Midwest International Economic Development Conference

April 23, 2026
Time	Location	Event
17:00 to 19:00	Pyle Hallway in front of room 213	Registration
April 24, 2026
Time	Location	Event
07:00 to 09:30	Pyle Hallway in front of room 213	Registration
07:15 to 08:00	Pyle Hallway in front of room 213	Breakfast
08:00 to 10:00	Pyle room 213	Session 1A
08:00 to 10:00	Pyle room 225	Session 1B
08:00 to 10:00	Pyle room 226	Session 1C
10:00 to 10:15	Pyle Hallway in front of room 213	Refreshment Break 1
10:15 to 12:15	Pyle room 213	Session 2A
10:15 to 12:15	Pyle room 225	Session 2B
10:15 to 12:15	Pyle room 226	Session 2C
12:15 to 13:30	Pyle Alumni Lounge	Buffet Lunch
13:30 to 15:30	Pyle room 213	Session 3A
13:30 to 15:30	Pyle room 225	Session 3B
13:30 to 15:30	Pyle room 226	Session 3C
15:30 to 15:45	Pyle Hallway in front of room 213	Refreshment Break 2
15:45 to 17:45	Pyle room 213	Session 4A
15:45 to 17:45	Pyle room 225	Session 4B
15:45 to 17:45	Pyle room 226	Session 4C
18:00 to 18:45	Pyle Alumni Lounge	Reception
18:45 to 20:30	Pyle Alumni Lounge	Dinner and Keynote Address
April 25, 2026
Time	Location	Event
07:15 to 08:00	Pyle Hallway in front of room 213	Breakfast
08:00 to 10:00	Pyle room 213	Session 5A
08:00 to 10:00	Pyle room 225	Session 5B
08:00 to 10:00	Pyle room 226	Session 5C
10:00 to 10:15	Pyle Hallway in front of room 213	Refreshment Break 3
10:15 to 12:15	Pyle room 213	Session 6A
10:15 to 12:15	Pyle room 225	Session 6B
10:15 to 12:15	Pyle room 226	Session 6C
12:15 to 13:30	Pyle Hallway in front of room 213	Boxed Lunch

Summary of All Sessions
Click here for an index of all participants

Date/Time	Type	Title/Location	Papers
April 24, 2026 8:00-10:00	contributed	Poverty and Inequality     Location: Pyle room 213	4
April 24, 2026 8:00-10:00	contributed	Firms     Location: Pyle room 225	4
April 24, 2026 8:00-10:00	contributed	Credit and Insurance     Location: Pyle room 226	4
April 24, 2026 10:15-12:15	contributed	Political Economy     Location: Pyle room 213	4
April 24, 2026 10:15-12:15	contributed	Mental Health     Location: Pyle room 225	4
April 24, 2026 10:15-12:15	contributed	Labor     Location: Pyle room 226	4
April 24, 2026 13:30-15:30	contributed	Education 1     Location: Pyle room 213	4
April 24, 2026 13:30-15:30	contributed	Environmental Shocks     Location: Pyle room 225	4
April 24, 2026 13:30-15:30	contributed	Structural Transformation     Location: Pyle room 226	4
April 24, 2026 15:45-17:45	contributed	Education 2     Location: Pyle room 213	4
April 24, 2026 15:45-17:45	contributed	Identity     Location: Pyle room 225	4
April 24, 2026 15:45-17:45	contributed	Trade     Location: Pyle room 226	4
April 25, 2026 8:00-10:00	contributed	Urban     Location: Pyle room 213	4
April 25, 2026 8:00-10:00	contributed	Agriculture     Location: Pyle room 225	4
April 25, 2026 8:00-10:00	contributed	Health     Location: Pyle room 226	4
April 25, 2026 10:15-12:15	contributed	Gender     Location: Pyle room 213	4
April 25, 2026 10:15-12:15	contributed	Land Use     Location: Pyle room 225	4
April 25, 2026 10:15-12:15	contributed	Migration     Location: Pyle room 226	4

 

18 sessions, 72 papers, and 0 presentations with no associated papers

Midwest International Economic Development Conference
Detailed List of Sessions

Session: Poverty and Inequality April 24, 2026 8:00 to 10:00 Location: Pyle room 213
Session Chair: Harounan Kazianga, Oklahoma State University
Session type: contributed
1. Displacement and Development: Evidence from a Graduation Program for Somalia’s Ultra-Poor Abstract While the population of internally displaced people (IDPs) around the world continues to grow, evidence around strategies to sustainably enhance their livelihoods remains extremely limited. We present findings from a randomized trial of an ultra-poor graduation program targeting IDPs in urban Baidoa, Somalia. The intervention provided cash transfers, an asset transfer or technical training program, and facilitated savings groups. Our findings suggest that two years following the program launch, the intervention has led to significant increases in consumption, assets, and savings. However, these effects seem to be driven almost exclusively by increased livestock production. An exploration of heterogeneous effect using generalized random forest methods further suggests that the positive effects of the treatment are dramatically larger for smaller households characterized by lower dependency ratios.
By Kalle Hirvonen; IFPRI    Naureen Karachiwalla; International Food Policy Research Insti    Jessica Leight; IFPRI
Presented by: Jessica Leight, IFPRI
Discussant:   Michael King, Trinity College Dublin
2. How many children, men, and women are living in poverty globally? An approach combining structural and machine-learning models Abstract The World Bank’s global poverty numbers have always been based on three strong assumptions: (1) household consumption is entirely private, i.e. there are no economies of scale in household consumption; (2) all household resources are distributed equally among members irrespective of age or gender composition; and (3) adults and children have identical needs. This paper leverages advances in data and modelling to address these issues, thereby providing more reliable estimates of the demographic distribution of global poverty, and improving poverty targeting and monitoring. It adopts data on household resource shares accruing to men, women, and children estimated for 45 countries from a structural model of collective household decision-making. It combines these data with prediction variables from multiple sources to train machine-learning models and predict household resource shares for the remaining countries in the world. It then estimates extreme poverty affecting men, women, and children from individual-level survey data while incorporating sharing, inequality, and different needs for adults and children in the household. From a global sample of 152 countries, more than 40 percent of the estimated 802 million people living in extreme poverty in 2024 were women, a third were men, and a quarter were children.
By Dean Jolliffe; The World Bank    Christoph Lakner; The World Bank    Daniel Mahler; World Bank    Samuel Kofi Tetteh-Baah; World Bank
Presented by: Samuel Kofi Tetteh-Baah, World Bank
Discussant:   Harounan Kazianga, Oklahoma State University
3. Household Frictions and Reaching the Frontier: Experimental Evidence from Malawi Abstract We examine the role of gender targeting and couples training on economic cooperation and women’s empowerment within the context of a multifaceted anti-poverty program for the ultra-poor in Malawi. We document how an additive lower cost intervention to alleviate internal constraints in the household is almost as effective at generating economic returns as the sizable multifaceted anti-poverty program it was added to. Specifically, seventeen months post program, participation in couple’s training for female-targeted households affected the nature of investments made by the household towards livestock, suggesting a drift towards male domains. It nonetheless led to a Pareto improvement with improved household income and business income - driven by higher female business income and increased livestock sales and ownership. The couple’s training also improved female economic agency, male mental health, and couples are more likely to stay together. Finally, the gender of the recipient does not affect overall household or spousal consumption, or the total or spouse specific ownership of assets, suggesting the presence of income pooling and complete risk sharing.
By Michael King; Trinity College Dublin
Presented by: Michael King, Trinity College Dublin
Discussant:   Samuel Kofi Tetteh-Baah, World Bank
4. Not All Inequalities Are Created Equal: Initial Endowments and Ethnic Inequalities in Burkina Faso Abstract This paper examines how historical spatial endowments, rather than explicit ethnic discrimination, have created persistent ethnic inequalities in Burkina Faso. We develop a conceptual model where the optimal allocation of a well-meaning, optimizing government is linked to population density -- more densely populated regions get more schools, and the more schools in a region, the shorter the travel distance for students. Using data from 1961, 1975, and the 2019 census, we find that communes with higher historical population densities had shorter distances to schools, which improved primary school completion and formal labor market participation. Our analysis shows that ethnic disparities align with historical settlement patterns; the Mossi, in high-density regions, had better school access, while the Fulani and Gourmantché faced disadvantages. Controlling for education nearly eliminates ethnic employment gaps, indicating that disparities arise mainly from unequal education opportunities rooted in geography. These findings highlight how efficiency-driven policies can lead to enduring inequalities, emphasizing the need for a balance between equity and efficiency in public service provision.
By Harounan Kazianga; Oklahoma State University    Mohamed Nana; ETH-Zurich    Tade Okediji; University of Minnesota    Rodney Smith; University of Minnesota
Presented by: Harounan Kazianga, Oklahoma State University
Discussant:   Jessica Leight, IFPRI
Session: Firms April 24, 2026 8:00 to 10:00 Location: Pyle room 225
Session Chair: Gisella Kagy, University of Wisconsin Madison
Session type: contributed
1. Micro-enterprise saturation: Critical mass or overcrowding? Abstract Should entrepreneurship support programs to extremely poor people be scaled by saturating a few villages, or maintaining low saturation and enrolling more villages at a higher cost? On the one hand, saturation may create a critical mass of entrepreneurs whose income generation and associated spending multipliers make each other viable. On the other hand, encouraging the start-up of many small firms in close proximity may be a recipe for overcrowding and artificially fierce competition in a small village economy. In a large randomized control trial in Malawi, I exogenously vary the saturation of an entrepreneurship support program to assess whether business performance increases or decreases in the share of treated neighbors. Business performance is tracked at fortnightly high frequency. Eighteen months after the start of the intervention, most participants have started a retail business and the number of successful businesses scales linearly with the number of supported entrepreneurs to be, but the overall earnings take a 22% hit as saturation doubles and aggregate earnings are split among the larger number of supported entrepreneurs. Earnings losses are of a comparable magnitude to implementer cost savings. The heightened competition does not lower consumer prices, but induces out-migration. I show that the sectoral concentration in retail is not driven by information frictions about other entrants’ intended sectoral choice. Instead, respondents highlight a lack of hard skills.
By Moritz Poll; Brown University
Presented by: Moritz Poll, Brown University
Discussant:   Gisella Kagy, University of Wisconsin Madison
2. Firm Adaptation and Reallocation under Rationing: Evidence from South Africa Abstract Rationing policies are frequently implemented due to equity concerns. We study whether equitable-exposure rationing rules deliver equal economic impacts in the context of the 2021--2023 power crisis in South Africa. We leverage shocks to outage intensity and a rotational assignment system to generate quasi-random variation in electricity outage exposure, and we combine detailed hour-level outages with geocoded transactions data from a leading payment platform in Cape Town. Although we find that aggregate daily sales do not change on outage days, there is substantial heterogeneity across the firm distribution. Revenue is reallocated through consumers substituting between firms: baseline high-performing firms able to invest in defensive technology capture the spending displaced from their competitors, gaining roughly nine percent in daily sales while the latter lose a similar share. Unequal effects are amplified when firms are able to anticipate electricity outages. The results suggest the impacts of rationing are not equal despite equitable exposure.
