Research

Publications

  1. Incomplete Markets, Crop Portfolios, and Agricultural Productivity [Code] Journal of Development Economics, 185 (2027), 103944. Open access.

Working Papers

  1. The Distributional Patterns of Consumption Insurance: Evidence from Rural and Urban Uganda [Code] Revise & Resubmit, Economic Modelling How households at different points of the income distribution insure consumption against income shocks. In rural Uganda the poor insure more than the rich; in urban areas the pattern reverses.
  2. Non-Linear Returns to Fertilizer and Input Subsidy Policies in Africa New, 2026 Using Malawi panel data and natural cubic splines, I find that returns to fertilizer on maize yields are S-shaped, and study what this implies for Malawi's Farm Input Subsidy Program.

Work in Progress

  1. Social Norms and Excess of Transfer Progressivity in the Village (with Francesco Carli and Raül Santaeulàlia-Llopis) Transfers in a Malawian village are far more progressive than a calibrated limited-commitment model says is optimal, and close to optimal for a "pre-fertilizer era". We rationalize this with social norms that adjust slowly to economic change.
  2. Legislation, Cultural Change, and Gender Differences in the Labor Market (with Jenny Peters and Virginia Sánchez-Marcos) The joint dynamics of legislation, cultural change, and economic progress.
  3. It Does Take a Village: Insurance Beyond Kinship in Bantu Africa (with Leandro de Magalhaes, Liyuan Dong, Ying Feng, Pau Milán, and Raül Santaeulàlia-Llopis) The determinants of food transfers and insurance in village economies.