Research

Abstract: Female labor force participation remains low in many low- and middle-income country contexts. I estimate the effect of electing female politicians to state legislative assemblies in India on women's work. Using a close-election regression discontinuity design, I find that female representation expands labor demand for women at both the extensive and intensive margins. More villages have firms that employ women, and those firms employ more women. The gains come through paid rather than unpaid work. In addition, female-owned enterprises also expand, especially those operating outside the home. These gains do not come at the expense of men, whose employment rises by a similar proportion, pointing to local economic growth rather than redistribution between the sexes. I find suggestive evidence that female politicians influence female labor supply through more public sector hiring and better implementation of public infrastructure programs. These findings highlight that female political representation can deliver economic gains to women through overall economic growth, offering a new lens for understanding how minority political representation translates into group-level economic outcomes.

Abstract: Can gender training interventions shift household labor allocation and women's decision-making power? I address this question using a randomized control trial of a multi-year gender training program in Bangladesh that targeted women and encouraged men's involvement. On average, I find little to no significant long-term effects on household division of labor or women's decision-making power. However, combining rich women's empowerment data and machine learning techniques, I find substantial heterogeneity in treatment effects by community gender norms. For the most affected households associated with communities having relatively less restrictive norms, women enhance their participation in income-generating and consumption decisions while men engage more in household chores. In contrast, among the least affected households associated with relatively more conservative areas, women experience reduced time in income-generating work and decreased decision-making power. These findings suggest that gender training interventions may backfire in highly conservative settings, highlighting the importance of accounting for community norms when designing and targeting gender interventions.

Abstract: We study how drought shapes agricultural adaptation through the reallocation of land and inputs in Vietnam. Using a long difference approach, we find that in the long run, drought reallocates land away from rice toward other crops, while the shift toward aquaculture depends on local water conditions. Our mechanism analysis shows that drought persistently reduces rice productivity. Irrigation infrastructure mitigates the contraction of rice and facilitates crop diversification, while electricity access enables mechanization in aquaculture. We also find that drought is associated with a shift of labor from manufacturing into agriculture, where it is absorbed primarily by crop cultivation rather than aquaculture. Our findings shed light on how infrastructure and local factor markets shape farmers' long-run adaptation margins.

Abstract: Markets for credence goods – goods for which quality is difficult to observe both ex-ante and ex-post – are plagued with information asymmetries whereby low-quality products are sold alongside high-quality products at similar prices. Firms cannot signal the quality of their products, and consumer demand is low. Widely used subsidies for agricultural technologies have often failed to improve adoption and profitability because many agricultural technologies are credence goods. We study the effects of a product assurance scheme in Uganda that introduced branded package labels for hybrid maize seed, a credence good. Using a market-level randomized control trial, we identify the effects of a large subsidy provided to farmers exposed to the product assurance scheme on hybrid maize seed demand, price, and quality. Adoption of hybrid maize increases by 44 percent due to the subsidy, with increased demand for both labeled and unlabeled hybrid maize. Prices and quality of labeled and unlabeled hybrid maize also increase in treated markets. Additionally, both quality and prices are higher for labeled goods than unlabeled goods, indicating the emergence of a separating equilibrium that allowed high-quality firms to distinguish their products. We find evidence of market changes on the extensive margin rather than the intensive margin, with fewer hybrid maize varieties available in subsidy markets and poorer-quality products exiting the market. The results suggest that, when combined with a quality signal delivered through a low-cost product assurance scheme, a temporary subsidy increases technology adoption and improves average product quality for credence goods.