By Jun Wong; University of Chicago
Presented by: Jun Wong, University of Chicago
Discussant:   Moritz Poll, Brown University
3. Knowing the Numbers: Performance Data and Microenterprise Outcomes in Uganda Abstract Can increasing business owners’ knowledge of their enterprise performance improve firm outcomes? We explore this question through a randomized controlled trial (RCT) with retail businesses in Kampala, Uganda. Firms were randomly assigned to one of three groups: (1) control, (2) record-keeping encouragement, or (3) record-keeping plus fortnightly business analytics — simple summaries of key business metrics over time. After one year of these interventions, we find that receiving business analytics leads to substantial increases in profits, sales and the value of inventory alongside improvements in the accuracy of business knowledge, inventory management, and the quality of record keeping. In contrast, encouraging record-keeping alone has no measurable effect, suggesting that merely keeping records is not sufficient to improve business outcomes. Our findings indicate that efforts to support microenterprises should move beyond basic financial literacy or record-keeping training and provide tools to enable business owners to understand and monitor their business performance over time.
By Timothy Ogden; Financial Access Initiative    Emma Riley; University of Michigan
Presented by: Emma Riley, University of Michigan
Discussant:   Jun Wong, University of Chicago
4. Mind the Data Gaps: An Examination of Public Enterprise Data from Sub-Saharan Africa Abstract We document and explore strikingly different characterizations of the enterprise landscape derived from the two most widely available enterprise data sources in Sub-Saharan Africa: the World Bank Enterprise Surveys (WBES), which targets formal establishments with five or more employees, and nationally representative household surveys (HHS), which enumerate enterprises through household-based sampling without size or formality restrictions. HHS data suggest enterprise issues related to infrastructure, capital, and market access are top policy priorities, while WBES data emphasize governance and safety. WBES samples show 25 percentage points lower female ownership than HHS and dramatically higher sales, with near gender sales parity (in stark contrast with the 59 cents on the dollar implied by HHS). Focusing on countries with both data sources available in similar years, we find the sources capture nearly mutually exclusive segments of the sales distribution, especially the female-owned sales distribution; thus, standard reweighting applied to either data source cannot bridge its data gap. Instead, we develop a concatenation approach to approximate the full enterprise distribution, revealing that HHS better represents the average enterprise and (female) owner while WBES covers a larger share of aggregate output. Our findings caution the use of commonly available data for the establishment of general stylized facts without careful consideration of these data gaps.
By Gisella Kagy; University of Wisconsin Madison    Morgan Hardy; New York University Abu Dhabi    Nusrat Jimi; Vassar College
Presented by: Gisella Kagy, University of Wisconsin Madison
Discussant:   Emma Riley, University of Michigan
Session: Credit and Insurance April 24, 2026 8:00 to 10:00 Location: Pyle room 226
Session Chair: Joshua Deutschmann, University of Chicago
Session type: contributed
1. Risk Aversion and Credit Access: Solving Financial Exclusion through Contract Innovation Abstract Credit market failures may reflect voluntary withdrawal by risk-averse borrowers in addition to supply-side constraints. We conduct a randomized trial with 1,517 Bangladeshi households, offering cattle financing through conventional loans or profit-sharing contracts that spread risk between the farmer and the financial partner. Overall, interest in and take-up of the profit-sharing contracts were modestly higher than the conventional loans. However, conventional loan take-up was much lower among risk-averse farmers, and profit-sharing eliminated the take-up gap between risk-averse and non-risk-averse farmers. We find that it is male risk preferences that are associated with these decisions even when contracts explicitly target women. Livestock investment increases under both contracts with no evidence of moral hazard under profit-sharing.
By Kate Ambler; IFPRI    M Mehrab Bakhtiar; International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)    Alan de Brauw; IFPRI
Presented by: M Mehrab Bakhtiar, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
Discussant:   Madison Levine, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign
2. Credit Constraints and Capital Allocation in Agriculture: Theory and Evidence from Uganda Abstract Fertilizer adoption is persistently low among Sub-Saharan African farmers. Numerous governments have responded by introducing substantial price subsidies, but solving an allocation problem by introducing price distortions has unclear welfare implications. This paper presents results from a theory-guided experiment on fertilizer adoption among Ugandan farmers, finding that there exists a group of farmers with high returns to fertilizer, who would not adopt at the market price but can be induced to adopt with a 30% subsidy. Furthermore, consistent with adoption frictions due to liquidity constraints, the results indicate that a cash transfer is sufficient to eliminate the need for subsidies. These findings tie into broader ideas on second-best policymaking (Lipsey and Lancaster, 1956) and have important implications for fertilizer policy in Africa.
By Benedetta Lerva; World Bank
Presented by: Benedetta Lerva, World Bank
Discussant:   Joshua Deutschmann, University of Chicago
3. See It Grow: A randomized evaluation of a digital innovation to improve crop insurance contract design Abstract Agricultural insurance can relax risk constraints on input investment, yet markets remain thin due to asymmetric information and basis risk. We evaluate picture-based insurance (PBI), a digital indemnity contract using smartphone images to assess crop damage. A cluster-randomized trial in Kenya compares PBI and weather index insurance effects on take-up and fertilizer use. Moving from index-based to indemnity insurance increases coverage, especially among women and farmers in drought-prone areas. Both products raise fertilizer use, but higher PBI take-up does not increase aggregate use. This reflects multidimensional selection: PBI attracts farmers with lower investment. Thus, contract design shapes coverage and investment.
By Berber Kramer; International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)    Francesco Cecchi; Wageningen University    Madison Levine; University of Illinois Urbana Champaign    Lilian Waithaka; ACRE Africa
Presented by: Madison Levine, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign
Discussant:   Benedetta Lerva, World Bank
4. Contagion in Financial Cooperatives: Evidence from Guarantor Networks in Kenya Abstract Social ties underpin much of formal and informal finance in low- and middle income countries. One concern about the use of social ties is the potential for strategic behavior to cause defaults to cascade. In this paper, we provide a novel characterization of the network defined by loan guarantees in a financial cooperative in Kenya. The network is highly interconnected, with most members forming a single large connected component. We then study how production shocks propagate through this network. We find that production shocks have a small direct effect, but sizeable indirect short-term effect on loan nonpayment, with each production shock causing more than one loan nonpayment event among connected borrowers on average. We find no evidence of persistent changes in loan nonpayment, suggesting the propagation of production shocks is costly for the financial institution but may not threaten long-term viability.
By Paul Brimble; University of Michigan    Kevin Carney; University of Michigan    Joshua Deutschmann; University of Chicago
Presented by: Joshua Deutschmann, University of Chicago
Discussant:   M Mehrab Bakhtiar, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
Session: Political Economy April 24, 2026 10:15 to 12:15 Location: Pyle room 213
Session Chair: Muhammad Yasir Khan, University of Pittsburgh
Session type: contributed
1. Incentives, Administrative Capture and Preference Aggregation in Community-Based Targeting Abstract Community-based targeting (CBT), which leverages community leaders to identify eligible beneficiaries, is widely used in social protection programs and development interventions, especially in data-scarce settings. Yet, little is known about how these leaders respond to opportunities for potential resource leakages and elite capture, and whether such behavior is moderated by budget constraints or the level of discretion given to leaders. Similarly, how community leaders involved in CBT aggregate individual preferences into collective decisions remains understudied. We conduct a cluster-randomized experiment in 180 Ethiopian villages to study the effects of incentive structures and discretion on administrative capture—defined as funds retained under the disguise of covering “administrative” costs. Local leaders were tasked with allocating real or hypothetical transfer budgets, with discretion to retain up to 10 percent as “administrative costs”. To uncover decision-making and preference aggregation within CBT committees, we elicited these decisions (proposals to retain a portion of the budget) individually as well as collectively. We find that financial incentives significantly increase administrative (elite) capture, and that capture increases with budget size. Group decisions yield higher appropriation than individual proposals, suggesting implicit collusion rather than prosocial restraint in group-based decisions. Moreover, when real stakes are at play, group outcomes are disproportionately shaped by extreme (outlier) preferences, whereas in hypothetical settings without actual transfers, popular preferences dominate. These findings highlight behavioral mechanisms underlying collective decision-making and administrative capture in CBT, which can inform the design of more accountable CBT systems.
By Kibrom Abay; IFPRI
Presented by: Kibrom Abay, IFPRI
Discussant:   Muhammad Yasir Khan, University of Pittsburgh
2. Public Procurement, Firm Networks, and the Propagation of Government Demand Abstract Public procurement is one of the largest and most policy-driven sources of demand in the economy. We study the effect of government demand shocks using a novel dataset that links the universe of firm-to-firm transactions in China with administrative tax records and comprehensive bid evaluation data containing the precise scores of all competitors. We implement a quasi-experimental design that compares winning firms to runner-up bidders who lost by narrow scoring margins. We find that contract awards lead to large, persistent increases in firm revenue, profits, and employment, driven by a significant expansion in intermediate input purchases. Crucially, we document that procurement shocks induce both network expansion and competitive displacement: winning firms actively broaden and upgrade their supplier base, driving expansion and reallocation of suppliers. These direct effects generate significant upstream spillovers, as the suppliers of winning firms experience robust growth even without direct government contracts. Aggregating these granular linkages, we show that production networks amplify the aggregate fiscal multiplier, with demand propagating primarily upstream to connected supplier industries.
By Qianmiao Chen; World Bank
Presented by: Qianmiao Chen, World Bank
Discussant:   Kibrom Abay, IFPRI
3. Overpromising and Underdelivering: The Political Economy of Air Pollution Policy in India Abstract What are the political consequences of setting ambitious policy targets and failing to meet them? We study this question in the context of India's National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), a flagship policy designed to cut air pollution by 40\% in 131 cities and address a crisis that causes 1.2 million deaths annually. Using multiple difference-in-differences approaches, we demonstrate that the program had a precisely estimated zero effect on air pollution. In a survey experiment carried out with residents of NCAP cities, we show that informing citizens about NCAP boosted their approval of the government’s air pollution policy. Surprisingly, this effect persisted even when respondents were told the program had no impact --- revealing a clear political benefit from the ambitious announcement, and minimal cost for the subsequent implementation failure. This incentive structure is consistent with the lack of political commitment to implementing NCAP, which we document, and is a likely explanation for the program's failure to reduce air pollution.
By Archana Bala; Columbia University    Martin Mattsson; National University of Singapore    Sangita Vyas; CUNY Hunter College
Presented by: Sangita Vyas, CUNY Hunter College
Discussant:   Qianmiao Chen, World Bank
4. Social Norms, Men's Beliefs, and Women Voting Abstract This paper investigates the role misperceptions play in preventing women from participating in politics in conservative societies. Before the 2024 general election in Pakistan, we surveyed 2,593 households across 36 villages and found substantial misperception of social norms regarding women's voting and misbeliefs about alignment between men's and women's vote choices. Using a randomized controlled trial, we provided truthful information to households to correct their misbeliefs. Correcting misperceptions nearly doubled women's turnout from a baseline of 14.4 percent. Information about vote alignment and about permissive community norms were similarly effective, raising turnout by 10.9 and 10.2 percentage points respectively. An incentivized survey experiment revealed the information relaxed constraints on women's political decision-making almost immediately. However, turnout effects on election day were stronger in households with higher baseline women's empowerment, suggesting information campaigns are most effective for marginal cases.
