Work in progress
1. Improved Early Action through Precise Targeting, Timely Cash, and Early Warning to Mitigate the Impacts of Climate Shocks
Grants: J-PAL King Climate Action Initiative
(with Stefan Dercon, Rohini Kamal, Ashley Pople and Hannah Timmis)
Details
The project evaluates a targeted risk-informed early action pilot in response to floods in Bangladesh, testing efficacy of early warning messaging, timing of cash transfers, and data-driven innovations in targeting approaches. Through a randomized evaluation, researchers will target 10,400 households, with some households receiving unconditional cash transfers ahead of or after a flood event. Researchers will address two critical knowledge gaps that impede adopting early actions at scale. First, they will explore the optimal timing for delivering assistance: they will evaluate when best to act by examining how households use assistance before, during, or after a disaster. Second, researchers will evaluate the accuracy of data-driven approaches in targeting the most vulnerable households and the trade-offs thus incurred vis-a-vis timing.
2. Rejection sensitivity and on-the-job search: A lab-in-the-field experiment in South Africa
Details
I investigate the effect that experiencing repeated rejection has on on-the-job search. Using a lab-in-the-field experiment implemented with young workers in South Africa, I repeatedly ask subjects to choose between a high-return activity with frequent exposure to rejection signals and a lower-return activity with less frequent exposure to rejection signals. I ask whether subjects take costly action to avoid exposure to information on rejection by choosing the lower-return, lower-rejection activity. To do so, I experimentally vary both the rewards and the amount of rejection that subjects experience when choosing between the two tasks, holding other salient drivers of search behaviour constant, including eliminating the ability of players to learn about returns to search through experiencing rejection. I find that when exposed to (more frequent) rejection, subjects choose to trade-off expected earnings in order to avoid receiving rejection signals. I interpret these results as an example of active information avoidance.
3. A push which is less big but just as good? Experimental evidence on the role of coaching within bundled ultra-poor graduation programmes
(with Narayan Das, Stefan Dercon, Maliha Noshin Khan, and Ashley Pople)
Details
We investigate the role that coaching plays within ultra-poor graduation programmes -- specifically, how sensitive the welfare benefits of graduation interventions are to the intensity and the type of coaching inputs. We do so through a multi-arm field experiment implemented in Bangladesh in 2016, in which experimental variation was built into the amount of coaching (weekly vs fortnightly) and type of coaching (individual vs individual and group-based) that recipients received. We measure six-year impacts through an endline survey conducted in 2022, following the COVID-19 pandemic shock. While the programme itself does lead to large and sustained impacts on household asset holdings, earnings, land holdings, and hours worked in high-productivity activities, variation in coaching plays no discernible role in explaining the variation we observe in these outcomes. Reducing the intensity of coaching within ultra-poor graduation programmes could be an effective tool in bringing such programmes to scale.
4. The effects of informal institutions on social and economic outcomes: Experimental evidence from Bangladesh
(with Jay Garg, Narayan Das, Stefan Dercon, and Ashley Pople)
AEA Trial Registry
5. The effect of timely cash transfers during an extreme flood shock: Evidence from the 2022 Pakistan Floods
(with Ashley Pople, Muhammad Bin Khalid and Nihan Rafique)
AEA Trial Registry
6. The effect of anticipatory action in the context of flood shocks in Somalia
(with Ashley Pople, Michael Green, Lilly Schofield and Laura Swift)
AEA Trial Registry