Working Papers

'The Impact of Incomplete Financial Markets on Crop-Choice, Agricultural Productivity, and Welfare'. [Paper]

Using the Ugandan National Panel Survey (UNPS), I document that (1) farmers face a trade-off between crop yields and crop risk and (2) low-yield, low-risk crops represent the main share of output for poor farmers. Then, I introduce a crop-portfolio choice in an incomplete markets model. When choosing intermediate inputs across the crop portfolio, households weigh the potential trade-off between higher agricultural returns and less consumption smoothing. I calibrate the model to rural Uganda and I find that completing markets increases agricultural productivity by 21.75 percent, with half of the gain resulting from reallocating inputs across farmers and crops, and welfare increases by 28.4 percent.

'Do the Poor Insure their Consumption More? Empirical Evidence from Uganda'. [Paper]

I study the difference in consumption insurance levels across the quintiles of the consumption, income, and wealth distributions in Uganda. Using nationally representative panel household data (UNPS), I find that poor households present higher levels of consumption insurance than rich households.

Work in Progress

'Social Norms and Excess of Transfer Progressivity in the Village', with Francesco Carli and Raül Santaeulàlia-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.

'So Far Away: Market Access and its Role in Growth, Inequality, and Risk'. [Slides]

Using the UNPS, I find that market access is associated with (1) higher consumption, income, and wealth levels, (2) higher income fluctuations but not higher consumption fluctuations, and (3) higher between counties inequality. Building a toy model based on an Aiyagari model with different locations and a discrete choice of accessing the markets, I find that assuming households can save is sufficient to replicate result (2).

'Eating Up Productivity: Social Insurance Barriers to Economic Growth', with Raül Santaeulàlia-Llopis.

We seek to characterize the optimal level of informal social insurance in Malawi.