By Saad Gulzar; Princeton University    Muhammad Yasir Khan; University of Pittsburgh
Presented by: Muhammad Yasir Khan, University of Pittsburgh
Discussant:   Sangita Vyas, CUNY Hunter College
Session: Mental Health April 24, 2026 10:15 to 12:15 Location: Pyle room 225
Session Chair: Kevin Carney, University of Michigan
Session type: contributed
1. Turning Inward and/or Outward: Which Socioemotional Skills Pay for Agribusiness Entrepreneurs in Nigeria? Abstract Socioemotional skills (SES) programs are widely used to promote economic empowerment, yet their returns may vary by skill-type and gender. This paper evaluates an SES intervention for 4,500 agribusiness owners in a large-scale government program in Nigeria. Using a randomized controlled trial we examine whether trainings focused on interpersonal skills yield higher economic returns when combined with intrapersonal skills among men and women. SES trainings overall enhance women’s economic outcomes, raising business profits by over 50%, with some firms brought into activity and others growing on the intensive margin. The interpersonal and combination treatments yield similar economic impacts. However, we find that the interpersonal skills training improves women’s interpersonal skills (e.g., negotiation, empathy and collaboration), while the combination training improves men’s intrapersonal skills (e.g., emotional awareness and perseverance). The positive impacts on women’s business performance are strongest in norm supportive environments — where there is little perceived judgment from the community for defying traditional gender roles — with no evidence of an effect on their agency or decision-making power. Our results suggest that while SES programs are effective at improving women’s economic outcomes, accelerating broader empowerment may require complementary programs to help relax gender norms.
By Smita Das; Innovationsf or Poverty Action    Clara Delavallade; World Bank    Ayodele Fashogbon; Department of Agricultural Economics    Sreelakshmi Papineni; World Bank
Presented by: Sreelakshmi Papineni, World Bank
Discussant:   Antonia Vazquez, University of Texas at Austin
2. In-Kind Reparations, Wellbeing, and Mental Health Conditions: Evidence from the Colombian Land Restitution Program Abstract Recognizing victims' rights to receive justice while transitioning to peace, the Colombian government enacted in 2011 Law 1448 (Victims' Law), a landmark decision that established a series of reparation processes for the victims of the country's long internal armed conflict. In this paper, I focus specifically on land restitution, which seeks to restore property rights for victims who had to abandon their land or were subject to dispossession. Using the timing of the policy implementation in a difference-in-differences strategy and detailed electronic health records, I explore first the spillover effects of the restitution process on mental health conditions at the municipality level. I show that the restoration of property rights is associated with a reduction in overall mental health conditions equivalent to 18 cases per 10,000 people. A decrease in conflict, more productive investment, and coverage of the health system suggest that the interventions to secure property rights boost the trust and expectations of citizens during times of war. In a second exercise using microdata on the direct restitution beneficiaries and exploiting the timing of when they got their land back, I find that those who have been exposed to the restitution are more likely to have health insurance, less likely to be renters and have a higher probability of owning real estate. Taken together, these findings are consistent with an improvement in victims' mental health status to the extent that the process of non-monetary reparations amplifies institutional presence, reduces poverty levels and offers a safer local environment to enjoy the restored property rights.
By Dario Salcedo Monroy; University of Wisconsin – Madison
Presented by: Dario Salcedo Monroy, University of Wisconsin – Madison
Discussant:   Kevin Carney, University of Michigan
3. The Well-Being Effects of Digital Mental Health Care Abstract The widespread global adoption of smartphones and rise of AI-powered mental health digital tools has generated enthusiasm about their potential to expand access to mental health support at a low cost. Yet questions remain about their effectiveness, user engagement, and the risk of exacerbating isolation or crowding out traditional care. We evaluate an AI-powered digital mental health app in a randomized controlled trial among women in Mexico experiencing at least mild psychological distress. Over a 24- week period, access to the app led to significant improvements: reductions in anxiety, depression, and stress; enhanced subjective well-being; lower feelings of isolation; improved sleep quality; and greater uptake of other healthy behaviors. Treated participants were also more likely to seek traditional psychotherapy, though this is not the main driver of results. While engagement with the app was initially high and declined over time, treatment effects persisted, potentially suggesting that the app could address high distress periods or that users learned tools to address emotional distress.
By Manuela Angelucci; University of Texas    Raissa Fabregas; The University of Texas at Austin    Antonia Vazquez; University of Texas at Austin
Presented by: Antonia Vazquez, University of Texas at Austin
Discussant:   Dario Salcedo Monroy, University of Wisconsin – Madison
4. Financial Incentives, Health Screening, and Selection into Mental Health Care: Experimental Evidence from College Students in India Abstract Young adults worldwide experience high rates of depression and anxiety, but many do not seek treatment. In a randomized controlled trial with college students in Chennai (N=340), we test how modest financial incentives and personalized feedback affect the uptake and targeting (by symptom severity) of free therapy. Despite 56% of students screening positive for at least mild depression or anxiety, only 3% in the control group took up therapy. A small cash incentive (∼$6 USD) increased appointments by 9 pp (p = 0.06) on average without substantially affecting targeting. Personalized feedback and recommendations based on a mental health screening tool did not increase appointments on average, but significantly improved targeting. Combining cash incentives with personalized feedback increased appointments by 21 pp (p < 0.01) among symptomatic individuals, without affecting uptake by asymptomatic individuals. These findings suggest that low-cost incentives coupled with screening information can effectively increase uptake while allocating limited mental health care resources to those with greater need.
By Kevin Carney; University of Michigan
Presented by: Kevin Carney, University of Michigan
Discussant:   Sreelakshmi Papineni, World Bank
Session: Labor April 24, 2026 10:15 to 12:15 Location: Pyle room 226
Session Chair: Khoa Vu, Charles River Associates
Session type: contributed
1. Working Without Wages: The Consequences of Widespread Pay Delays Abstract We show that firms in low-income countries frequently withhold employee wages and study how workers respond to this widespread practice. Using original survey data from Lagos, Nigeria, we document that 30% of workers across firms of all sizes report delayed or unpaid salaries. To examine how workers respond to wage withholding, we conduct a field experiment in which we establish a firm in Nigeria, reach over 1,700 jobseekers through our recruitment process, and hire 600 for multi-month employment. Unpaid wages increase employees’ initial effort, as outstanding balances raise the amount workers expect to receive in the future, without affecting absenteeism or total hours worked. The prevalence of wage withholding creates uncertainty that in- duces worker selection. Credibly signaling salary reliability increases job take-up by 25%, attracting workers who would otherwise be unwilling to accept wage employment but are no more productive. Combining intensive- and extensive margin estimates suggests that, in our setting, firms lose at most 0.2% in productivity from engaging in wage withholding. This gives firms little incentive to refrain from the practice, while workers are willing to forgo more than 30 percent of the monthly minimum wage for reliable pay.
By Daniel Sonnenstuhl; University of Chicago
Presented by: Daniel Sonnenstuhl, University of Chicago
Discussant:   Akhila Kovvuri, Stanford University
2. Anti Sexual Harassment Amenities at Work Abstract While many countries have mandated provisions of anti-sexual harassment amenities at work through anti-sexual harassment laws, low monitoring due to low state capacity can lead to under-investment in such amenities. Lack of private provision could be due to lack of awareness about the laws or perceived under-importance of such amenities for workers. In this paper, we first study whether job seekers value such amenities using a job choice experiment. We then study whether firms understand the POSH act and investigate their compliance and whether they understand what anti-sexual harassment amenities job seekers want in a job. We find that job seekers value safety amenities at about 5-13\% of their salary, similar to job flexibility. We also find that majority of firms did not understand the provisions of the act and were mis-calibrated on job seekers' preferences for such amenities. Using an information experiment to bridge these gaps, we show that while firms could be weakly motivated to seek more information about how to make workplaces safer, they do not translate into making real changes in their behaviour.
By Karmini Sharma; Imperial College London Business School
Presented by: Karmini Sharma, Imperial College London Business School
Discussant:   Khoa Vu, Charles River Associates
3. Moving Opportunity Closer: How Public Transit Transforms Firm Composition and Employment Abstract Transportation infrastructure can improve workers' access to existing economic opportunities, but it can also reshape economic opportunity itself by influencing where and what kinds of firms locate. This paper studies how public transit infrastructure influences firm location, composition, and employment at the neighborhood level. We construct novel data tracking over one million establishment entries and employ both difference-in-differences and market access specifications, exploiting the phased expansion of the Delhi Metro Rail in India. Transit access increases firm entry near stations, with larger, established retail and service firms locating first and inducing subsequent entry of other firms. These patterns create new economic hubs in peripheral areas, increasing employment per capita, especially for women in a context of low baseline female labor force participation. Counterfactual decompositions using a quantitative spatial model with estimated gender-specific commute elasticities reveal that compositional shifts toward larger establishments and consumer-facing industries that ex-ante employ more women account for the majority of this differential employment effect. Understanding how infrastructure reshapes the demand side of the labor market is thus critical for predicting and enhancing its distributional impacts.
By Akhila Kovvuri; Stanford University
Presented by: Akhila Kovvuri, Stanford University
Discussant:   Daniel Sonnenstuhl, University of Chicago
4. Drought and Agricultural Adaptation: Land Reallocation and Labor Dynamics in Vietnam Abstract Climate change increases the frequency and intensity of droughts, posing major risks to agricultural production in developing economies such as Vietnam. We study how droughts reshape land allocation and input choices that underpin both short-run adaptation and long-run structural change. We find that droughts reduce rice cultivation, reallocating land away from rice toward other crops and aquaculture in the long term. In response to droughts, households intensify rice production on smaller plots, diversify into non-rice crops, and expand aquaculture in the short run. At the same time, droughts have relatively more adverse effects on local manufacturing sectors, pulling workers out of non-agriculture into agriculture. The additional agricultural labor is absorbed primarily into rice intensification and crop diversification, whereas aquaculture expansion is entirely driven by mechanization adoption. The results highlight various adjustment margins to droughts in interaction with local labor market conditions in shaping adaptation pathways.
By Giang Thai; University of Minnesota    Khoa Vu; Charles River Associates
Presented by: Khoa Vu, Charles River Associates
Discussant:   Karmini Sharma, Imperial College London Business School
Session: Education 1 April 24, 2026 13:30 to 15:30 Location: Pyle room 213
Session Chair: Paul Glewwe, Univ. of Minnesota
Session type: contributed
1. Looking ahead? The Role of Future Educational Opportunities on Pre-College Human Capital Abstract Do future schooling opportunities shape current educational decisions? In this paper, I explore a large expansion in the supply of free technical and traditional higher education institutions (HEI) in Brazil to assess whether exposure to HEI openings shifted educational trajectories and pre-college human capital accumulation for local teenagers. Using a novel dataset on policy roll-out combined with rich administrative records, I measure the effect of receiving an HEI on local students' pre-college outcomes, college attendance, and later labor market outcomes. Employing a staggered differences-in-differences approach, I find that the arrival of an HEI meaningfully increases students' middle-school test scores and high-school graduation rates. Following an increase in pre-college educational attainment, students in treated municipalities experience higher college enrollment, wages, and employment in the formal sector. Non-white students who are exposed to an HEI are 3.5% more likely to continue to high school after completing primary education, with no effects on progression for white students. Although effects on all other pre-college education outcomes are similar by race, wage gains in the formal labor market are concentrated among white individuals. Addressing potential mechanisms, I find that higher education expansion significantly decreases the share of 9th-graders working outside the household in treated municipalities, consistent with the important trade-off between schooling and work in low- and middle-income contexts.
