See below for a complete list of publications and working papers, as well as selected works in progress. For the latter, I am happy to provide more details—and a draft paper where possible—upon request.
Job Market Paper
Technology of Liberation or Control?: The Asymmetric Effects of the Internet on Political Conflict
with Megan Ryan
Over the past two decades, the internet and social media have expanded rapidly to all corners of the world. While these new technologies have liberalized access to information and communication channels, they have also introduced new platforms for surveillance and propaganda. As such, the internet can be characterized as a ``double-edged sword’’ for society, introducing new freedoms as well as oppressions. This duality is perhaps most evident in the case of Myanmar, where a majority of the population was first exposed to the internet within the past ten years. In this paper, we estimate the effects of the internet empirically by exploiting geographic variation in access as well as temporal shocks to exposure. We find that reducing internet access leads to a reduction in the prevalence of demonstrations—but not other forms of political conflict—during the months following a military coup. However, as internet freedoms are eroded, the effect on protest activity disappears, and we argue that this shift can be explained by a change in the nature of political discourse online. Moreover, in the long run, we find that internet access is associated with more political violence and higher levels of military control across Myanmar. Taken together, our results show that the internet can serve as both a tool of liberalization and oppression, conditional on the government’s capacity to monitor and exert influence over the network. These findings are especially relevant for developing economies in which widespread internet access is relatively recent, as these advances may not necessarily be beneficial for democracy movements.
Publications
A Field of Her Own: Property Rights and Women’s Agency in Myanmar (Online Appendix), The Journal of Politics (2025)
with Alexandra Hartman, Lakshmi Iyer, and Edmund Malesky
Can financial incentives lead households to register land in women’s names, thereby providing them with formal property rights? Can formal property ownership improve women’s economic outcomes and change decision-making dynamics within the household? To investigate these questions, we take advantage of a bank lending policy in Myanmar that motivated households with land holdings above 10 acres to title the surplus land in their wives’ names. We surveyed 5,068 men and women in Myanmar about land ownership, economic activity, and gendered decision-making. We find that the financial incentives provided by the bank lending policy led to increases in women’s formal property ownership, but these exogenously assigned rights did not manifest broadly into greater economic empowerment or decision-making power for recipients. We provide suggestive evidence that local cultural norms are a significant constraint for women to achieve empowerment through formal land rights.
Measuring Remittances, Journal of Development Economics (2023)
with Giuseppe De Arcangelis, Yuna Liang, Peter Srouji, and Dean Yang
Remittances received by households from international migrants are of interest in an increasing number of microeconomic analyses. Making use of novel data, we measure misreporting of remittances sent by migrants in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to remittance recipients in the Philippines. We obtained administrative transaction data from a sample of Filipino migrants who were clients of a popular money transfer operator (MTO). We then surveyed these migrants as well as their primary remittance recipients about the same remittance flows. Migrant-reported remittances are only 6% lower than MTO administrative records, and we cannot reject their equality. A custom smartphone app designed to facilitate migrant remittance reporting does not help raise reporting accuracy. Recipient-reported remittances are 23% lower than migrant reports on average. Recipients under-report even more when they receive remittances less frequently and when remittances make up a lower share of household income.
Working Papers
The Intergenerational Impacts of Reparations: Evidence from the Eastern Cherokees
with Achyuta Adhvaryu, Randall Akee, Emilia Simeonova, and Huayu Xu
What are the long-term effects of financial reparations on recipients and their children? Do reparations merely make people whole again, or do they alter the life trajectories of recipients (and their dependents)? We explore this question through the experience of the Cherokee Nation, who were forcefully removed from their traditional lands in the American southeast and moved to newly designated territories in current day Oklahoma during the 1830s. The forced relocation, known as the Trail of Tears, resulted in tremendous loss of life, land, and other resources. Decades later, in 1905, the US Court of Claims awarded substantial financial restitution to Cherokee survivors and their descendants. We combine digitized data from administrative records with full-count historical U.S. Census data from 1900 to 1940 to estimate the short and long-run impacts of these financial reparations on Cherokee recipients and their family members. To address endogeneity issues in the receipt of financial reparations, we exploit variation in the size of treated households. Plausibly exogenous differences in birth timing determined how many dependents an applicant could claim, and thus, how much restitution these households were entitled to. Within one year of payment receipt, households receiving larger per-person awards had higher levels of home ownership and sent their children to school at higher rates. Ten years after payment, these households were still more likely to own a home, and significantly less likely to live in a rural area or engage in farming. We show that migration is the primary mechanism for long term effects, as households receiving higher payments settled in more affluent areas outside of tribal reservation lands.
Goal Setting for Remittances
with Marup Hossain and Dean Yang
Remittances currently constitute more than 5 percent of Bangladesh’s GDP, eclipsing the total revenue from both foreign investment and international aid, and thus represent a significant channel for growth and development. We conduct a randomized evaluation that aims to better understand the remittance and savings behaviors of international work migrants and their households in this context. With a randomly selected sample of migrants and their primary remittance recipients, we conducted a simple goal setting exercise to elicit individual savings preferences. We then connected each remittance sender/recipient pair via a group messaging app in order to share their individual savings goals and facilitate agreement on a single joint goal. By comparing the subsequent remittance volumes and savings behaviors with a control group of otherwise similar sender/recipient pairs, we learn about the salience of certain behavioral constraints faced by remittance senders and recipients. This study represents an important contribution to our understanding of the role of remittances in household financial decisions, and may be of interest to policy makers looking to adopt simple interventions for increasing the share of investment from remittance income.
Works in Progress
Bias and Precision in Measurement of Livestock Weight
with Andrew Dillon, Dylan Groves, and Dean Karlan
Mobile Money Agents’ Incentives to Adopt Digital Tools: A Randomized Controlled Pilot Study
with Emma Riley
Innovations in School-Based Learning Programs to Mitigate Risks of Conflict for Youth in the Philippines’ BARMM Region
with Jeroen Adam and Mahreen Khan
Unpacking Bias and Market Power in Bangladesh’s High International Migration Costs
with Mahreen Khan, Sakib Mahmood, and Emir Murathanoğlu