Working Papers

'Incomplete Markets, Crop Portfolios, and Agricultural Productivity' [Paper] [Code]

R&R Journal of Development Economics. Using panel data from rural Uganda, I document that higher-yielding crops are riskier and that poorer farmers concentrate their output in the safer, low-yield ones. I then build an incomplete-markets model in which farmers allocate intermediate inputs across a crop portfolio, trading off higher returns against smoother consumption, and ask what that trade-off costs in productivity and welfare.

'The Distributional Patterns of Consumption Insurance: Evidence from Rural and Urban Uganda' [Paper] [Code]

R&R Journal of Economic Modelling. Using nationally representative panel data from Uganda, I study how households at different economic levels insure consumption against idiosyncratic income shocks. In rural areas, poorer households show little or no pass-through of income shocks into consumption, while richer households insure less; in urban areas, the pattern reverses, with richer households insuring more.

'Non-Linear Returns to Fertilizer and Input Subsidy Policies in Africa' [Paper]

NEW WP. Using panel data from the LSMS-ISA Malawi and a semi-parametric aprroach with natural cubic splines, I find that the returns of fertilizer on maize yields follow an S-shaped production function. Then, I study the Fertilizer Input Subsidy Policy (FISP) in Malawi.

Work in Progress

'Social Norms and Excess of Transfer Progressivity in the Village' , with Francesco Carli and Raul Santaeulalia-Llopis

With primary data from a complete village in Malawi we find that the level of transfer progressivity is large. The solution to a village-calibrated OLG model with limited commitment and private information implies an optimal level of transfer progressivity that is one third that of the village data. Interestingly, the current transfer progressiviy turns out to be close to optimal in a "pre-fertilizer era". We rationalize our findings with social norms (a wedge on participation constraints) that are sluggish to economic change.

'Legislation, Cultural Change, and Gender Differences in the Labor Market' , with Jenny Peters and Virginia Sánchez-Marcos

We aim to study the dynamics of the equilibrium between legislation, cultural change, and economic progress.

'It Does Take a Village: Insurance Beyond Kinship in Bantu Africa' , with Leandro de Magalhaes, Liyuan Dong, Ying Feng, Pau Milán and Raul Santaeulalia-Llopis.

We seek to understand the determinants of food transfers and insurance in village economies.