By Virna Vidal Menezes; University of Notre Dame
Presented by: Virna Vidal Menezes, University of Notre Dame
Discussant:   Paul Glewwe, Univ. of Minnesota
2. Social Engineering Through Schools Abstract We study how schools embed themselves in communities and, in doing so, function as instruments of social engineering that influence political and cultural change. Our focus is on schools run by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu nationalist volunteer organization. We compile new data on the establishment years and locations of these schools and link it to constituency-level electoral outcomes for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), India’s dominant right-wing party. Using a staggered difference-in-differences design, we find that the presence of RSS schools leads to a persistent rise in BJP vote share and a higher probability of BJP victories in subsequent elections. These schools also lead to cultural change. Vegetarianism rises in nearby villages, especially among upper-caste households, the traditional supporters of the BJP. The share of children given Hindu deity names, particularly those of the \textit{Vaishnavite} pantheon, increases in affected areas after the setting up of schools. Together, these patterns point to a process of gradual identity activation through sustained community engagement. To examine the mechanisms in greater detail, we survey a random subsample of RSS-run and non-RSS private schools across four districts in Bihar. The survey results indicate that, relative to close-by non-RSS private schools, RSS schools are substantially more likely to engage in Hindu religious programming as well as community engagement that involves not only students but also parents and local communities.
By Varun K; Harvard University    Anirvan Chowdhury; Georgetown University    Aaditya Dar; Indian School of Business    Chinmaya Kumar; Azim Premji University
Presented by: Varun K, Harvard University
Discussant:   Virna Vidal Menezes, University of Notre Dame
3. Activating Parental Managerial Capital: How Role Clarity Improves Education Outcomes Abstract Households, like firms, differ widely in how effectively they transform inputs into outcomes. This paper argues that gaps in parental managerial capital—the ability to structure time, monitor effort, and guide behavior—help explain persistent educational inequality. I designed and evaluate a randomized experiment in Benin in which less-educated parents received, on average, ten structured phone calls offering behavioral guidance on how to manage their child’s time and effort on educational production. The intervention improved parental monitoring and time management, raising GPA by 0.11 standard deviations, reducing absenteeism by 11%, increasing grade completion by 6%, and lowering dropout—especially among girls and children of illiterate parents. The results highlight managerial capital as a critical but overlooked input in education, distinct from information or financial constraints.
By Mahounan Yedomiffi; Dartmouth College
Presented by: Mahounan Yedomiffi, Dartmouth College
Discussant:   Varun K, Harvard University
4. Beyond Basics: Whole-School Reform and Early Adolescent Development Abstract This study investigates whether a government-led, whole-school reform in public lower secondary schools can simultaneously reduce dropout and improve both academic and socioemotional outcomes. We employ a prospective difference- n-differences design, matching 200 reform schools in Morocco to 100 comparable schools using machine learning on nationwide administrative data. The analysis combines primary assessment data for 20,036 students with enrollment records for 637,587 observations. After one year, the reform reduced end-of-year dropout by 1.6 percentage points (a 31.4 percent decline), increased learning by 0.52 standard deviations (a 3.3-fold acceleration), and improved a pre-specified index of socioemotional skills by 0.22 standard deviations. These findings demonstrate that government-led interventions can deliver multidimensional benefits during the critical lower secondary school years and highlight the potential of whole-school reform to support adolescent development.
By Paul Glewwe; Univ. of Minnesota
Presented by: Paul Glewwe, Univ. of Minnesota
Discussant:   Mahounan Yedomiffi, Dartmouth College
Session: Environmental Shocks April 24, 2026 13:30 to 15:30 Location: Pyle room 225
Session Chair: Berber Kramer, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
Session type: contributed
1. Liquidity Constraints and Real-Time Adaptation to Extreme Heat: Evidence from GigWorkers Abstract Extreme heat reduces labor supply and worsens health for workers exposed to outdoor conditions. We study whether short-term liquidity facilitates adaptation to heat shocks. We evaluate a randomized intervention that provides small, forecast-triggered payments to gig delivery workers during heatwaves. Access to liquidity attenuates productivity losses and mitigates heat-related health symptoms by enabling costly avoidance behaviors, including rescheduling work to cooler hours and resting in cooled locations. Machine-learning-based heterogeneity analysis shows gains concentrate among workers facing rigid demand and output-linked pay. Despite ex-post benefits, workers display low ex-ante demand for heat-indexed insurance, highlighting liquidity constraints as a barrier to adaptation.
By Yutong Chen; University of Texas at Arlington    Md Amzad Hossain; University of Arkansas    Sheetal Sekhri; University of Virginia
Presented by: Yutong Chen, University of Texas at Arlington
Discussant:   Steve Berggreen, Stanford University
2. Water Wars Abstract This paper studies the relationship between access to water resources and local violence in Africa. Due to limited irrigation, rural communities rely on water from rainfall and rivers for their economic needs. When rainfall is scarcer, river water becomes more valuable, potentially fueling violence in areas with greater control over its flow. We test this hypothesis by combining high-resolution data on hydrography, river network structure, rainfall, and conflict in Africa from 1997 to 2021. Low rainfall in a location increases conflict in neighboring areas that are water-rich and located upstream along the river network. The effects are stronger where water distribution among ethnic groups is more unequal and weaker in countries with better governance. The increase in conflicts is more pronounced in regions facing a long-term decline in river water availability. These findings suggest that water access can drive local violence, a risk that may grow as climate change increases the frequency of droughts and reshapes river water distribution.
By Devis Decet; Northwestern University
Presented by: Devis Decet, Northwestern University
Discussant:   Berber Kramer, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
3. Salient Climate Shocks and Precautionary Saving Abstract Households in low- and middle-income countries face substantial climate risk but often lack access to formal insurance, reliable forecasts, or long historical records from which to infer future conditions. Existing work typically measures climate risk using variability, implicitly assuming that the ordering of climate shocks is irrelevant for behavior. This paper challenges that assumption. I introduce a measure of climate shock salience that captures the magnitude of recent year-to-year reversals in local weather conditions. Using household survey data from 29 low- and middle-income countries combined with high-resolution climate data, I show that climate shock salience predicts precautionary saving, while standard measures of climate variability do not. The effects are concentrated among rural households and operate primarily through informal saving arrangements. Exploiting panel data from Tanzania, I further show that within the same households, changes in shock sequencing increase emergency saving and amplify perceived climate risk, even when conditioning on realized climate conditions and long-run variability. These results show that the temporal sequencing of recent shocks constitutes an economically meaningful dimension of perceived risk with important implications for household food security and climate change adaptation.
By Steve Berggreen; Stanford University
Presented by: Steve Berggreen, Stanford University
Discussant:   Devis Decet, Northwestern University
4. Bundling crop insurance with digital credit to boost agricultural investments: Findings from a randomized trial in two states in India Abstract Digital innovations offer new ways to expand agricultural credit in settings where traditional borrower‑based screening is limited. We evaluate KhetScore, a digital credit‑scoring system that uses remote sensing and machine learning to predict plot‑level agricultural productivity and inform lending decisions. Using a cluster‑randomized trial in two Indian states, we estimate impacts on credit access, borrowing patterns, and agricultural production. Access to KhetScore significantly increases borrowing from formal financial institutions without increasing overall indebtedness. Agricultural production expands primarily at the extensive margin, with larger effects in the poorer state. This demonstrates the potential of plot‑based credit scoring to expand productive investment.
By Berber Kramer; International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)    Subhransu Pattnaik; University of Gottingen    Patrick Ward; University of Florida    Yingchen Xu; University of Florida
Presented by: Berber Kramer, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
Discussant:   Yutong Chen, University of Texas at Arlington
Session: Structural Transformation April 24, 2026 13:30 to 15:30 Location: Pyle room 226
Session Chair: Jeremy Foltz, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Session type: contributed
1. Farm Household Misallocation Abstract Agricultural markets often fail to allocate resources efficiently across farm households in developing countries. However, policymakers require knowledge of which markets fail and how the distortions they generate are correlated. Using data from rural Thailand, I characterize how distortions in land, labor, credit, and insurance markets each contribute to misallocation. I use moments in household consumption and production data to separately identify these distortions and develop a novel method using them to structurally estimate the production function. I find that the efficient allocation would increase aggregate productivity by 7.2% relative to the status quo, while only 4.0% (2.8%) gains could be achieved by eliminating financial (input) distortions in isolation. Positive interaction effects from addressing multiple distortions simultaneously account for the remaining 0.4% TFP gains. There also appear to be sharply decreasing marginal returns to addressing a single distortion in isolation, suggesting that policies overcoming inefficiencies in a broad set of markets would outperform attempts to eliminate a single one. Meanwhile, other common methods would produce larger estimates of misallocation and suggest that a financial market intervention would decrease aggregate productivity. Accounting for multiple correlated distortions is therefore crucial for measuring misallocation and designing policies to address it.
By Jedediah Silver; Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Presented by: Jedediah Silver, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Discussant:   Jeremy Foltz, University of Wisconsin-Madison
2. Sun, Sand, and Services: Tourism and Household Welfare in Jamaica Abstract Tourism services have seen marked growth over the previous two decades. A number of lower- and middle-income countries have sought to take advantage of this boom in demand in the hopes of driving economic development. Even so, there remain significant questions about the ability of tourism to contribute to robust and inclusive prosperity for local populations in developing countries. I address this gap in the literature by investigating these questions in Jamaica, an upper-middle-income country that has made tourism the foundation of its development strategy. I combine a rich and granular dataset of tourist expenditure surveys from the Jamaican Ministry of Tourism with a detailed, nationally representative household expenditure survey, both spanning nearly two decades. Linking tourist activity and individual households across consistent spatial units, I employ a shift-share instrumental variable identification strategy to estimate the effects of changes in tourism revenues on the welfare of local households. I find increases in real consumption and welfare for urban households with members working in mid-skilled occupations in non-tourism services and manufacturing. I discuss the implications of these findings for understanding the welfare impacts of tourism specialization in developing countries, and for the design of policies that aim to harness and scale tourism in the service of development.
By Matthew McKetty; University of Wisconsin - Madison
Presented by: Matthew McKetty, University of Wisconsin - Madison
Discussant:   Jedediah Silver, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
3. Can the Service Sector Lead Structural Transformation in Africa? Evidence from Cote d'Ivoire Abstract Standard models of structural transformation of developing economies typically see an increase in manufacturing as a necessary phase of economic development. Meanwhile, many African countries have bypassed manufacturing, moving directly to a service sector economy, which has concerned many observers, especially about the labor and productivity growth effects. Can the service sector lead structural transformation in an African economy through productivity and labor force growth? We answer this question with unique firm-level panel data from Cote d'Ivoire. Using proxy variable estimates of total factor productivity, we show that it is possible to produce credible estimates of service sector productivity and estimate labor movements across  rms of different productivity levels. Our results show that TFP in services is 2.46 times as high as that in manufacturing on average, and that high-productivity  rms in services hire more workers overall, especially unskilled workers, than low-productivity firms. Overall, the results sug- gest that in Cote d'Ivoire, the service sector is leading structural transformation and GDP growth. We draw conclusions about what this means for development policy in Africa.
