Research
Working papers:
Refugee Settlement and Social Integration: Evidence from Turkey (submitted)
This paper explores how refugee networks influence social integration in the host community. I study this question in the context of Turkey, a country that has been profoundly impacted by the arrival of more than 3.5 million Syrian refugees since 2011. Using a rich dataset on the mobile phone communications of Syrian refugees living in the country, I construct village-level measures of refugee presence and social integration. In villages with a larger refugee population, refugees make significantly more phone calls with locals and other refugees, and homophily decreases. Furthermore, refugee networks are more important for social integration when the refugee population is small relative to natives and when the cultural gap between refugees and locals is wider. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that refugee networks make it easier for their members to interact with locals by sharing information on local norms and creating new opportunities to meet locals.
Coverage: World Bank Development Impact Blog
From Missing Brothers to Educated Sisters: The Effects of Victimization During a Civil Conflict (submitted)
How do civil conflicts affect female empowerment? I study the effects of household-level victimization during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda on the human capital of surviving children. Identification stems from differential mortality rates by age groups and sex. I construct a Bartik-style instrument for household-level victimization based on whether the siblings of a child are likely to be targeted during the genocide due to their demographic characteristics. Victimization leads to a large increase in schooling, especially for surviving girls relative to surviving boys. Victimization mostly takes the form of losing siblings. These results can be explained by the impact of relief programs and by increased parental investments in the human capital of surviving children following the loss of a child.
Nation Building in Post-Conflict Settings: Evidence from South Africa (with Daniela Horta Sáenz and Gianluca Russo)
How do states rebuild nations after a major conflict? Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRCs) have emerged as one of the most common interventions to achieve this objective. Despite their popularity, little is known about their efficacy to foster reconciliation and nation-building. We fill this gap by studying the seminal TRC established in South Africa after the end of Apartheid. To measure exposure to TRC across South African municipalities, we leverage quasi random variation in media coverage of the TRC message. South African municipalities with higher historical exposure to TRC on media have lower levels of violence today. This effect is driven by improved nation-building and higher trust towards post-Apartheid institutions. Exploiting daily variation in TRC hearings and mediatic exposure in the short-run, we bolster our interpretation that our long-run results are forged in the years of the TRC activity. The same evidence suggests that our results are driven by the coverage of TRC on media as opposed to generic media exposure.
Work in progress:
"Social Networks and Women's Economic Empowerment" (with S. Anukriti and Eeshani Kandpal)
"Transportation Networks and Inter-Ethnic Contacts" (with Gedeon Lim and Alex Rothenberg)
"Can I get that in writing? Lessons from a Contracting Field Experiment in Urban Malawi (with Mahesh Karra)