associate professor
734.615.2327
R4344, 701 Tappan Street, 48109
PhD, economics, Yale University (2009)
BA, math and economics, University of Pennsylvania (2004)
BE 300 (Applied Microeconomics; BBA)
BUSABRD 320 (Doing Business in India, BBA)
ECON 666 (Economic Development, PhD)
In the 2020-2021 academic year I taught a master's course in applied economics and a PhD course in development economics.
I will be on sabbatical for the 2021-2022 academic year.
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SYLLABI:
BUSABRD 320: Doing Business in India
2018-2020 | BBA | Syllabus
ECON 666: Economic Development
2018 | PhD | Syllabus
BE 300: Applied Economics
2015-present | BBA | Syllabus
BE 888: Enterprise and Health in Emerging Economies
2014, 2016 | PhD | Syllabus
HMP 663: The Economics of Health Management and Policy II
2014 | MPH/MHSA | Syllabus
HPM 591a: Global Health Economics (at Yale)
2010-2012 | MPH | Syllabus
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Resources, Conflict, and Economic Development in Africa
with James Fenske, Gaurav Khanna, and Anant Nyshadham
No understanding of the economic development of modern Africa can be complete without an appreciation of the role of natural resources. Our study is at the nexus of resources, conflict, and development, using theory and high-resolution spatial data from sub-Saharan Africa. Our results help explain why the most resource-rich countries are no better off than the most resource-poor.
pdf | july 2020
Journal of Development Economics (forthcoming)
When It Rains It Pours: The Long-run Economic Impacts of Salt Iodization in the United States
Iodized salt increased women's income and labor force participation in the 20th century US.
pdf | Review of Economics and Statistics, 2020, 102(2)
Conflict and the Formation of Political Beliefs in Africa
pdf | American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 2015, 7(3)
When workers face productivity shocks, managers reallocate tasks within teams, shifting workers away from jobs in which their performance is most affected.
pdf | december 2020
Revise and resubmit, Journal of Political Economy
Soft skills training on-the-job boosts worker productivity and generates large returns for the firm.
pdf | december 2019
Revise and resubmit, Journal of Political Economy
A randomized evaluation of Hirschman's (1970) seminal theory. Workers quit when wage increases do not meet their expectations, but enabling voice mitigates this exit.
pdf | may 2020
Revise and resubmit, Economic Journal
Hostel Takeover: Living Conditions, Reference Dependence, and the Wellbeing of Migrant Workers
with Anant Nyshadham and Huayu Xu
Worker satisfaction depends critically on how expectations are set by firms. Migrant workers experienced large losses in subjective wellbeing when randomized improvements in hostel living conditions were more modest than expected.
pdf | july 2020
Revise and resubmit, Journal of Public Economics
No Line Left Behind: Assortative Matching Inside the Firm
with Vittorio Bassi, Anant Nyshadham, and Jorge Tamayo
Do talented managers match with productive workers, or with those who are struggling to perform? We find negative assortative matching of managers and workers. Despite supermodularity of production, "misallocating" managerial skill in this way may be optimal for firms who value buyer relationships.
pdf | march 2020
Cash transfers mitigate a large fraction of the negative impact of early life shocks on educational attainment and employment outcomes.
pdf | january 2021
Absenteeism, Productivity, and Relational Contracting Inside the Firm
with Jean-Francois Gauthier, Anant Nyshadham, and Jorge Tamayo
Relational contracts are essential building blocks of the theory of the firm, but we know little about the form or function of these contracts in practice. We study the behavior of managers who share workers across teams to weather absenteeism shocks. Relationships have some smoothing value, but many potentially beneficial transfers are left unrealized. We simulate the gains to increased relationship formation and find that the firm could reduce worker misallocation and increase productivity substantially by spurring relationship formation.
pdf | august 2020
Diagnosing Quality: Learning, Amenities, and the Demand for Health Care
with Emilio Gutierrez, Anant Nyshadham, and Jorge Tamayo
Increasing access to nontechnical amenities substantially drives up the demand for cataract surgery in Mexico.
pdf | july 2020
Protecting Infants from Natural Disasters: The Case of Vitamin A Supplementation and a Tornado in Bangladesh
with Snaebjorn Gunnsteinsson, Parul Christian, Alain Labrique, Jonathan Sugimoto, Abu Ahmed Shamim, and Keith P. West, Jr.
Can policy protect against the often devastating human impacts of environmental shocks? We study this question by leveraging data from a situation in which a tornado tore through an area involved in a double-blind cluster-randomized controlled trial of at-birth vitamin A supplementation in Bangladesh.
pdf | april 2020
Monitoring and Managerial Effort: Evidence from the Fast Food Industry
with Anant Nyshadham and Jorge Tamayo
Managing Demand Shocks: Evidence from Quick Service Restaurants
with Anant Nyshadham and Jorge Tamayo
Organizational Responses to Product Cycles: Evidence from Auto Manufacturing
with Vittorio Bassi, Anant Nyshadham, and Jorge Tamayo
Model Selection for Optimal Screening with AI in Hiring
with Jean-Francois Gauthier, Yuqing Gu, Anant Nyshadham, and Jorge Tamayo
Optimal Employment Contracts with Psychometrics
with Jean-Francois Gauthier, Anant Nyshadham, and Jorge Tamayo
Empowerment for Positive Living in Uganda [project description]
with Jean-Francois Gauthier, Pamela Jakiela, Dean Karlan, and Ed Mills
Training, Decentralization, and Information Frictions in the Firm
with Snaebjorn Gunnsteinsson, Emir Murathanoglu, and Anant Nyshadham
Impacts of Skilling and Employment Opportunities on Female Migrant Workers and their Families
with Anant Nyshadham, Priyanka Sarda, and Huayu Xu
Behavioral Bidding in a Manufacturing Supply Chain
with Russell Morton, Anant Nyshadham, and Jorge Tamayo
REVIEWS / OTHER
The Stakeholder Disagreement Metric (SDM): Quantifying Preference Disagreement Between Product Stakeholders
with Suzanne Chou et al.
Developing metrics for disagreement in the preferences of stakeholders in early-stage product design.
Journal of Mechanical Design, forthcoming
"He was trapped in his own web” - Dependent drinking as a poverty trap: a qualitative study from Goa, India
with Jaclyn Schess et al.
Qualitative evidence on alcohol consumption as a poverty trap in India.
published (gated) | Drug and Alcohol Review, 2020
Cash transfers for clinical and household economic outcomes among HIV-affected households in Uganda: A factorial randomized trial
with Ed Mills et al.
Can cash transfers improve the health of HIV-positive individuals in low-income settings?
published (gated) | AIDS, 2018
Review article: management interventions can improve worker and firm productivity in low-income country contexts.
pdf | IZA World of Labor, 2018
An Experiment in India Shows How Much Companies Have to Gain by Investing in Their Employees
with Lavanya Garg, Namrata Kala, and Anant Nyshadham
A summary of our work on soft skills training for female garment workers in India.
link | HBR, 2017
Early Childhood Health and Development in India: A Review of the Evidence and Recommendations for the Future
with Prashant Bharadwaj and Samuel Krumholz
We review the status of early childhood development in India and make recommendations for future policy focus, informed by theory and evidence on interventions that work around the world.
pdf | NCAER-Brookings India Policy Forum, 2017
Psychological distress in Ghana: associations with employment and lost productivity
with Maureen Canavan et al.
What is the economic incidence of mental health disorders?
published | International Journal of Mental Health Systems, 2013, 7(9)