By Chunxiao Jing; University of Wisconsin-Madison    Jeremy Foltz; University of Wisconsin-Madison
Presented by: Jeremy Foltz, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Discussant:   Andrei Laskievic, University of Michigan
4. Commodity Booms and Structural Transformation: The Role of Input Use and Land Inequality Abstract This paper studies the effects of an agricultural commodity price boom on structural transformation. I construct a shift-share measure of exposure to the commodity shock by combining climate- and soil-induced variation in agricultural production patterns among municipalities in Brazil with fluctuations in international commodity prices between 2000 and 2010. I show that labor was reallocated away from agriculture towards the manufacturing sector in locations more exposed to the commodities boom. Using data from the Population and Agricultural Censuses, I argue that the results are consistent with greater use of capital inputs in agriculture, which worked as substitutes for farm labor, and greater land inequality in more exposed locations, which ultimately displaced workers from the agricultural sector.
By Andrei Laskievic; University of Michigan
Presented by: Andrei Laskievic, University of Michigan
Discussant:   Matthew McKetty, University of Wisconsin - Madison
Session: Education 2 April 24, 2026 15:45 to 17:45 Location: Pyle room 213
Session Chair: Jeffrey Smith, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Session type: contributed
1. The Economics of Algorithmic Personalization: Evidence from an Educational Technology Platform Abstract Can personalized recommendations improve engagement in educational technology? We design, test, and scale a collaborative filtering system for Freadom, an English-learning app for Indian children. A randomized controlled trial (RCT) shows that personalization, deployed in a single content section, increases engagement by 60% in that section and by 14% app-wide. We then exploit an eligibility threshold in a regression discontinuity design (RDD) to track effects over five months of deployment. For user cohorts receiving personalization during deployment, RDD estimates exceed RCT benchmark by a factor of 2.5, opposite of the ``voltage drop" typically observed in policy scale-ups. This provides evidence that, for algorithmic interventions, RCT estimates may be lower bounds on scaled impact rather than upper bounds. However, personalization benefits are front-loaded. Gains concentrate in users' first weeks, with diminishing returns thereafter. This pattern, combined with the sharp decline in predicted match quality as users exhaust their best content matches, suggests that content availability rather than algorithmic sophistication becomes the binding constraint.
By Keshav Agrawal; Stanford University    Susan Athey; Stanford University    Ayush Kanodia; Stanford University    Shanjukta Nath; University of Georgia    Emil Palikot; Stanford University
Presented by: Emil Palikot, Stanford University
Discussant:   Jeffrey Smith, University of Wisconsin-Madison
2. Too good to last? Exploring persistence and fade-out of quality preschool at 11 and 13 years in Ghana Abstract The preprimary school period is one of tremendous growth in early cognitive and social competence and is a critical foundational period for later school success. Yet, little is known about how early educational experiences shape school children’s cognitive and social outcomes at the end of primary school, particularly in low- and middle-income countries where educational quality is often limited. We report two sets of estimates of the causal impact of higher-quality preprimary school experiences on children’s academic, cognitive and social-emotional skills in 2021 and 2024. We draw on a longitudinal sample of children who participated in the Quality Preschool for Ghana (QP4G) study in 2015-2016, where their schools were randomly assigned to a teacher training intervention that improved classroom quality and child outcomes in the short term, a teacher training plus parental engagement intervention, or to a control condition, where children were exposed to standard preschool education. In contrast to earlier follow-ups, we find no evidence of long-term effects of the QP4G on any measured outcomes. Further, we do not find effects on hypothesized potential mechanisms at 11 and 13 years of age. In sum, by leveraging a rigorous randomized design and state-of-the-art methods to account for attrition, we find that access to higher-quality preprimary school did not show sustained improvements in child skills six and nine years later, despite finding sustained effects in earlier years.
By Elisabetta Aurino; University of Barcelona    John Egyir; Universidad de Alicante    Karen Ortiz-Becerra; University of San Diego    Sergi Quintana    Noelle Suntheimer; University of Minnesota, Twin Cities    Sharon Wolf; University of Pennsylvania
Presented by: Karen Ortiz-Becerra, University of San Diego
Discussant:   Emil Palikot, Stanford University
3. Scaling Down Costs to Scale Up Effective Programs: Evidence from Two Randomized Interventions Abstract To scale education programs governments confront a critical trade-off between mitigating costs while preserving high-fidelity implementation. Partnering with the Ghanaian Ministry of Education, we analyze this trade-off through two randomized controlled trials following the nationwide roll-out of Differentiated Learning (DL) in 10,000 government primary-schools. An In-Person teacher refresher training significantly improved teacher implementation of DL and increased student test scores by 0.07 standard deviations. In contrast, neither a Digital refresher nor Information Session impacted teaching practices. These findings highlight that light-touch digital interventions may be inexpensive at scale, but their effectiveness depends on whether they satisfy the binding implementation constraints.
By Sabrin Beg; University of Delaware    Stephanie Bonds; Center for Global Development    Anne Fitzpatrick; The Ohio State University    Adrienne Lucas; University of Delaware
Presented by: Sabrin Beg, University of Delaware
Discussant:   Karen Ortiz-Becerra, University of San Diego
4. Reading for Life Abstract Despite many examples of educational programs that are effective in the short run, evidence of programs that remain effective in the long-run is scarce. We study the Northern Uganda Literacy Project (NULP)—a three-year early-grade reading intervention that had large immediate impacts on reading of up to 1.4 SDs in local language and 0.6 SDs in English. We follow students 8-9 years after the program began (5-6 years after it ended) and find that 50% of the effect remains in local language and 92% remains in English, amounting to up to 0.71 SDs gains in local-language reading and 0.5 SDs of gains in English reading compared to the control group. We find no spillover effects on math. The control group exhibits dismal grade progression and retention both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. While the literacy program had no impact on attendance or remaining in school, it led to a 10% improvement in grade progression.
By Julie Buhl-Wiggers; Copenhagen Business School    Jason Kerwin; University of Washington    Ricardo Montero; University of Minnesota    Jeffrey Smith; University of Wisconsin-Madison    Rebecca Thornton; University of Notre Dame
Presented by: Jeffrey Smith, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Discussant:   Sabrin Beg, University of Delaware
Session: Identity April 24, 2026 15:45 to 17:45 Location: Pyle room 225
Session Chair: Soeren Henn, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Session type: contributed
1. All in the Family: Kinship Pressure and Firm-Worker Matching Abstract Firm hiring in low- and middle-income countries often remains within family networks. This paper tests whether kin-based redistributive pressure pushes firms toward less-productive family hires. I run three field experiments in Zambia that offer hiring subsidies and randomize employers' "plausible deniability" for rejecting relatives. Deniability shifts hiring away from kin: the probability of hiring a family member falls by 20-25% in urban samples and by 26% in rural labor markets. Using randomized subsidy menus, I elicit employers' reservation subsidies and express the wedge as a price-equivalent "kin-pressure tax"; deniability lowers the premium to hire a non-kin by ZMW 38 (4% of monthly profits) in urban firms. Heterogeneity in the effect suggests that for some jobs related workers are desirable employees and for other jobs they are undesirable: treatment effects attenuate where performance is easily verifiable to outsiders and are large where effort is opaque, making firing kin socially costly. Finally, I find evidence that the incidence of the tax falls on employers: when employers receive randomized subsidies for related versus unrelated hires in rural markets, I find that relatives produce 7% less output at similar cost. Together, the results quantify an implicit tax on the hiring margin, show that its burden largely falls on employers through reduced output, and suggest for which jobs family hiring is privately optimal versus distortionary.
By Nicholas Swanson; Cornell University
Presented by: Nicholas Swanson, Cornell University
Discussant:   Benjamin Krause, University of Chicago
2. Colonizer Identity and Economic Development: Evidence from the “Scramble for Africa” Abstract This paper examines the long-run economic impact of differential European colonial rule in Africa, by exploiting differences arising from the arbitrary borders established during the Scramble for Africa (1876-1912). Using a regression discontinuity design along the full set of British-French colonial borders in West and Central Africa, we explore the impact of colonizer identity on local measures of economic development. We find that areas formerly under British rule exhibit higher nighttime light intensity (2-6%), which translates into substantially higher local GDP per capita (USD 1,620-2,220). At the individual level, these areas display higher educational attainment, lower unemployment rates, and improved public good provision. We explore mechanisms and find sharp institutional discontinuities at colonial borders. Areas formerly under British rule display lower perceived corruption in formal government institutions, particularly local government, and higher trust in parliaments. Perceived judicial corruption is lower, while agreement that court decisions must be obeyed is stronger, in line with differences in legal origin. However, traditional leaders show higher perceived corruption on the British side, consistent with indirect rule empowering traditional authorities as intermediaries. Colonial legacies also shape nation-building. British areas show weaker national identity and lower colonial language use, alongside lower perception of unfair treatment of one’s ethnic group. These findings indicate that differential colonial governance strategies created persistent institutional divergences that continue to shape economic development in contemporary Africa.
By Thomas Lloyd; University of Michigan    Laston Manja; University of Michigan
Presented by: Laston Manja, University of Michigan
Discussant:   Soeren Henn, University of Wisconsin-Madison
3. Imagined Communities and Nation Building Abstract We test a theory that posits that national identity can be strengthened by historical narratives anchored in museums and monuments that create the nation as an "imag- ined community". To implement this test, we estimate the impact of a high-school program in Mexico that takes students with predominantly indigenous backgrounds to visit sites integral to the Mexican nation’s history. We find that the program in- creases stated, implicit, and incentivized measures of national identity, causes stu- dents to self-identify as having darker skin and indigenous origins, and contribute to public goods. Most effects persist for half a year, although attenuated.
By Benjamin Krause; University of Chicago    Michael Kremer; University of Chicago    Eduardo Rivera; MIT    Enrique Seira; MSU
Presented by: Benjamin Krause, University of Chicago
Discussant:   Laston Manja, University of Michigan
4. Does Contact Reduce Conflict? Experimental Evidence from Nigeria Abstract Can contact between warring groups reduce conflict? We examine this question through a randomized controlled trial across 286 communities of farmers and settled herders in Nigeria. We assess the impact of two distinct contact interventions: inter-group dialogue workshops where both sides discuss the underlying sources of their conflict, and health workshops where participants discuss health issues without directly addressing the conflict. We find that inter-group dialogues partly strengthen relationships but produce unexpected negative effects. Farmer cooperation increases, and newly formed farmer-herder committees improve conflict resolution mechanisms. However, the dialogues also attract an influx of outside herders into communities, and overall, herder cooperation decreases. As a result, economic disputes rise, though violence levels remain unchanged during the first year after the intervention. In contrast, health workshops have entirely negative effects: cooperation decreases on both sides, stereotypes and empathy worsen, and disputes increase, though violence again remains unchanged a year later. Over the longer run, two years after the interventions, the dialogues lead to increased violence. The deterioration in inter-dialogue communities is consistent with cooperative agreements unraveling as herders renege on their commitments. Our results highlight the complexities and unintended consequences of promoting contact between groups engaged in active conflict, particularly in settings where third parties can undermine cooperative efforts.
