Prerna Dokania - Research

Working Papers
Education, Labor, Development, Experimental Economics

My job market paper examines whether feedback incentivizes professional development among early childhood education and care providers. By bridging theoretical frameworks with practical applications, my work aims to contribute valuable insights to both academic discourse and industry practices.

Incentivizing Professional Development in Early Childhood Education
Job Market Paper
(Other: Blog on my field experience )

I run a lab-in-the field experiment with government ECE workers (based in Bihar, India) to nudge their intrinsic motivation for professional development. The study is designed in the context of the world’s largest public early childhood care and education program – the Anganwadi system in India. I collect primary data on service-providers' perception regarding in-service training and causally test if a light-touch information intervention about their knowledge gap motivates them to choose professional development opportunities over cash

Math Remediation Course and its Impact on Undergrad Outcomes using Fuzzy RDD
Poster (draft available on request)
Joint work with K. Blanchard & I. Foster

In this paper, we study the impact of taking a remedial math course prior to Principles of Microeconomics on students’ academic outcomes like their economics course grade, choice of electives, and graduation rates. Utilizing a fuzzy regression discontinuity design, we find that students just below the cut-off score on a placement test – who are more likely to take the remedial course – graduate sooner and do not perform worse than the students just above the cut-off, suggesting no discouragement effect from remediation

Effect of Student-Teacher Gender-Caste Matching on Social-Emotional Learning Outcomes

In this paper, I explore the association of teacher-student demographic match with student SEL measures like self-efficacy, sense of teacher fairness, and academic affirmations using a longitudinal sample of grade-3 students from two states in India. I find that student self-efficacy is on average lower if they have a lower social category teacher, and it decreases further if the student belongs to a higher social category. I do not find differential effect based on gender matching.

Left Behind? Effect of Seasonal Migration on Education Outcomes of 'Children Left Behind' (with Kathryn Blanchard)

We study the effect of parent’s temporary migration on education levels of ‘children left behind’ using data from India. We use an instrument variable specification formulated as a combination of labor demand Bartik shocks and distance from booming districts to handle the self-selection issue with measurement of migration at the district level. Reduced-form specifications indicate a zero net effect, implying a negative parent-away effect on educational attainment.

Working PapersEducation, Labor, Development, Experimental Economics