Research

Publications (peer-reviewed)

• Inputs, Incentives, and Complementarities in Education: Experimental Evidence from Tanzania
  (With Karthik Muralidharan, Isaac Mbiti, Youdi Schipper, Constantine Manda, and Rakesh Rajani)
  Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 134, Issue 3, 2019
  >Final Manuscript > AEA RCT registration > NBER Working Paper No. 24876> Data and code > Dataverse (raw data, survey instruments, and more) > Twaweza policy brief > JPAL’s policy brief > VoxDev coverage > Mundo ITAM coverage (in Spanish) > Podcast for Diana Lopez-Avila’s class > Free Policy Brief

• Outsourcing Education: Experimental Evidence from Liberia
  (With Justin Sandefur and Wayne Sandholtz)
  American Economic Review, Volume 110, No. 2, 2020
  >Final Manuscript > AEA RCT registration > Executive Summary > Policy Brief > Devex coverage > The Economist coverage > Future Development (blog) coverage > Chris Blattman’s blog coverage > Data and code

• Communal Property Rights and Deforestation
  (With Santiago Saavedra)
  Journal of Development Studies, Volume 57, No. 6, 2021
  >Final Manuscript > Data and code

• Local incentives and national tax evasion: The response of illegal mining to a tax reform in Colombia 
  (With Santiago Saavedra)
  European Economic Review, Volume 138, 2021
  >Final Manuscript > Code

• Direct vs Indirect Management Training: Experimental Evidence from Schools in Mexico
  (With Juan Bedoya, Rafael de Hoyos, Marcela Silveyra, and Monica Yanez-Pagans)
  Journal of Development Economics, Volume 154, 2022
  Final Manuscript> Code> Harry Patrinos’s blog coverage> Some of the results in this paper first appeared in the working paper “School Management, Grants, and Test Scores: Experimental Evidence from Mexico”

• Cross-Age Tutoring: Experimental Evidence from Kenya
  (With Lisa Chen and Noriko Magari)
  Economic Development and Cultural Change, Volume 70, No. 3, 2022
  >Final Manuscript > Code

• Beyond Short-term Learning Gains: The Impact of Outsourcing Schools in Liberia after Three Years
  (With Justin Sandefur)
  Economic Journal, Volume 132, No. 644, 2022
  >Final Manuscript> AEA RCT registration > Devex coverage > The Economist coverage > Quartz coverage > Chris Blattman’s blog coverage > Data and code > Replication package

• Designing Teacher Performance Pay Programs: Experimental Evidence from Tanzania
  (With Isaac Mbiti and Youdi Schipper)
  Economic Journal, Volume 133, No. 653, 2023
  >Final Manuscript >AEA RCT registration> NBER Working Paper No. 25903 > Twaweza policy brief > GlobalDev brief > GlobalDev Spanish version > Data and code

• Learning Losses during the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence from Mexico
  (With Enrique Alasino, María José Ramírez, Norbert Schady and David Uribe)
  Economics of Education Review, Volume 98, 2024
  >Final Manuscript > Blog Nexos (in Spanish)

• The Effect of School Grants on Test Scores: Experimental Evidence from Mexico
  (With Juan Bedoya, Rafael de Hoyos, Marcela Silveyra, and Monica Yanez-Pagans)
  Economica, Volume 91, No. 363, 2024
  >Final Manuscript > Online Appendix

• Factorial Designs, Model Selection, and (Incorrect) Inference in Randomized Experiments
  (With Karthik Muralidharan and Kaspar Wuthrich)
  Forthcoming at The Review of Economics and Statistics
  >Final Manuscript > Online Appendix > NBER Working Paper No. 26562 > Development impact blog coverage #1 > Development impact blog coverage #2 > Data and code

• COVID-19 Learning loss and recovery: Panel data evidence from India
  (With Abhijeet Singh and Karthik Muralidharan)
  Forthcoming at the Journal of Human Resources
  >Final Manuscript >RISE Working Paper> NBER Working Paper No. 30552 > Data and code

Comments, proceedings, and others

• How to make replication the norm
  (With Paul Gertler and Sebastian Galiani)
  Nature, Vol 554. pp. 417-419. 2018
  >Final Manuscript > NBER Working Paper No. 23576 > Data and Code

• Risk Adjustment Revisited using Machine Learning Techniques
  (With Alvaro Riascos and Natalia Serna)
  Proceeding Series of the Brazilian Society of Computational and Applied Mathematics, v. 6, n. 2 . 2018
  >Final Manuscript > Published Version

Non-econ peer-reviewed articles

• On the optimality of answer-copying indices: theory and practice
  (With Alvaro Riascos and Diego Jara)
  Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, Vol. 40, No. 5, pp. 435-453. 2015
  >Final Manuscript > R Code

• Misinformation About HIV and Negative Attitudes Toward Homosexuality and Same-Sex Couples’ Rights: The Case of Colombia
  (With Federico Andrade-Rivas) 
  International Journal of Public Opinion Research. Volume 29. Issue 3. pp. 426-448. 2017
  >Final Manuscript

Working papers

• The incidence of affirmative action: Evidence from quotas in private schools in India
  (With Abhijeet Singh)
  >RISE Working Paper > Online Appendix

• Preventing School Dropout: Experimental Evidence from Guatemala
  (With Francisco Haimovich, Emmanuel Vazquez, and Melissa Adelman)
  >An earlier version of this paper was circulated under the title “Scalable Early Warning Systems for School Dropout Prevention: Evidence from a 4,000-School Randomized Controlled Trial”
  

• Preschool and Primary School Markets: Evidence from India
  (With Petter Berg and Abhijeet Singh)
  Revise and resubmit at the Economic Journal

Work in progress

• The long-term effects of admission to an elite high school
  (With Enrique Seira and Rafael de Hoyos)

• Toxic Recycling: The Cost of Used Lead-Acid Battery Processing in Mexico
  (With Erin Litzow, Bianca Cecato, and Tatiana Zarate-Barrera)

Policy and popular writing

•  Will an RCT Change Anyone’s Mind? Should It?
  (With Justin Sandefur and Wayne Sandholtz)
  CGD blog – January 25, 2017.

• Ajuste de Riesgo y Solvencia de las Aseguradoras de Salud en Colombia 
  (With Alvaro Riascos and Natalia Serna)
  Nota de Política Nº 28 – Universidad de los Andes. March, 2017.

• Motivating teachers to improve learning: evidence from Tanzania
  (With Isaac Mbiti , Youdi Schipper, and Aidan Eyakuze)
  GlobalDev Blog -December 9, 2019

• Outsourcing Primary Education in Liberia Leads to Mixed Results
  (With Elizabeth Tofaris)
  The Impact Initiative – August 25, 2020

• Designing and Testing a Scalable Teacher Incentive Programme in Tanzania
  (With Isaac Mbiti and Youdi Schipper)
  RISE Insight Note – September 7, 2022

• Reversing losses in learning after Covid
  (With Abhijeet Singh and Karthik Muralidharan)
  Hindustan Times – October 12, 2022

• Preschool services in Tamil Nadu
  (With Abhijeet Singh)
  RISE Blog – December 20, 2022

Resting papers

• Benefit plans, insurer competition, and pharmaceutical prices: Evidence from Colombia

• Using Instrumental Variables for Assessing the Effects of Air Pollution on Health: A Cautionary Tale
  (With Tarik Benmarhnia and Prashant Bharadwaj)

• The effect of gold mining on the health of newborns
  (With Santiago Saavedra)

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