Conference Presentations: AGEW 2024, WB/GU Poverty Conference 2023, Fourth SANEM-World Bank North America Discussion Forum 2023, CES North America Conference 2023, AMIE 2nd Workshop in Applied Microeconomics 2022, ADE 2022, YES 2022, 14th Joint IOS/APB/EACES Summer Academy, ICDE 2022, NOVAFRICA 2022, NCDE 2022, SEHO 2022, DEVPEC 2022, PACDEV 2022, ACLEC Poster Session 2021
Do household members hide employment income from one another? Consistent with income hiding within the household, I find that respondents in Kenya and Indonesia underestimate labor income of other household members, and underreport own income when other household members are present. Households with measured hiding consume more private goods and transfer more to extended families. I develop and test a household model where each member can strategically underreport income, increasing private consumption at the expense of household efficiency. In equilibrium, cooperation is endogenous and incomplete, as household members collectively allocate reported income, but total income is not allocated efficiently.
Conference Presentations: CSAE 2024, ECBE 2023, NCDE 2023, SEHO 2023, PACDEV 2023, WGAPE Berkeley 2023, AFE 2022
In an experiment in western Kenya, I experimentally vary the observability of endowment and study how exogenously unobservable income affects individuals’ choices to share endowment with their spouse and to consume. I find that when endowment is unobservable, both husbands and wives share less with their spouses. In addition, husbands consume significantly more private goods when the endowment is unobservable, while wives do not change their consumption behavior. Opportunistic behavior under asymmetric information is driven by rigid bargaining and high sharing pressure.
Conference Presentations: MWIEDC 2025, Lisbon Economics and Statistics of Education (LESE) 2024
Despite the widespread economic shocks faced by children in developing countries, the factors that contribute to resilience remain poorly understood. In this paper, we present three novel facts on the development of noncognitive skills using a longitudinal dataset from Ethiopia. First, we observe a weak correlation between parental wealth and noncognitive skills. Second, we find that while adverse weather shock cause a slight decline in cognitive test scores, they boost noncognitive skills, including generalized self-efficacy, self-esteem, and internal locus of control. Lastly, we show that past exposure to adverse weather shocks is correlated with better mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. We rationalize these surprising findings within a model of cognitive and noncognitive skill development, where child agency serves a key role. In this model, when a child chooses to exert effort during a particular period, they not only increase their immediate consumption, but it also enhances their noncognitive skills through “learning by doing.” Incorporation of child agency in human capital development result in model predictions that are consistent with the empirical results, and highlights the policy relevance of improving child agency.
Do providing women with conditional cash transfers increase their Pareto weight within the household as much as if they entered employment? Using data between 1997 to 2007 from Mexico's Progresa program (also known as Oportunidades/Prospera), I find that both receiving Progresa transfers and female employment leads to household expenditure reallocation from men's clothing to girls’ and women's clothing. This provides evidence against the household unitary model. Meanwhile, Progresa leads to an increase in boys’ clothing expenditures while female employment leads to a decrease in boys’ clothing expenditures. This suggests that Progresa reallocates household resources from adults to children, while female employment reallocates resources from male family members to female ones.