et al.
Depression, Violence and Power
With: Victoria Baranov, Sonia Bhalotra, Pietro Biroli and Joanna Maselko
Does treating maternal depression reduce women's risk of intimate partner violence, or could it sometimes increase it? Harnessing a psychotherapy trial and eight years of follow-up data, we show that treatment reduced maternal depression but increased women's likelihood of experiencing violence. Patterns of heterogeneous treatment effects reveal divergent trajectories for two distinct subgroups of women. Among women with higher status relative to their husbands, psychotherapy reduced sexual violence and increased women's voice: they participate more in household decision-making, have higher labor force participation, and achieve lower fertility. Among lower-status women, similar reductions in depression led to increased psychological, physical and sexual violence and reduced decision-making power, consistent with husbands using violence instrumentally to suppress women's self-advocacy. The results show that the gold standard treatment for maternal depression can have serious adverse effects in the absence of sufficient leverage to support women's restored self-advocacy.
Psychological Interventions Provide Resilience to Future Negative Shocks
With: Victoria Baranov, Sonia Bhalotra, Pietro Biroli and Joanna Maselko
We investigate the efficacy of a cognitive behavioral therapy-informed (CBT) intervention in fostering resilience, leveraging longitudinal data from a trial implemented on women suffering depression in pregnancy. We examine resilience in terms of the robustness of mental health and relationship quality in the face of one of the largest aggregate negative shocks in the 21st century, the COVID-19 pandemic. We show that women who received psychotherapy five years before the peak of the pandemic, exhibited significantly lower symptoms of anxiety (22.3%) and depression (18.9%), better spousal relationships (10.4%), and a markedly lower likelihood of experiencing marital problems (84%) when government restrictions were stringent, relative to women who did not receive the intervention. Further results suggest that these improvements are attributable to an enhanced ability to manage stress and worry, and through improved locus of control and problem-solving orientation.
Long-term effects of the 2010 Haiti Earthquake on Child Nutrition
With: Marina Dodlova and Michael Grimm
This paper assesses the effects of natural disasters on human capital accumulation. In particular, we examine the impact of the 2010 Haiti earthquake on child nutrition and education. Using the geo-coded data from the USGS ShakeMaps and four waves of Demographic Health Surveys, we find strong negative impacts of the earthquake on child stunting and wasting as well as on school attendance and attainment. The results are robust to alternative specifications, sample changes and different methodologies applied for calculating shaking intensity. Importantly, the deterioration of child nutrition and education is significant after controlling for the aid allocated by the World Bank to overcome the earthquake’s aftermath. The results also hold after controlling for selective mortality and migration patterns. Our contribution accentuates the necessity to protect children’s nutrition, prevent food insecurity and protect education after natural disasters in resource-poor settings.
The Economic Consequences of Improving Sleep among the Urban Poor through Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia
With: Idaliya Grigoryeva, Juan Pablo Franco and Sean Drummond
Funding received
Teacher Mental Health and Classroom Outcomes
With: Lelys Dinarte and Idaliya Grigoryeva
Piloting baseline survey
When Helpers Need Help: Encouraging Mental Health Care Use Among Health Workers
With: Carlos Schmidt-Padilla
Piloting baseline survey
Economic Constraints, Indoor Heat and the Health Toll of Failing to Adapt - Evidence from Tropical Informal Settlements
With: Grant Duffy, David Johnston, Rachel Knott, Emma Ramsay and Rohan Sweeney
Finalizing manuscript