By Oeindrila Dube; Harris school, Univeristy of Chicago    Soeren Henn; University of Wisconsin-Madison    James Robinson; University of Chicago
Presented by: Soeren Henn, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Discussant:   Nicholas Swanson, Cornell University
Session: Trade April 24, 2026 15:45 to 17:45 Location: Pyle room 226
Session Chair: Eleanor Wiseman, University of Wisconsin Madison
Session type: contributed
1. Beyond Borders: Impacts of the Plastic Waste Trade in Indonesia Abstract Global plastic waste generation has risen sharply over the past two decades, while recycling rates remain below 9%. As a result, high-income countries have exported waste to low- and middle-income countries with weaker regulatory capacity. This study investigates the environmental consequences of the abrupt reorientation of global plastic waste flows following China’s 2018 National Sword Policy, which restricted plastic waste imports and redirected large volumes to Southeast Asia. Employing a quasi-experimental design, the analysis leverages spatial and temporal variation in exposure to waste sites and deep-sea ports to estimate the impact of increased plastic waste imports on fine particulate matter (PM2.5) across Indonesia, a receiving country heavily affected by these inflows. The empirical strategy integrates satellite-based PM2.5 measurements, machine-learning–identified waste facilities, trade data, and port locations. The difference-in-differences estimates show that PM2.5 concentrations increase by roughly 7–8 percent in areas within 3 km of waste sites relative to locations farther away, with effects that attenuate quickly with distance. Additionally, when port proximity is included in the model, pollution increases are concentrated in cells that are both near waste sites and deep-sea ports handling imported plastic. These results provide causal evidence of cross-border pollution leakage generated by global plastic waste trade and highlight the distributional consequences of unilateral environmental policies. The findings underscore the need for stronger regulation and enforcement in waste-receiving countries and for international coordination to ensure that efforts to improve environmental quality in one jurisdiction do not exacerbate environmental injustice elsewhere.
By Monica Shandal; UCSC
Presented by: Monica Shandal, UCSC
Discussant:   Eleanor Wiseman, University of Wisconsin Madison
2. Elsewhere in North America: How U.S. Tariffs on China Boosted Mexico's Manufacturing Employment and Output Abstract Using administrative longitudinal firm- and plant-level data from Mexico that links manufacturing firms to their customs records and covers the period 2014–2023, I examine whether US tariffs targeting China have contributed to a manufacturing revival in the southern part of North America. Leveraging the abrupt shift in US trade policy as a natural experiment, and constructing firm-level trade policy exposure measures based on firms’ pre-shock trade portfolios at the product level, I show that higher US tariffs on China significantly increased manufacturing output and employment. Adjustment occurs along both intensive and extensive margins, through expansion of existing plants and the establishment of new manufacturing plants by incumbent firms. Foreign multinationals and their domestic affiliates operating under Mexico’s export platform, IMMEX, drive these gains in manufacturing output and jobs, with U.S.-headquartered firms making a particularly notable contribution. The employment response is concentrated among production workers and technicians and in technology-intensive industries embedded in North American supply-chain specialization. These findings provide firm-level evidence that heightened import protection in the United States has stimulated manufacturing activity elsewhere in North America— namely, in Mexico.
By Hale Utar; Grinnell College
Presented by: Hale Utar, Grinnell College
Discussant:   Monica Shandal, UCSC
3. Trade Liberalization and Human Capital Formation: Child Learning and Child Labor in Peru Abstract Trade liberalization can promote long-run growth, but adjustment costs fall unevenly and may affect children's human capital with lasting consequences. We examine how Peru's dramatic unilateral liberalization efforts affected human capital, exploiting local labor market exposure to import tariff cuts and combining household surveys with administrative records on test scores and enrollment. We document a stark trade-off between the quantity of schooling and the quality of learning. Greater exposure to import competition increased public primary school enrollment and attendance, yet learning outcomes deteriorated: exposed districts experienced a decline in average math scores. We trace these divergent outcomes to countervailing income and substitution effects. While the decline in returns to low-skill labor increased the relative value of schooling, negative shocks to household income forced children to combine education with employment. Finally, we document a substitution from private to public schooling driven by income constraints, which mechanically raised average private school scores via compositional changes. Our results highlight that trade reforms can expand school access while simultaneously eroding learning quality, a cost standard enrollment metrics fail to capture.
By Ryan Abman; San Diego State University    Leah Lakdawala; Wake Forest University    Clark Lundberg; San Diego State University
Presented by: Leah Lakdawala, Wake Forest University
Discussant:   Hale Utar, Grinnell College
4. Traders Beyond Borders The Effects of Incentivizing Cross-Border Trade Abstract We investigate the impact of an incentive-to-trade scheme on micro-enterprise performance among traders at the Kenya-Uganda border. Through a randomized controlled trial (RCT), we assess the effects of a scalable monetary incentive combined with an information treatment to curb misperception of trading risks. The treatment significantly increases trade volume and leads to sizable growth in revenue and profit, detected six months after the end of the intervention. We explore the underlying mechanisms driving these results, particularly the role of profit reinvestment and changes in traders’ perceptions of risk. This study contributes critical insights into the potential of targeted interventions to enhance cross-border trade and improve the economic outcomes of micro-entrepreneurs in developing regions.
By Eleanor Wiseman; University of Wisconsin Madison
Presented by: Eleanor Wiseman, University of Wisconsin Madison
Discussant:   Leah Lakdawala, Wake Forest University
Session: Urban April 25, 2026 8:00 to 10:00 Location: Pyle room 213
Session Chair: Yao Wang, Ohio State University
Session type: contributed
1. The market for safe food in informal settings: Experimental evidence from cyanide in Nigeria Abstract Food safety failures in informal food markets remain widespread, driven by the unobservability of food contaminants, information asymmetries between producers and consumers, and the lack of incentive to supply safe foods. Whether market-based mechanisms can support food safety improvements, and under what conditions such markets can emerge, remains unclear. These issues are salient in cyanide-safe cassava product markets, leading to serious health risks for hundreds of millions who consume cassava foods as a staple. We implemented a randomized controlled trial combined with experimental auctions among 1,200 small-scale cassava processors and 792 consumers in Nigeria to estimate supply and demand conditions that can lead to a market for safe gari (a cassava flour). We specifically evaluated whether training, price incentives, and information can spur the supply and demand of cyanide-safe gari in the same market. Both training and a price premium reduced cyanide concentrations by more than 50% and increased compliance with WHO safety standards by 35 to 70 percentage points. Consumers were willing to pay more than processors required as a premium to produce safe gari, by a margin large enough to suggest that a market for safe food exists given simple processor training and consumer information. Overall, results show informal food markets can internalize safety when the costs of producing safe foods are low, and training and information are provided.
By Bukade Adesina; Purdue University    Jonathan Bauchet; Purdue University    Jacob Ricker-Gilbert
Presented by: Bukade Adesina, Purdue University
Discussant:   Yao Wang, Ohio State University
2. Urban Sprawl and Residential Carbon Emissions: Evidence from Indonesia and the Philippines Abstract This paper studies how neighborhood density affects residential carbon emissions, using detailed data from Indonesia and the Philippines. To address simultaneity, we instrument density with soil characteristics, and to address sorting, we control for community averages of observed characteristics. Unlike cities in developed countries, we find that density is positively correlated with residential energy use. After controlling for sorting, we find a precise null relationship between density and residential carbon emissions. Our results suggest that policies to control urban sprawl may not be successful in reducing residential carbon emissions in developing country cities.
By Yi Jiang; ADB    Taylor Lathrop; Syracuse University    Alexander Rothenberg; Syracuse University    Yao Wang; Ohio State University
Presented by: Alexander Rothenberg, Syracuse University
Discussant:   Bukade Adesina, Purdue University
3. Don’t Know, Don’t Care? Experimental Evidence on Barriers to Responsive Public Services in Ethiopia Abstract Do bureaucrats know and respond to the policy preferences of the public in a decentralized bureaucracy? In a sample of local Ethiopian bureaucrats, we document low knowledge of public priorities and substantial mismatch between citizen and government priorities. Using three experiments, we show that bureaucrats fail to update beliefs or adapt policy when provided with information about local preferences for public services, and bureaucrat demand for this information is low. Mismatch between citizen and local government priorities in this setting cannot be explained by information frictions, lack of autonomy, or bureaucrat turnover. Our results challenge standard assumptions in models of fiscal federalism and highlight the limitations of decentralized bureaucracies in providing locally tailored public services without incentives or intrinsic motivation to meet public demand.
By Daniel Agness; University of Maryland, College Park    Pascaline Dupas; Princeton University    Tigabu Getahun; Ethiopian Development Research Institute (EDRI)    Fiker Negash; Princeton University
Presented by: Daniel Agness, University of Maryland, College Park
Discussant:   Alexander Rothenberg, Syracuse University
4. Carbon Footprint of Place-based Economic Policies Abstract We evaluate the unintended environmental impacts of Special Economic Zones (SEZs)—a place-based policy aimed at promoting economic development in India—on firms’ energy use and carbon emissions. Using detailed firm-level energy data and a spatial regression discontinuity difference-in-differences (RD-DiD) design, we find that firms located within SEZs reduce their carbon emissions by 25% compared to comparable firms outside SEZs. This reduction is primarily driven by a shift from conventional fuels to lower-carbon renewable energy sources, rather than by a decline in output. Guided by a conceptual framework, our heterogeneity analysis shows that emission reductions are more pronounced among larger firms and non-manufacturing firms with greater flexibility in energy substitution, and firms located in regions with better access to clean energy infrastructure
By Sayahnika Basu; James Madison University    Yao Wang; Ohio State University    Zhanhan Yu; University of Glasgow
Presented by: Yao Wang, Ohio State University
Discussant:   Daniel Agness, University of Maryland, College Park
Session: Agriculture April 25, 2026 8:00 to 10:00 Location: Pyle room 225
Session Chair: Laura Meinzen-Dick, Michigan State University
Session type: contributed
1. Implementer Desirability Bias in Program Evaluation Abstract Development interventions are commonly piloted by organizations with strong community ties. Reminding beneficiaries that a pilot is being evaluated may prompt them to take costly actions that reflect favorably on the implementer. We test for this form of desirability bias in an evaluation of an unsuccessful agricultural extension pilot that ultimately drove treated farmers away from the target crops. Making the evaluation salient during endline data collection led participants to neutralize the negative treatment effect by altering input purchases and cultivation patterns. Implementer desirability bias can help explain why some promising pilot results fail to replicate at scale.
By Ashish Shenoy; UC Davis    Travis Lybbert; University of California, Davis
Presented by: Ashish Shenoy, UC Davis
Discussant:   Laura Meinzen-Dick, Michigan State University
2. Signed, Sealed, Delivered: Digital Receipts in the Ugandan Dairy Chain Abstract Using a randomized experiment with dairy cooperatives in western Uganda, we provide causal evidence that SMS-based digital receipts for daily milk deliveries improve accountability, product quality, and delivery frequency. In a context of weak monitoring and imperfect transaction information, these messages allow smallholder farmers to better observe the behavior of intermediaries in the supply chain. The intervention effects vary with the intensity of information frictions. Among farmers facing high information frictions (i.e., those relying on intermediaries to transport milk), the intervention increased the detection of discrepancies and encouraged switching away from dishonest intermediaries. Farmers in low-friction settings (those who deliver milk themselves) delivered more frequently; the likely mechanism is a behavioral nudge created by receiving messages both on days with deliveries and days without deliveries. We also find that the intervention increased milk quality for both self-deliverers and farmers using transporters. Overall, our results show that simple digital tools can reduce information asymmetries and strengthen accountability in smallholder supply chains.
