About
I work in development economics, using tools from empirical industrial organization to study product markets in developing economies. My research studies how the organization of markets affects the productivity of small firms, and what determines consumers' access to affordable food in urban settings.
I am currently working on projects in Côte d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia and Mexico.
On the job market, 2026-2027
Dissertation committee: Melanie Morten, Arun Chandrasekhar, Matthew Gentzkow and Alessandra Voena
Working Papers
Sourcing (Together): Fostering Economies of Scale through Retail Cooperatives [Job Market Paper]
Small firms pay more for inputs because they buy in small quantities and bear transaction costs alone. Purchasing groups let firms buy more collectively, but competing firms may struggle to find partners and organize purchases. I test whether coordination support enables group formation in a randomized experiment among 762 women selling produce in Bouaké, Côte d'Ivoire, encouraging purchasing groups in which one member travels to the wholesale market and buys, in bulk, for the entire group. A facilitated meeting raises participation to 37 percent, information about others' willingness is less effective, while monitoring the buyer has no additional effect. The interventions lowers wholesale unit costs by 7.2 percent as retailers pool their purchases. They then also lower retail prices by 3.4 percent and rotate products more frequently. Twelve months later, 30 percent of the full sample still participate in an active purchasing group, and 50 percent have participated at some point. Cooperation also spreads to the control group, extending the intervention's reach beyond treated retailers. Finally, a retail competition model shows how the gains are allocated: consumers capture 73 percent of the gain, mainly through lower prices generated by bulk purchasing, while retailers capture the remaining 27 percent by using group members' supplier relationships to stock additional goods and by lowering transportation costs. Buying together could also weaken competition when retailers sell. However, I find no evidence that they raise prices to protect each other's margins. The results show that low-cost coordination helps direct competitors capture scale economies while extending gains to consumers.
Estimating Variances for Causal Panel Data Estimators
This paper studies variance estimators in panel data settings. There has been a recent surge in research on panel data models with a number of new estimators proposed. However, there has been less attention paid to the quantification of the precision of these estimators. Of the variance estimators that have been proposed, their relative merits are not well understood. In this paper we develop a common framework for comparing some of the proposed variance estimators for generic point estimators. We reinterpret three commonly used approaches as targeting different conditional variances under an exchangeability assumption. We find that the estimators we consider are all valid on average, but that their performance in terms of power differs substantially depending on the heteroskedasticity structure of the data. Building on these insights, we propose a new variance estimator that flexibly accounts for heteroskedasticity in both the unit and time dimensions, and delivers superior statistical power in realistic panel data settings.
From Training to Earning. The 7-Year Impact of Dual Apprenticeships on Youth Employment
This paper studies the long-term impacts of dual apprenticeships on youth employment in a high-informality labor market. A Randomized Controlled Trial in Côte d'Ivoire with four follow-up surveys collected over seven years shows that dual apprenticeships have sustained impacts: youth earnings increase by 14 to 20 percent two to five years after program completion. Gains are observed across the earnings distribution, and the share of youth in working poverty—with earnings below the minimum wage—decreases by 11 percent. Importantly, results highlight a distinct pathway whereby training raises earnings through self-employment, with no impact on access to wage employment. Youth perform more complex, non-routine tasks, consistent with improved technical skills and productivity. In a setting where formal wage jobs are rare, these findings show that dual apprenticeships constitute an effective and inclusive skilling model that raises earnings in self-employment and reduces working poverty.
Work in Progress
Consumer Search in a Centralized Market: Informational Friction and Market Segmentation
Pilot Completed and Funding Secured
We study how consumer search costs shape access to food markets in Bouaké, Côte d’Ivoire. We combine household surveys, direct observation of shopping trips, and retailer price data to document how consumers trade off prices, quality, travel costs, and relationships with familiar vendors. Around the opening of a new central market, a planned randomized experiment will provide transport subsidies, price information, or both. We will examine whether these interventions change where households shop, the prices they pay, and whether new shopping relationships persist after support ends. The project asks who benefits from market modernization and whether reducing access and information barriers allows poorer households to share in those gains.
Demand and Supply Determinants of a Formal Apprenticeship Program: Scale-up Analysis
Analysis Stage
Apprenticeship programs have the potential to facilitate youth transitions into employment, yet little is known about what constrains their take-up, particularly on the demand side. This paper studies the determinants of youth and firm demand for a subsidized dual apprenticeship program in Côte d’Ivoire. We combine a machine-learning-assisted census of firms across 24 localities with a randomized experiment varying the salience of two program features: a monthly stipend and structured dual training. We document a substantial mismatch between firm and youth demand: the number of apprenticeship positions offered by firms exceeds the number of youth completing registration interviews by a factor of two to three. Despite this excess demand from firms, information about program features has little effect on their willingness to recruit apprentices. Among youth, however, average effects mask substantial heterogeneity. Emphasizing the stipend increases enrollment among rural youth by approximately 10 percentage points, while emphasizing dual training increases enrollment among urban youth previously unfamiliar with the program. Neither intervention substantially increases enrollment among urban youth already familiar with the program, and combining both messages does not improve take-up. These findings suggest that different barriers to apprenticeship participation prevail across youth populations, with financial constraints potentially more salient in rural areas and information about training quality more relevant among previously uninformed urban youth. More broadly, the results highlight how aggregate demand can conceal distinct constraints to participation and suggest that targeted information provision may be more effective than uniform communication strategies in expanding access to vocational training.
Publications
Panel Data Evidence on the Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Livelihoods in Urban Côte d'Ivoire
PLOSOne, 2023
In early March 2020, a few cases of COVID-19 were diagnosed in Abidjan, the capital city of Côte d'Ivoire. To combat the spread of the disease, major restrictions to mobility and gatherings were introduced between mid-March and late May 2020. We collected panel survey data on over 2,500 individuals from the Greater Abidjan area over the period immediately before and after the start of the pandemic. We document striking drops in employment, hours worked, income, and food consumption in the first months after the onset of COVID-19, when lockdown was in place. We also find that, in response, survey respondents received more private transfers from other parts of the country, at a time when remittances from abroad fell — and that some respondents moved either temporarily or permanently. In terms of recovery, we find that subjective well-being was lower on average in December 2020 than at baseline. Yet, despite schools being closed between mid-March and July 2020, school enrollment suffered little: by December 2020, enrollment rates had returned to baseline. Our results indicate that government policies aimed at alleviating the worst effects of lockdown only reached a few people, and not necessarily those most in need.
Other Work
Report on the AUDRI 2019-2020 Côte d'Ivoire
Last Update: May 2021
This report provides summary statistics on the 2019 household listing and the 2019-2020 individual survey conducted under the auspices of AUDRI in the Greater Abidjan region of Côte d'Ivoire. The household listing and the individual surveys were undertaken in collaboration with IPA-Côte d'Ivoire and with funding from the Stanford King Center on Global Development.
Households' Attitudes towards School Reopening during COVID-19 in Ethiopia
March 2021
