Research

Publications

Incentivizing School Attendance in the Presence of Parent-Child Information Frictions (with Damien de Walque). World Bank blog. Forthcoming, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy.
Individual Consumption in Collective Households: Identification Using Repeated Observations with an Application to PROGRESA (with Senay Sokullu). Journal of Applied Econometrics, 37(2), 286-304.
Primary Education Expansion and Quality of Schooling. 2019. Economics of Education Review 73:101913.
Population Policy: Abortion and Modern Contraception are Substitutes (with Grant Miller). 2016. Demography, 53(4), 979-1009.
Do the Maths: An analysis of the gender gap in mathematics in Africa (with Andy Dickerson and Steve McIntosh). 2015. Economics of Education Review, 46:1-22.
Civil Conflict, Gender-Specific Fetal Loss, and Selection: A new test of the Trivers-Willard Hypothesis. 2015 . Journal of Health Economics, 39:31-50.
Access to Abortion, Investments in Neonatal Health, and Sex Selection: Evidence from Nepal. 2014. Journal of Development Economics, 107:225-243.
Education and Civil Conflict in Nepal. 2014. World Bank Economic Review, 28(2), pp. 354–383.
Household Returns to Land Transfers in South Africa: A Q-squared analysis. 2011. Journal of Development Studies, 47(2), pp. 354-375.
The Puzzle of Muslim Advantage in Child Survival in India (With Sonia Bhalotra and Arthur van Soest). 2010. Journal of Health Economics, 29(2), pp. 191-204.
The Food (In)Security Impact of Land Redistribution in South Africa: Microeconometric evidence from national data. 2009. World Development, 37( 9), pp. 1540-1553.

Working Papers by Reverse Chronological Order

Saving Neonatal Lives at scale: Lessons for Targeting (with Hans H. Sievertsen and Mahesh C. Puri). This supersedes a paper circulated under the title "Saving Neonatal Lives for a Quarter".
Subjective Expectations and Demand for Contraception (with Grant Miller and Aureo de Paula). Policy Briefing.
Family Planning and Fertility Behavior: Evidence from Twentieth Century Malaysia. (With Kimberly Singer Babiarz, Jiwon Lee, Grant Miller and Tey Nai Peng). 2017. CGDev Working Paper 470.
Family Planning and Women’s Empowerment: Incentive Effects and Direct Effects among Malaysian Women (With Kimberly Singer Babiarz, Jiwon Lee, Grant Miller and Tey Nai Peng). 2017. CGDev Working Paper 471. Media Coverage: The Economist ; Malay Mail

Selected Work in Progress

Poverty Traps and Female Labor Force Participation, with Ragui Assaad, Adam Osman and William Parienté. Status: Intervention completed. Endline survey underway. AEARCTR-0009041
Subjective Expectations and the Demand for Contraception of Men and Women, with Aureo de Paula and Grant Miller. Status: Initial survey completed.
Measuring Desired Fertility, with Aurélia Lépine, Wally Toh, Aureo de Paula, and Grant Miller. Status: Fieldwork completed.