By Pedro Magana Saenz; University of Wisconsin-Madison    David Henning; UCLA
Presented by: Pedro Magana Saenz, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Discussant:   Ashish Shenoy, UC Davis
3. The Economic Consequences of Knowledge Hoarding Abstract Social learning is an important source of knowledge diffusion in low-income countries. However, the highly localized character of many labor markets could inhibit social learning by giving rise to incentives for individuals to hoard their knowledge. This paper studies the impact of knowledge hoarding on the diffusion of profitable skills and technologies in rural Burundi and measures its aggregate and distributional consequences for the village economy. In a field experiment covering 223 villages (labor markets), we encourage workers skilled in high-return agricultural technologies to share their knowledge with unskilled individuals. We randomize at the local labor market level whether the unskilled worker is a competitor (i.e., someone from the same labor market) and whether the training is about a technology with rivalrous rents (row planting, which commands a wage premium in the labor market). We first establish that knowledge hoarding indeed reduces social learning. When incumbents are matched with an individual from the same labor market, knowledge transmission occurs only 3% of the time, but this figure reaches 43% if the unskilled worker is not a competitor. In contrast, transmission of a technology with nonrivalrous rents (composting) is high regardless of the unskilled worker's identity. Next, we show that knowledge hoarding creates winners and losers: By hoarding knowledge, incumbents earn 6% more, and the skilled equilibrium wage is 3% higher. In contrast, unskilled workers' earnings and farm output are 7% and 20% lower, respectively. Overall, knowledge hoarding reduces technology adoption by over 20%, suggesting substantial yield losses. %The number of days in row-planting employment is 16% higher, and the share of row-planted fields increases by 27%, suggesting estimated yield gains of 9%. Finally, our results suggest that fear of social sanction is a mechanism that sustains knowledge hoarding among the incumbents, highlighting how social ties can foster social learning but also inhibit it when knowledge diffusion threatens incumbents' rents.
By Luisa Cefala; Cornell University    Pedro Naso    Nicholas Swanson; Cornell University
Presented by: Luisa Cefala, Cornell University
Discussant:   Pedro Magana Saenz, University of Wisconsin-Madison
4. Material and Informational Constraints to the Adoption of Digital Farm Input Subsidies Abstract We study the adoption of an electronic voucher subsidy for agricultural inputs by members of farmer organizations in Uganda. We randomly assign farmer organizations to have their members offered a status quo subsidy, a higher subsidy, or no subsidy. Adoption does not increase significantly due to the status quo subsidy but increases substantially due to the high subsidy. For farmers who at baseline did not use the inputs subsidized by the voucher, adoption increases with their farmer organization's leader's experience with the inputs and social similarity to the member. The results are consistent with material and information constraints limiting adoption of the electronic voucher subsidy, particularly for the intended beneficiaries of the subsidy program: farmers with limited experience with improved inputs, for whom a subsidy lowers the cost of learning by doing and may induce sustained technology adoption. While digital payment schemes can lower the costs of delivering payments from governments to people, they do not by themselves eliminate the need to tend to basic economic constraints of liquidity and information.
By Samuel Bird; Bates College    Michael Carter; University of California Davis    Laura Meinzen-Dick; Michigan State University
Presented by: Laura Meinzen-Dick, Michigan State University
Discussant:   Luisa Cefala, Cornell University
Session: Health April 25, 2026 8:00 to 10:00 Location: Pyle room 226
Session Chair: Matteo Magnaricotte, University of Chicago
Session type: contributed
1. MiningLeaks: Water Pollution and Child Mortality in Africa Abstract We investigate the effects of industrial mining-induced water pollution on child mortality in Africa. We construct a novel dataset by retrieving opening dates for 2,016 industrial mines and combine them with health data from 26 African countries (1986–2018). Using a staggered difference-in-differences approach comparing downstream and upstream villages, we find a 25% increase in 24-month mortality downstream after mine opening, particularly among nonbreastfed children. Effects are stronger during mine operation, at high mineral prices, and in densely mined regions, and decrease with distance. We rule out alternative mechanisms including fertility, health access, in-migration, conflict, and income effects.
By Melanie Gittard; Stanford University
Presented by: Melanie Gittard, Stanford University
Discussant:   Matteo Magnaricotte, University of Chicago
2. Doctoring a Solution: Promoting Health Advancements in Underserved Areas with Increased Physician Supply Abstract We investigate the impact of increased physician supply in underserved areas on a wide range of health outcomes. In Bangladesh, a government intervention in 2013 boosted physician supply by over 36%. Leveraging the variations generated by the placement of these doctors in a two-way fixed-effects estimation strategy, we find that the policy resulted in a 1.56 percent reduction in mortality rate per year, driven by a reduction in mortality from causes amenable to health care. We attribute this reduction to increased doctor visits, a shift in treatment-seeking from unqualified personnel to qualified physicians, and an increased likelihood of hospitalization at government facilities conditional on illness. Our cost-effectiveness analysis indicates that every 1 USD invested in the program returned around 62 USD, suggesting that increasing the number of physicians in underserved developing regions can be a cheap yet effective intervention to promote better health outcomes.
By Nirman Saha; University of Surrey
Presented by: Nirman Saha, University of Surrey
Discussant:   Melanie Gittard, Stanford University
3. Global Extreme Weather and Early Childhood Undernourishment Abstract Extreme weather is intensifying risks in developing countries, yet systematic global evidence on its impacts on early childhood outcomes remains limited. While existing studies have documented the effects of climate shocks on agricultural productivity, economic growth, and broader population health, few have examined child-level outcomes at scale across diverse geographic and climatic contexts. Early childhood is a particularly vulnerable period, during which health shocks can lead to long-term consequences for physical development, cognitive capacity, and human capital accumulation. Understanding the extent to which weather extremes affect child health is essential for designing effective public health and social protection systems in a changing climate. To address this gap, we quantify how temperature and precipitation variation affect child growth and health by combining georeferenced Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) with high-resolution ERA5 weather data across 57 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) from 1988 to 2023. The sample includes over 1.2 million children under five. We focus on three anthropometric indicators, stunting, underweight, and wasting, that reflect early-life health shocks. To flexibly capture nonlinearities, we employ bin and restricted cubic spline regressions using within-region variation in weather over children's twelve-month exposure histories. We control country-year, country-month, and region fixed effects to account for national time-varying unobservables, seasonal patterns at the country level, and regional heterogeneity. Exposure to both high and low temperatures elevates stunting risk. Compared to months with moderate temperatures (75–80°F), exposure to months above 90°F or below 50°F raises stunting probability by 1.3–1.4 percentage points. Heat also increases the risk of underweight (1.2 pp) and wasting (1.0 pp). Precipitation shocks operate through distinct pathways: drought (<5 mm/month) raises underweight risk by 0.5 pp, while heavy rainfall (>250 mm/month) increases wasting risk by 0.4 pp. These patterns suggest short-term disruptions in food access and disease exposure as potential channels. Subgroup analyses show that older children (37–60 months) exhibit more precisely estimated responses to temperature extremes. Rural children face elevated risks of underweight and wasting following heavy rainfall, reflecting differential vulnerability across geographic settings. Together, these findings provide harmonized global evidence on the health consequences of weather shocks in early childhood. We show that both heat and cold extremes, as well as drought and heavy rainfall, significantly affect child growth outcomes across diverse LMIC settings. These effects have implications for long-run human development under growing climate variability. The results underscore the need to incorporate weather-related risks into the design of climate-resilient health and social protection systems.
By Hannah Kim; University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign    Andrew Hultgren; University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign    Sarah Janzen; University of Illinois
Presented by: Hannah Kim, University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign
Discussant:   Nirman Saha, University of Surrey
4. Improving the Distribution of Quality in Health Provision: Two Incentive Reforms in Peru’s Healthcare System Abstract We examine the labor supply decisions of healthcare providers in Peru and their consequences in a large sector characterized by staff shortages and inequitable supply. The Peruvian government implemented two incentive reforms to reduce unfilled posts and increase healthcare quality in health centers serving poorer, primarily rural populations. Using two regression discontinuity designs, we find that career advancement incentives attract significantly more skilled physicians to the targeted areas but are almost ineffective for nurses; the opposite is true for monetary incentives, which attract more skilled nurses to the neediest areas. However, applying the same empirical approach to rich survey data covering the pre- and post-reform periods, we don’t find any change in utilization and insignificant or negative effects on the perceived quality of healthcare services received in the targeted areas.
By Jose Flor Toro; Northwestern University    Matteo Magnaricotte; University of Chicago
Presented by: Matteo Magnaricotte, University of Chicago
Discussant:   Hannah Kim, University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign
Session: Gender April 25, 2026 10:15 to 12:15 Location: Pyle room 213
Session Chair: Catalina Herrera Almanza, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Session type: contributed
1. Reproductive Autonomy as Economic Empowerment? An Impact Evaluation among Married Adolescents in Northern Nigeria Abstract We undertake a randomized evaluation of "Safe Spaces for Married Adolescents," which encourages birth spacing and empowerment to married girls aged 14 to 19 in northern Nigeria. A cluster-randomized control trial of the program among 1,200 girls in 40 communities shows substantial effects after the first year; girls in treatment communities are roughly 70 percentage points more likely to use contraception and 40% less likely to be pregnant. They are also more likely to work and save money. At the same time, we observe precipitous decreases in intimate partner violence and husband's control, and even larger increases in involvement in household decision-making. Data from a survey of health workers and digitized health center records are consistent with the survey results: we find that participants seek health services more often, are more comfortable in health facilities, and are prescribed contraceptives more often. The results suggest that even among the most vulnerable girls, a bundled intervention can lead to reproductive and economic empowerment without provoking intra-household backlash.
By Isabelle Cohen; University of Washington    Bilkisu Abba; Centre for Girls Education    Aisha Bello; Centre for Girls Education    Aminu Gurin; Centre for Girls' Education    Daniel Perlman; OASIS Initiative
Presented by: Isabelle Cohen, University of Washington
Discussant:   Ge Sun, University of Notre Dame
2. Information, Gender, and Food Safety in Agricultural Households Abstract Smallholder farmers in the Global South are often both producers and consumers of food, and food safety information is rarely observed or priced in such markets. We show that providing food safety diagnostic testing just to agricultural households can be a cost effective way to increase the adoption of food safety technologies by enabling them to weigh their own consumption needs in production decisions. We study this mechanism in a field experiment with groundnut-cultivating farmers in Senegal. We generate asymmetry in the provision of food-safety information such that only agricultural households know the safety of the crop they produce, while this information is neither observed nor priced in the market. Farmers are randomly assigned to receive information about the safety of their own crop, both own-crop and village-level benchmarking information, or no information. The gender of the respondent is also randomly assigned. Using an incentive-compatible auction, we measure demand for two food-safety inputs. When farmers learn that their own crop is unsafe, both men and women increase demand for food safety technologies. In contrast, village-level benchmarking information has no effect on men’s demand and reduces women’s demand. Simulations show that, in the absence of food safety information markets, providing household-specific diagnostic information can be more cost-effective at increasing safe food production than input subsidies or price premiums. These results highlight the potential of information policies that leverage households’ dual roles as producers and consumers to mitigate market failures in food safety.
