About

My work focuses on the impact of and strategies for bringing public services such as electricity and sanitation to poor households in developing countries.

Research topics

• Business
• Economics
• Environmental science
• Economic growth
• Computer Science
• Geography
• Natural resource economics
• Agricultural economics
• Environmental engineering
• Political Science
• Environmental planning
• Agroforestry
• International trade
• Accounting
• Development economics
• Finance
• Actuarial science
• Economic geography
• Monetary economics
• Ecology
• Economy
• Medicine

Selected publications

• Electricity, Agricultural Productivity, and Deforestation: Evidence from Brazil

  Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists · 2026-05-06

  article
  PublisherDOI

• The impact of infrastructure investment on resilience to environmental shocks: Evidence from Ecuador

  World Development · 2025-01-09 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Evidence on designing sanitation interventions

  Journal of Development Economics · 2024-05-29 · 3 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Governments face trade-offs in investing in many different inputs to markets in an effort to make them function more smoothly, and often these inputs are managed by bureaucrats with their own priorities. Many of these markets are acutely dependent on all elements of the system functioning well in order to reach a reasonably high level of equilibrium provision (education, public works, infrastructure, etc). In sanitation markets in particular, failure at any level of the supply chain creates downstream effects. In addition, local demand depends on enforcement, education, and spatial correlation. We provide a weakest link theory of agent choices for sanitation markets that demonstrates the difficulties of decentralized decision making and suggests key implications for policy implementation. The theory demonstrates that while the welfare implications of improvements in overall sanitation are substantial, incremental changes in one area may have little to no impact on overall sanitation provision. Our model provides context for thinking about lessons the sanitation literature provides in terms of policy and investment.

  PublisherDOI

• Spillovers without Social Interactions in Urban Sanitation

  American Economic Journal Applied Economics · 2024-06-26 · 2 citations

  article

  We run a randomized controlled trial coupled with lab-in-the-field social network experiments in urban Dakar. Decision spillovers and health externalities play a large role in determining uptake of sanitation technology, with decision spillovers being largest among households that don’t receive significant subsidies. There is no evidence that the spillovers are explained by social forces in general, nor by specific social mechanisms such as learning from others, social pressure, or reciprocity. We do find evidence of a fourth, nonsocial, mechanism impacting decisions: increasing health benefits. As more neighbors adopt the sanitary technology, it becomes more worthwhile for other households to adopt as well. (JEL I12, O12, O13, O18, Q53, Q55, Z13)

  PublisherDOI

• Imperfect Competition and Sanitation: Evidence from Randomized Auctions in Senegal

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2022-01-01 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Imperfect Competition and Sanitation: Evidence from Randomized Auctions in Senegal

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2022-09-01 · 6 citations

  report

  We study the extent to which collusion can explain the under-provision of clean sanitation technologies in developing countries. Using latrine desludging services in Dakar as a case-study, we document that prices are 40% lower in competitive areas than in areas where prices are coordinated by a trade association. We then develop an experimental just-in-time auction platform with random variation in several design features to formally test for collusive conduct and estimate the welfare costs of imperfect competition. Consistent with the collusion hypothesis, we find that bidders systematically avoid competition by placing round bids and refraining from undercutting rivals. We use a K-means clustering algorithm to classify bidders as competitive, collusive, or naïve and simulate counterfactuals in which non-competitive bidders are replaced with competitive bidders. This would significantly increase take-up of the improved sanitation technology, with back-of-the-envelope calculations suggesting improvements in health of a similar magnitude to those from building improved sewerage systems.

  PublisherDOI

• How Important are Investment Indivisibilities for Development? Experimental Evidence from Uganda

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2022-02-01 · 12 citations

  report

  Theoretically, indivisible investments together with financial frictions can lower development, generate poverty traps, and lead agents to become risk-loving. Using experimental cash grants involving a choice between a safer, low payoff and a riskier, large payoff lottery, we find that 27 percent choose the riskier, larger lottery. Small grant winners invest in livestock and business inventory, while large grant winners invest in land, which exhibits high capital gains. Our quantitative model shows that the aggregate effects of financial deepening are sizable if the indivisible investment can be accumulated (e.g., capital) but not if it is in fixed supply (e.g., land).

  PublisherDOI

• Imperfect Competition and Sanitation: Evidence from Randomized Auctions in Senegal

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2022-01-01 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Privatization of public goods: Evidence from the sanitation sector in Senegal

  Journal of Development Economics · 2022 · 13 citations

  • Business
  • Agricultural economics
  • Economics

  Privatization of a public good (the management of sewage treatment centers in Dakar, Senegal) leads to an increase in the productivity of downstream sewage dumping companies and a decrease in downstream prices of the services they provide to households. We use the universe of legal dumping of sanitation waste from May 2009 to May 2018 to show that legal dumping increased substantially following privatization-on average an increase of 74%, or an increase of about 1640 trips to treatment centers each month. This is due to increased productivity of all trucks, not just those associated with the company managing the privatized treatment centers. Household-level survey data shows that downstream prices of legal sanitary dumping decreased by 5% following privatization, and DHS data shows that diarrhea rates among children under five decreased in Dakar relative to secondary cities in Senegal following privatization with no similar effect on respiratory illness as a placebo.

  PublisherDOI

• How Important are Investment Indivisibilities for Development? Experimental Evidence from Uganda

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2022-01-01 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Laura Schechter

  28 shared

• Joshua Deutschmann

  17 shared

• Jean‐François Houde

  17 shared

• Jared Gars

  University of Florida

  15 shared

• Joseph P. Kaboski

  The Ohio State University

  10 shared

• Terence Johnson

  University of Virginia

  8 shared

• Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

  Yale University

  8 shared

• Virgiliu Midrigan

  New York University

  7 shared