Chiman Cheung

Information can spur community collective action against environmental harms, but its effectiveness depends on how it is delivered and by whom. Local leaders can legitimize and transmit new information, or distort and suppress it when incentives misalign. I study these trade-offs in the context of artisanal and small-scale gold mining (galamsey) in Ghana. I conduct a cluster randomized controlled trial across 99 galamsey communities, stratified by leaders’ conflicts of interest, comparing two information diffusion strategies: seeding, in which a documentary on mercury's health risks is screened privately to leaders (traditional local chiefs), and broadcasting, in which the same documentary is screened publicly to both leaders and community members. Seeding improved health-risk learning among chiefs but had no detectable effects on community learning, preferences over local mining regulation, or community engagement. Broadcasting, in contrast, increased community learning and engagement, as reflected in higher sign-ups for regular assembly meetings and more frequent community discussion of galamsey. When paired with non-conflicted chiefs, broadcasting shifted community preferences toward stricter local mining regulation; under conflicted chiefs, broadcasting instead polarized these preferences. Taken together, the results suggest that while broad public information can mobilize community engagement on its own, building consensus over local mining regulation requires both an informed public and non-conflicted leadership; neither alone is sufficient.

Despite a growing literature on the importance of keeping voters informed about politicians' actions, independent and impartial information disclosure systems are exceptions rather than norms in low-capacity states. This research documents the political influence in distorting road quality audits in PMGSY, a nationwide rural road-building program in India. Comparing state-level road quality audit reports around the 2015 Bihar election, I estimate a 7.4 pp reported quality differential by party alignment between legislative constituency and state ruling government (over the sample average satisfactory rate of 64.9%). One-third of the differential can be explained by the assignment of auditors of different leniency. I also find evidence consistent with politicians delaying the inspections of roads of unsatisfactory quality in aligned constituencies until after the election. The same patterns are not observed in the national-level audits, which state-level governments have no control over. The results taken together suggest that out of electoral concerns, the state ruling party manipulates the reporting of audit outcomes, against the hypothesis of resource targeting to improve actual public good provision.

Despite the rapid growth in digital payments (DP) adoption and its positive socio-economic impacts in low-income countries, a large portion of the population remains disconnected from DP. At the same time, usage of DP conditional on adoption is low, highlighting the unexplored potential for financial inclusion and economic advancement. This paper reviews the burgeoning academic literature on DP and categorizes both macro-level adoption barriers (extensive margin) and micro-level usage challenges (intensive margin). We draw on the Transaction Cost Index, a new comprehensive database encompassing 16 low-income countries, to shed light on major themes in markets for DP. We conclude by outlining potential avenues for future research in this area.

In partnership with Ghana’s National Petroleum Authority, this project evaluates a reform to the distribution of in-kind fuel subsidies in rural fishing communities. Under the status quo system, local community leaders determine subsidy recipients, generating two distortions: political targeting, where households affiliated with opposition parties are less likely to receive subsidized fuel, and diversion to the black market, whereby leaders resell high-quality subsidized fuel that is subsequently diluted and sold back to fishermen. The reform introduces a digital distribution system requiring fishermen to authenticate their identity using biometric cards at fuel pumping stations. The study tests whether digitization reduces political bias in subsidy allocation and, by curbing diversion, improves fuel quality and lowers marine pollution. The evaluation is being implemented in five rollout waves; the first wave has been completed, and the remaining waves will be rolled out over the next two years.

This project combines administrative health records from the Ghana Health Service, covering 4,907 health facilities nationwide and a wide range of annual health outcomes, with remote-sensing measures of informal mining activity to provide the first comprehensive estimate of the health impacts of informal mining. Leveraging the breadth of observed health conditions, the analysis documents not only negative environmental pollution pathways but also potential positive income-related channels, such as improved nutrition. Examining both channels is important given the labor-intensive nature of informal mining, which employs an estimated 14-19 million people globally. The project contributes to a literature that has largely focused on capital-intensive industrial mining and a much narrower set of health outcomes. Beyond Ghana, this work serves as a case study for a broader analysis using Demographic and Health Survey data and comparable remote-sensing measures to estimate the health impacts of informal mining across Sub-Saharan Africa.