By Kajal Gulati; Michigan State University    Jonathan Bauchet; Purdue University    Jacob Ricker-Gilbert; Purdue University    Diamilatou Kane; Purdue University
Presented by: Kajal Gulati, Michigan State University
Discussant:   Catalina Herrera Almanza, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
3. Expected Fertility, Labor Market Contracts, and the Gender Wage Gap Abstract This paper examines how employers’ expectations about women’s future fertility increase the gender wage gap in contract-based labor markets—standard settings in many occupations that involve long-horizon, complex tasks. In such environments, salaries are set in advance based on expected match productivity rather than contemporaneous output; if employers expect women’s productivity to decline more than men’s after childbirth, they offer lower wages today. Exploiting China’s relaxation of the One-Child Policy as a quasi-experiment, I implement a difference-in-differences design and find that women’s wages declined by 15.3% immediately after the reform, despite no short-term increase in actual births. To interpret these findings, I develop a search-and-matching model with on-the-job human capital accumulation, integrated with a household framework in which non-contractable fertility-driven effort choices are made. Effort links the two components by governing human capital growth and, in turn, long-run productivity in the labor market. Estimating the model on Chinese data, I find that gender differences in expected productivity—rooted in the unbalanced division of household labor—explain nearly the entire pre-reform wage gap and approximately 80% of the post-reform widening. The policy implication is stark: women-protective rules that preserve employment through legislative contract provisions may not reduce the gap; by reinforcing employers’ present-value pricing, they can be offset by ex ante wage markdowns applied to all women.
By Ge Sun; University of Notre Dame
Presented by: Ge Sun, University of Notre Dame
Discussant:   Kajal Gulati, Michigan State University
4. Breaking Job Search Barriers for Women: Experimental Evidence from Vocational Trainees in India Abstract Digital platforms can potentially improve youth employment by overcoming informational barriers to job search at a relatively low cost. We conducted a clustered randomized control trial with 3,699 female vocational trainees in India—a setting with extremely low female labor force participation—to evaluate whether encouragement to use a phone-based job platform can improve their labor market engagement. Along with job postings, the app provides information about employers (e.g., salary structures, female friendliness, employee reviews) that is especially relevant to first-time female job seekers. Treated women were provided installation and usage support. After six months, our intervention made treated women more realistic about their job prospects–it led to downward correction in reservation wage and salary expectation and increased the expected job search duration. Although the labor force participation and employment rates remained the same on average, conditional on employment, treated women had better quality jobs in various dimensions.
By Catalina Herrera Almanza; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Presented by: Catalina Herrera Almanza, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Discussant:   Isabelle Cohen, University of Washington
Session: Land Use April 25, 2026 10:15 to 12:15 Location: Pyle room 225
Session Chair: Marcos Barrozo, DePaul University
Session type: contributed
1. Frontier Settlement, Agricultural Migration and Land Use Change in Latin America Abstract Cross-border agricultural land acquisitions and frontier settlement are reshaping forested regions in Latin America. Low German Mennonite colonies represent a distinct form of transnational agrarian expansion—large, contiguous land purchases followed by the rapid development of commercial-scale agriculture—that has accelerated settlement in remote forest frontiers. We combine spatially explicit data on 105 Mennonite colonies established across Latin America after the year 2000 with annual satellite measures of forest loss, biomass carbon, biodiversity, and nighttime luminosity. We exploit quasi-experimental variation in establishment timing and locations of Mennonite settlements to plausibly identify the causal impacts of these frontier settlements on the local environment, ecology, and economic development. Frontier settlements lead to very large and significant forest loss with substantial ecological and environmental costs. We find no evidence of any positive development spillovers to local communities. Our findings highlight the ecological consequences of cross-border agricultural settlement in frontier regions.
By Ryan Abman; San Diego State University    Enno Klotz; San Diego State University    Clark Lundberg; San Diego State University
Presented by: Clark Lundberg, San Diego State University
Discussant:   Guthrie Gray-Lobe, University of Chicago
2. Forest Restoration from Spatial Monitoring Abstract This paper offers rare causal evidence of private forest restoration in the heavily-farmed tropics, highlighting a scalable strategy for sustainable land development. I estimate the impact of spatial monitoring on private land use in protected riparian zones (Areas of Permanent Preservation, or APPs) across 103,341 properties in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest from 2014 to 2021. Mechanisms of restoration—enforcement risk, credit, and opportunity costs—are predicted through a land allocation model and tested empirically. Findings show restoration was widely-induced in degraded regions despite high opportunity costs. Landowners converted 4,200 hectares of farm to forest in high-farming APPs (or 0.5 to 4.0%) where riparian recovery was needed most. The policy also induced unexpected clusters of deforestation in several remote, high-vegetation areas (5,055 hectares or -0.6 to -3.0%). Mechanistically, landowners restored because monitoring raised the marginal risk of enforcement above the opportunity cost of land. Complementarily, credit appeared to amplify restoration and support income through adaptive yield expansion. Overall, this paper shows that a simple observer effect can induce private forest restoration in degraded agricultural landscapes, as long as the threat of enforcement is credible. Other tropical countries may utilize spatial monitoring as a low-marginal-cost strategy to recover ecosystem services at large scales in balance with agricultural development. However, targeted enforcement is needed in less-farmed areas to deter pockets of deforestation.
By Roberto Toto; Oregon State University
Presented by: Roberto Toto, Oregon State University
Discussant:   Marcos Barrozo, DePaul University
3. Consolidating Use Rights to Unlock the Value of Waterlogged Land Abstract Millions of people live in areas that become seasonally waterlogged and unproductive. Inundated land can be used to produce fish, but only when landowners collectively agree to lease their land for this purpose. We show that floodplain fisheries have large welfare impacts on landowning households in Bangladesh. Consistent with classical theories of multilateral bargaining, the likelihood landowners agree to produce fish falls steeply as the number of landowners increases or when landowners reside in multiple villages. However, we find evidence that NGO intervention can solve bargaining failures. These interventions coincide with common ownership policies, where landowners jointly finance the fishery, instead of concentrated ownership. When a single group (household, religious group, village, neighborhood) dominates among landowners, the bargaining fails. The results suggest that governance concerns, as opposed to free-riding or asymmetric information about landowners private values constrain consolidation of land use rights for high value.
By Guthrie Gray-Lobe; University of Chicago    Rachel Heath; University of Washington    Ahmed Mobarak; Yale University
Presented by: Guthrie Gray-Lobe, University of Chicago
Discussant:   Roberto Toto, Oregon State University
4. Are sustainability pledges anticompetitive? Abstract When there are gaps in government regulation, firms can cater to consumer environmental preferences through private governance initiatives, for example pledging to only source inputs from suppliers that meet certain criteria. But recent antitrust enforcement has claimed that such firms may illegally exert monopsony power as they exclude suppliers. We use theory to discuss the competitive effects of market-exclusion pledges, then apply it to the Amazon Soy Moratorium (ASM), an initiative by soy traders that has led to important deforestation reductions. Despite excluding noncompliant farmers, we find that the ASM has no significant effects on average farmgate prices. We also find that it induces higher entry by ASM signatory traders, which earn more on average. This evidence points to complementary economic gains to sustainability pledges, in addition to their environmental benefits.
By Marcos Barrozo; DePaul University    Marin Skidmore; University of Illinois
Presented by: Marcos Barrozo, DePaul University
Discussant:   Clark Lundberg, San Diego State University
Session: Migration April 25, 2026 10:15 to 12:15 Location: Pyle room 226
Session Chair: Yashodhan Ghorpade, World Bank
Session type: contributed
1. Barriers to Labor Migration for the Rural Poor Abstract Migration offers access to better job opportunities, yet rural-to-urban migration remains surprisingly low in developing countries, particularly among the rural poor. We investigate this puzzle using a field experiment with job-information and vocational training ``plus" interventions, targeting poor rural youth for apparel-sector employment. Six- and 18-month follow-ups show substantial and sustained increases in migration, employment, income, and remittances---significantly reducing household poverty---especially when training includes stipends and internships. Reduced job search and migration financing costs appear to drive these outcomes, particularly benefiting males and risk-averse individuals. The internship treatment's high benefit-cost ratio highlights its potential for cost-effective scaling and broader impacts.
By Abu Shonchoy; Florida International University
Presented by: Abu Shonchoy, Florida International University
Discussant:   Sarah Pearlman, Vassar College
2. Understanding Workers’ Migration Response to Shocks - Mass Layoffs in Brazil Abstract This paper investigates the impact of unforeseen displacement shocks on workers’ migration decisions using matched employer-employee data from Brazil’s formal sector. Leveraging an event-study design, we find that workers who separate from their firm during a mass layoff face a significant and persistent 10% decline in their earnings. We also find that displaced workers are 15 percentage points more likely to migrate to another labor market. While all displaced workers migrate at higher rates than controls, we find that men migrate at higher rates than women, and that non-white workers migrate more and further than white workers. We explain these patterns through a descriptive exercise comparing wage trajectories of migrant and non-migrant displaced workers. We find 1.5% higher earnings among migrants than stayers, with almost all gains concentrated among men and larger gains among non-white workers. We complement our empirical evidence with a location-choice model that delivers a gravity equation for bilateral migration flows. Gravity estimates indicate that a one-standard-deviation increase in layoff intensity raises flows out of the origin by roughly 1-3%. Taken together, the findings show that mass layoffs trigger substantial but selective geographic reallocation, and that unequal access to migration shapes the distributional consequences of displacement shocks.
By Takshil Sachdev; Cornell University
Presented by: Takshil Sachdev, Cornell University
Discussant:   Yashodhan Ghorpade, World Bank
3. Remittance Declines and Labor Market Responses of Older Adults Abstract We examine how older adults in Mexico adjust their work in response to a decline in remittances. This is relevant given the rapidly aging population and the heavy reliance of older adults on private transfers from abroad. Using variation in remittance receipt status before and after the onset of the Great Recession, we find that men's employment status and wages do not change, but those of women do. Rising employment is driven by women entering the labor force-- some for the first time-- and moving into higher paid self employment and into unpaid work. For many women this unpaid work is on family farms. Our work suggests older women will likely face larger adjustments to remittance declines than older men.
By Emily Conover; Hamilton College    Sarah Pearlman; Vassar College
Presented by: Sarah Pearlman, Vassar College
Discussant:   Takshil Sachdev, Cornell University
4. From Conflict to Compromise: Experimental Evidence on Occupational Downgrading in Migration from Myanmar Abstract We examine the relationship between violent conflict and the willingness of potential migrants to accept lower skilled work (occupational downgrading). We develop a theoretical model of migration decisions, which we test using an innovative survey module administered to high-skilled youth in Myanmar. Consistent with the predictions of the model, we show that insecurity induced by conflict reduces the additional wage premium that individuals would typically demand for taking on lower-skilled work, indicating greater amenability to occupational downgrading. These effects are particularly pronounced for disadvantaged groups, such as women, ethnic minorities, and those with weaker labor market networks or English language skills. The results are driven by respondents from areas under territorial contestation, and those interviewed after the sudden activation of a conscription law during the survey. This further confirms how security considerations may override the preference for skill-appropriate job matching, suggesting that conflict may worsen labor market outcomes and reduce potential gains from migration, especially for disadvantaged groups.
By Yashodhan Ghorpade; World Bank
Presented by: Yashodhan Ghorpade, World Bank
Discussant:   Abu Shonchoy, Florida International University

 

This program was last updated on 2026-03-23 11:29:33 EDT