I am a PhD candidate in Agricultural and Resource Economics and a Rocca Fellow for African Studies at UC Berkeley. I am a development and political economist specializing in environmental governance. My CV is here.
Working Papers
Information and Collective Will Against Environmental Harms: Experimental Evidence from Ghana’s Galamsey
Funded by JPAL Governance Initiative ($46,772), Weiss ($45,872), IGC (GBP 20,000), and CEGA ($19,208).
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. We study these trade-offs in the context of artisanal and small-scale gold mining (galamsey) in Ghana. In a cluster randomized controlled trial across 99 galamsey communities, stratified by leader conflicts of interest, we screened a documentary on mercury’s health risks either privately to leaders (traditional local chiefs) or publicly to both leaders and community members. Leader-only screenings improved health-risk learning among chiefs but had no detectable effects on community learning, preferences for local mining rules, or community engagement. Public screenings, 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 leaders, public screenings shifted community preferences toward stricter mining bylaws, whereas under conflicted leaders, they instead polarized these preferences. Together, the results suggest that building consensus and mobilizing community engagement requires both an informed public and non-conflicted leadership; neither alone is sufficient.
Political Economy of Information Disclosure: Evidence from Indian Rural Road Quality Audits
Sidney Hoos Award for the Best Second Year Paper
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.
Publications
Digital Payments
Oxford Review of Economic Policy (2024), 40(1): 118–228.
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.
Work in Progress
Eliciting and Utilizing Willingness to Accept Information: Evidence from Mining Communities in Ghana
Funded by Weiss ($44,305).
Abstract coming soon.
Digital Innovation in Ghana - Interventions Targeted at Addressing Leakage (DIGITAL)
Funded by JPAL King Climate Action Initiative ($200,054).
Abstract coming soon.
Internet Access in Post-Conflict Recovery: Experimental Evidence from Liberated Areas in Myanmar
Funded by Weiss ($14,462) and CEGA ($5,000).
Abstract coming soon.
A Comprehensive Accounting of the Health Costs of Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mining
Abstract coming soon.