Research

This study constructs a novel dataset on the ethnicity of individuals in an ethnically diverse country in sub-Saharan Africa. We measure ethnicity using a machine-learning algorithm that exploits variation in surnames across ethno-linguistic groups. We apply this approach to voter registration data from Uganda's 2016 general election. The resulting data capture local variation in ethnicity over a wide geographic scale. We pair these data with election outcomes from polling stations throughout Uganda to estimate the relationship between ethnicity and voting behavior. Our regression analyses both control for location and include interactions between ethnic groups within the same polling station. Local variation in ethnicity is associated with voting behavior at the level of the polling station, and these relationships vary with the presence of other ethnic groups at the polling station. The results suggest the importance of studying ethnic voting using local variation in ethnicity at scale.

Published journal article

Accepted manuscript © 2025. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.

This paper studies whether the absence of locally adapted seed varieties constrains the productivity and incomes of farm households residing in small, agro-ecological niches. We empirically examine the disruption of the maize seed market in Western Kenya that took place when public sector foundation breeding and social impact investment capital came together and allowed a local seed company to expand and target a niche area with adaptively-bred maize varieties. The three-year randomized controlled trial reveals that these seed varieties increased farmer yields and revenues, both for better-resourced farmers (who used non-adapted hybrids and fertilizer prior to the intervention) as well as less well-resourced farmers (who did not). This theoretical and empirical evidence suggests news ways for thinking about seed systems in areas typified by high levels of agro-ecological heterogeneity.

Best Publication of 2022 Award -- Agricultural & Applied Economics Association Africa Section

Published journal article

Accepted manuscript © 2022. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.

ATAI Summary

AMA Policy Brief

This paper develops a novel empirical measure of market participation using subjective belief elicitation. I apply the measure to the study of developing country agriculture, in which production by a household is stochastic and a household may be a net buyer, a net seller, or autarkic with respect to a staple food crop that they produce. Data come from maize producing households in Uganda targeted for a government-implemented agricultural input subsidy program. Market participation belief measures have substantial within-household variation due to both stochastic and endogenous production factors, variation that would be hard to quantify with standard measures of market participation. I pair these market participation belief measures with administrative data on adoption of the agricultural input subsidy to estimate the relationship between market participation and technology adoption. Technology adoption varies with market participation, increasing with the subjective probability of transitioning from buying to autarky due to technology adoption. Measuring market participation with subjective belief elicitation offers new approaches to studying output market participation and its effects on economic behavior.

Full paper

This paper studies gender and market participation within agricultural households in sub-Saharan Africa. In particular, I estimate how gender of the individual who controls the harvest of a staple food crop relates to sales from that harvest. I estimate this relationship using within-household variation in panel data from the Government of Uganda for the Living Standards Measurement Survey – Integrated Survey of Agriculture from 2009-2015. Sales are greatest for harvests controlled by a single male, followed by harvests controlled by a female and male and harvests controlled by a single female. Average differences in sales between genders are largely driven by observations of banana harvests, especially those in western Uganda. I also estimate that allowing survey respondents to report multiple decision-makers substantially reduces both misclassification of decision-maker gender and bias when estimating the relationship between gender and market participation. The results show that estimates of the relationship between gender and market participation varies in sub-Saharan Africa with crop and measurement.

Full paper

Pentecostalism is among the fastest-growing religious movements in the world. We test whether increasing its salience shapes an individual’s economic behavior and disposition. We randomly assign invitations to workshops hosted by either Pentecostal churches or mainline Christian churches in Kenya. Relative to a control group, assignment to either type of church decreases contributions to a communal entrepreneurship fund as well as self-reported grit and self-control. Beyond higher interest-bearing savings among men assigned to Pentecostal workshops, we find limited evidence of a distinct "Pentecostal Ethic." Rather, our findings support the literature suggesting that Christianity more broadly may contribute to greater individualism.

AEA RCT Registry

We study the adoption of a time-bound electronic voucher subsidy for agricultural inputs by members of farmer groups in Uganda. Under a cluster-randomized design, each group was assigned a 90% input subsidy, a 67% subsidy, or no subsidy (control). Assignment to the 67% subsidy had no impact on voucher usage, whereas assignment to the 90% subsidy increased voucher usage by a statistically significant 30 percentage points. These estimated average treatment effects are consistent with the paper's theoretical model, which shows that liquidity, risk, and informational constraints would likely limit adoption of the 67% electronic voucher subsidy given the voucher program's technology and cost assumptions. In exploratory analysis, we find that voucher adoption by farmers who lacked prior experience with the subsidized inputs was higher when their farmer group leaders were either more experienced with the technology or more socially similar to them. In short, our analysis suggests that time-bound digital farm input subsidies may require relatively large subsidies and attention to informational constraints in order to spur technology adoption by smallholder farmers.