Job Market Paper
Short Messages Fall Short for Micro-Entrepreneurs: Experimental Evidence from Kenya
This paper studies whether low-touch SMS-based business management training can durably improve managerial practices and business outcomes for micro-entrepreneurs using a large-scale field experiment. Three months after the intervention, I find that the training improved managerial knowledge and practices, with younger entrepreneurs engaging more with the content and experiencing stronger positive effects on business outcomes. However, these positive effects dissipate within twelve months as engagement with the training declines rapidly over time. Despite this fade-out, entrepreneurs exhibit positive willingness to pay for additional training content, suggesting they value access to managerial knowledge. The results highlight sustained engagement as a key constraint to scalable capability-building and suggest limits to information-based managerial interventions as stand-alone tools.
Blog Posts and Policy Briefs:
EconThatMatters
Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA)
The International Growth Center (IGC)
Working Papers
Command and Can’t Control: Assessing Centralized Accountability in the Public Sector
with Saad Gulzar, Juan Felipe Ladino and Daniel Rogger (Revise & Resubmit at Nature)
A long-established approach to management in government has been the transmission of information up a hierarchy, and centralized decision-making and oversight; colloquially known as ‘command and control’. This paper examines accountability in such a system implemented at scale in Punjab, Pakistan. Using random variation in the intensity of accountability of the scheme, we show that the corresponding de facto punishments had a negligible impact on school or student outcomes. We use detailed data on the education production function to show that this fundamental component of command-and-control approaches does not induce bureaucratic action towards improvements in government performance.
Selected Work in Progress
“Weather and Effort in Public Administration”
with Juan Esteban Garzon, Saad Gulzar, Juan Felipe Ladino and Daniel Rogger
“The Political Economy of Environmental Protection: Evidence from India”
with Juan Felipe Ladino and Suraj R. Nair
“Mobile Mentoring: Supporting Education of Children of Sex Workers in Kenya”
with Stephanie Bonds and Eric Ochieng
“Accounting for Accounting: Book-keeping Lessons from Nigeria”
with Abiola Oyebanjo and Anne Krahn