Abstract: International development assistance provides substantial investment in LMICs and is provided by donor countries for political, economic and humanitarian reasons. Most development assistance is earmarked for specific sectors or ministries, its delivery often managed by international NGOs or other proxies. Evidence on the effectiveness of this assistance focuses on evaluations of individual projects or modeling of return on foreign assistance, but well-identified evidence on the impact of an entire program of bilateral development assistance is rare. Using a quasi-experimental matching design, we provide the first evidence of the impact of USAID’s largest development assistance program in one of its highest priority countries: the Feed the Future program in Bangladesh. We examine the population-level impact of FTF investments on people living in its 20 target districts on food security, poverty, child malnutrition, agricultural production and women’s empowerment in Bangladesh from 2011-2019. We find plausible positive impacts on food security, agricultural production and empowerment, impacts that largely reflect USAID investment priorities. We find no effect on prevalence of poverty or child malnutrition. Results suggest that impacts on these outcomes would require larger sustained investments as well as more targeted assistance to the poor.

Abstract: Vietnam’s economy and education system have had remarkable success in recent decades, yet there are concerns about the declining returns to higher education since 2008. We document this decline in returns to higher education and propose four hypotheses to explain it. Analysis of the VLSS/VHLSS and LFS data provides little evidence for three of four hypotheses. The fourth hypothesis is that changes in the demand for highly educated labor in Vietnam, perhaps due to recent changes in foreign direct investment inflows, rather than the labor supply, are perhaps the most important determinant of the returns to education across different levels.

Abstract: Women’s self-help groups (SHGs) are an important platform for reaching poor women in India. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of an integrated agriculture-nutrition intervention delivered through women’s SHGs in five states in central and eastern India. We do not observe any improvements in women’s BMI or overall dietary diversity. Although more women in the nutrition intensification arm consumed animal source foods, nuts and seeds, and fruits, this was not enough to increase overall dietary diversity scores or the proportion of women achieving minimum dietary diversity. We measure intermediate outcomes along the program’s impact pathways and find improvements in household incomes, cultivation of home gardens, and utilization of government schemes but not in women’s empowerment. The lack of improvement in anthropometry and diets despite changes in some intermediate outcomes can be attributed to several factors such as low implementation intensity, poor facilitator capacity and incentives, the lack of relevance of the BCC topics to the average SHG member, and resource and agency constraints to adoption of recommended practices.

Abstract: Microfinance groups are a prominent source of small-scale rural credit in many developing countries. In India, evidence of the impact of the now ubiquitous women-only savings and credit self-help groups (SHGs) on household consumption and asset accumulation is inconclusive and based on small-scale interventions. Further, little is known about the sustainability of impacts at scale. We use panel data on close to 2500 households from five states in India to estimate the impact of SHG membership on household expenditure and asset ownership. Over four years, we find small but significant impacts of SHG membership on household expenditure and livestock ownership. Membership duration has a modest effect, suggesting that initial impacts may taper off as the program scales up, though small sample sizes limit our ability to draw inferences. Accompanying evidence on pathways is compelling; related work shows that SHG participation improves information, empowerment, and access to entitlements. While the direct impacts of SHG membership may not suffice to fill gaps in access to credit faced by the rural poor, impacts along these additional pathways could intensify the benefits of these groups.

Abstract: Bangladesh struggles with undernutrition in women and young children. Nutrition-sensitive agriculture programmes can help address rural undernutrition. However, questions remain on the costs of multisectoral programmes. This study estimates the economic costs of the Targeting and Re-aligning Agriculture to Improve Nutrition (TRAIN) programme, which integrated nutrition behaviour change and agricultural extension with a credit platform to support women's income generation. We used the Strengthening Economic Evaluation for Multisectoral Strategies for Nutrition (SEEMS-Nutrition) approach. The intervention was designed around a randomised control trial. Incremental costs are presented by treatment arm. The total incremental cost was $795,040.34 for a 3.5-year period. The annual incremental costs per household were US$65.37 (Arm 2), USD$114.15 (Arm 3) and $157.11 (Arm 4). Total costs were led by nutrition counselling (37%), agriculture extension (12%), supervision (12%), training (12%), monitoring and evaluation (9%) and community events (5%). Total input costs were led by personnel (68%), travel (12%) and supplies (7%). This study presents the total incremental costs of an agriculture-nutrition intervention implemented through a microcredit platform. Costs per household compare favourably with similar interventions. Our results illustrate the value of a standardised costing approach for comparison with other multisectoral nutrition interventions.