Ongoing Research

Synopsis: Overlap between school and farming calendars—pervasive in agrarian settings—constrains children’s time for both activities, potentially forcing trade-offs between schooling and child labor. Using shift-share estimation, I study an exogenous shift to overlap between school and crop calendars in Malawi, weighted and aggregated by communities’ pre-policy crop shares, matched to panel data on school-aged children. From pre- to post-policy, a five-day (i.e., one school-week) increase in overlap during peak farming periods decreases children’s school advancement by 0.14 grades—one lost grade for every seven children—while only resulting in 3.9 percent fewer children working on the household-farm. Policy simulations show how adapting the school calendar to minimize overlap with peak farming periods can be an effective strategy to increase school participation.

Links: World Bank Development Impact Blog, UM Article, IFPRI Discussion Paper version

Abstract: Individuals usually contribute to public goods out of prosocial or altruistic motivations. Providing a private incentive for such donations can induce more giving by supplementing altruistic gains with direct benefits, or may reduce contributions if private benefits reduce the marginal “warm glow” enjoyed from giving. Using data from a lab-in-the-field experiment in rural Senegal, and within-individual comparisons, we find that providing private benefits reduces donations by 13%. Such motivational crowding-out is greater for individuals of higher socioeconomic status and for those with a higher willingness to donate in the absence of private benefits.

Synopsis: We study households’ choice between continued cash transfers and a new economic inclusion program—two global prevalent social protection programs—offered by the Egyptian government. Lower-than-expected early adoption of the new program is correlated with differing perceptions on its design. We randomize official messaging to households describing the new program’s (i) consumption support duration and (ii) income-earning potential. Both treatments increase respondents’ likelihood of recommending the new program. A theoretical model estimated using households’ perceptions of program design predicts interest in the new program, and how it diminishes with increasing effort costs, asset loss probability, risk aversion and loss aversion.

Links: IFPRI Blog, MENA Working Paper version

Synopsis: This study conducts a heterogeneity analysis using data from a three-year cluster randomized controlled trial in rural Mali comparing proactive home visits with fixed-site community-based care delivered by professional, supervised CHWs to assess whether the effect of proactive home visits on under-five mortality varies by the population served per community health worker (CHW). It focuses on a policy-relevant question for community health programmes: how staffing density and service-delivery models should be considered jointly when designing CHW systems. The paper contributes evidence on the conditions under which proactive outreach may be most relevant, particularly in resource-constrained and fragile settings where CHWs often serve large populations.

Synopsis: Environmental change and agricultural intensification can reshape schistosomiasis transmission by altering freshwater habitats that support intermediate host snails, as happened in the Senegal River Basin (SRB) following dam construction and irrigation expansion, yet the links between snail ecology, environmental conditions, and human infection risk remain incompletely understood. We evaluated ecological and epidemiological drivers of spatial heterogeneity in urogenital and intestinal schistosomiasis across 116 villages in northern Senegal, including parasitological surveys of 1,385 schoolchildren in a randomly selected subset of 29 villages. Concurrent ecological surveys quantified intermediate host snail abundance and infection, aquatic vegetation, anthropogenic debris, and physicochemical water characteristics at freshwater access points throughout the study villages. The findings demonstrate that schistosomiasis transmission in the SRB is shaped by interacting ecological, hydrological, and behavioral processes that vary between parasite species. Integrating environmental and snail management with preventive chemotherapy and improved water access infrastructure may therefore be critical for sustainable schistosomiasis control in northern Senegal and similar settings.

Status: Baseline and midline data collection complete. Analysis ongoing.

Policy outputs: Midline Report, Midline Policy Note

Status: Data collection ongoing.

Links: AEA Registry

Status: Baseline complete. Midline data collection ongoing.

Working paper coming soon: “Do private incentives crowd out public good donations? Evidence from a lab-in-the-field experiment” (with Kira Lancker, Lakshmi Iyer, Faraz Usmani, Molly Doruska, Samba Mbaye, Amina Sylla, Binta Sow, Jason Rohr, and Christopher Barrett).

Links: AEA Registry 

Status: Completed baseline data collection. Analysis ongoing.

Status: Data collection completed. Analysis ongoing. Working paper expected soon.

Links: IFPRI Project Note 

Status:  Digitizing raw data collected at the Archives Nationales du Senegal.