Impact of social pensions in Bangladesh (with S. Fehrler, A. Rabbani and H. Salomon)
Drafting stage.
We use detailed eligibility data of 4000 elderly in Bangladesh prior to the beneficiary selection, to assess quasi-experimentally the impact of social pension receipt on their consumption, mental health, physical well-being and satisfaction in a variety of dimensions.
Harmful Norms Perpetuated Through Politics? Election Cycles and Female Genital Cutting (with L. Corno, J. Garcia-Brazales and E. La Ferrara)
Drafting stage.
What drives the persistence of harmful social norms? We focus on female genital cutting (FGC), the partial or total removal of external female genitalia for non-medical reasons and argue that formal institutions may actively contribute to the perpetuation of the norm if doing so is in their benefit. We examine our hypothesis in Sierra Leone, where the prevalence rate is 90% and FGC is an expensive rite of passage into womanhood executed within powerful women associations whose leaders have as main source of income FGC fees and dictate the voting behavior of their members, especially in rural areas. Politicians therefore have an incentive to sponsor FGC to mobilize voters. We exploit the constitutionally-driven exogenous timing of general elections to estimate hazard models and document that poorer women in rural households indeed increase their likelihood of undergoing FGC during election years by 25% of their probability in off-election years.
Unlocking women's potential (with Ankush Asri)
Design stage.
Strategies to Curb Over-the-Counter Pharmacy Sales of Antibiotics in India (with Ankush Asri)
Design stage.