For more details, contact me at nsunder@bentley.edu

Abstract:

We examine articles published between 2002 and 2022 in the top 22 journals in the field of education economics and document the following patterns: (i) most publications (85.7 percent) are based on high-income countries, with the United States having the largest share (58.4 percent); (ii) there is a strong positive GDP-publications gradient; (iii) after controlling for several factors (including country GDP), nations with lower learning levels have fewer publications based on them, and (iv) publications based on high-income countries are more likely to imply external validity. We show that (a) concentration of authors and (b) research capacity/funding in high-income countries might explain a part of the positive GDP-publications relationship, while we find limited support for the argument that education-based papers on LMICs get disproportionately published in journals focused on developing countries.

We conducted an experiment on a major international online freelancing platform to examine how increased flexibility in daily work hours affects female participation. We post identical job advertisements (for 320 jobs) covering a wide range of tasks (80 distinct tasks) that differ only in flexibility and the wage offered. Comparing the numbers of applicants for these jobs, we find that while both men and women prefer flexibility, the elasticity of response for women is twice that for the men. Flexible jobs attracted 24% more female applicants and 12% more male applicants compared to inflexible ones. Importantly, these increases did not compromise the quality of applications. On the contrary, there is suggestive evidence that flexible jobs attracted higher-quality female candidates. Our findings have significant implications for understanding gender disparities in labor market outcomes and for shaping equity-focused policies of organizations.

I examine the impact of foreign aid on child health outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa, focusing on stunting as a key indicator. Using geocoded aid project data from six countries—Burundi, Malawi, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Uganda—matched with individual-level health data, I employ a quasi-experimental framework to analyze the causal effects of proximity to aid sites on childhood development. I find that children living within 10kms of an aid site are two percentage points less likely to be stunted. The results suggest that foreign aid contributes positively to child health perhaps through a combination of direct interventions, such as healthcare services, and indirect channels, including improved household incomes. I also show that the results are statistically significant and robust to different treatment definitions, which vary by geographic radii and temporal windows. Additional robustness checks confirm these results across multiple levels of fixed effects and alternate treatment definitions. While treatment effects are relatively consistent across gender and rural/urban status, children with uneducated mothers may experience slightly greater benefits. Overall, the findings underscore the importance of aid interventions to local communities and provide evidence for the broader applicability of aid’s positive impact on child health across sub-Saharan Africa.

Abstract: Attending kindergarten (KG) has been shown to have persistent benefits, but the peer effects of KG remain largely unexplored. We fill this gap in the literature by using nationally representative panel data on a cohort of middle-school students (grade 7) in China. We demonstrate that when peers have had limited time to interact with one another (three to six months), there are no discernable effects of peer KG status. However, in the medium-term (14+ months), having a peer group with KG experience improves academic (math, English, and Chinese exam scores) and non-cognitive outcomes including mental health and social adjustment. These impacts are more pronounced among children from underprivileged families, and are explained by reallocation of student time and effort, a better classroom environment, improved friends’ attitudes and behaviors, and pedagogically effective teacher-student interactions. The presence of these positive crosspeer spillovers indicates that the overall benefits of KG attendance are likely to be even higher than previously understood.

Some languages, like Spanish, assign gender to inanimate objects—for example, el sol (the sun, masculine) and la luna (the moon, feminine). These grammatical structures embed gender into everyday speech, potentially reinforcing traditional norms and limiting perceived female agency. We examine whether speaking such gendered languages is associated with more regressive gender attitudes and behaviors in low- and middle-income countries. To do so, we merge individual-level data from 36 countries using the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) with linguistic features from the World Atlas of Language Structures. We find that women who speak gendered languages are more likely to justify intimate partner violence and report lower participation in household decisions related to health, mobility, and finances. The effects are strongest among women with limited education, suggesting that schooling may mitigate language’s influence on gender norms. 

Please write to me at nsunder@bentley.edu for more details. Thanks!