Working Papers
Better roads, better off?: Evidence on improving roads in Tanzania, Working Paper with Ximena Jativa, 01.09.2020/518.
Returns to farm child labor in Tanzania, Working Paper with P. André and E. Delesalle, 01.03.2019/502.
Health consequences of sterilizations, WIDER Working Paper 2017/125.
Birth weight and long-term outcomes in a developing country, with Marie Baguet, Université de Fribourg, WP SES 2015-465.
Shocks and child labor: the role of markets, Université de Fribourg, WP SES 2015-458.
Early schooling and later outcomes: Evidence from pre-school extension in France, with Arnaud Lefranc, Thema WP 2010-07.
Unpublished Working Papers
Health consequences of sterilizations, Working Paper with M. De La Rupelle, 01.03.2019/503, Revise and resubmit World Development.
Non-standard forms of employment in Uganda and Ghana, with Cédric Houdré, International Labour Organization, WP 29.03.2016, 2226-8944 [ISSN].
Trajectoires de scolarisation et de travail des enfants au Sénégal, with Sylvie Lambert, International Labour Organization, WP 2005-07.
Work in progress
"Informal labor exchange teams and participation on the labor market : Evidence from rural Tanzania" with C. Arciniegas and M. Fahn
Development economists have long studied how informal arrangements among community members may substitute for an imperfect and incomplete market. This paper assesses whether informal arrangements may actually promote exchanges in the market. We study rural labor exchange teams, an organization that is found in many different areas but still underdocumented in the economic literature. Our theoretical analysis shows that these teams offer an advantage to employers, who may outsource the monitoring of workers' effort to the team. Team members are incentivized to provide high effort because a deviation would lead to the team dissolution, including for home production. Using data from north-west Tanzania, we confirm the model's predictions: women who are part of a labor exchange team are more likely to obtain paid farm work, and are more often hired for tasks for which teams have a comparative advantage.
"Reservations and school infrastructure and quality in India" with X. Jativa
This paper uses a novel dataset to estimate the effect of Women and Scheduled Castes reservations in local governments in rural areas of four North Indian states over the period 2005-2016 on primary school-level infrastructure investments, organization, enrollment and examinations. Taking advantage of natural experiments resulting from the institutional design of the reservation policy, we find evidence that female representation had no detectable impact on any of the dimensions we address in this paper. On the contrary, SC representation lead to limited positive effects on school investments in areas relevant to the needs of their group; but mostly negative effects on school enrollment for other disadvantaged minorities, without benefiting enrollment of pupils of their own group. These findings suggests that quotas have limited effects on primary education, which can be explained in part by a lack of agency of these population classes.
"Antibiotic pollution and infant mortality in India" with S. Baumgartner and X. Jativa
The number of deaths from antibiotic resistance is steadily rising and has become a global public health issue. Children from the Global South pay a strikingly high tribute, as last-line antibiotics are usually unavailable. Pollution of riverways due to pharmaceutical products is one driver of resistance. In this paper, we assess whether this channel explains a large part of infant mortality in India. We show that living downstream of a producer increases the infant mortality risk by 16\% and that antibiotic production explains 20,000 infant deaths in India per year. This suggests that new regulations, improved production processes and strategic considerations on the location of antibiotic producers are needed to guarantee that production does not induce negative externalities on the local population.
"Determinants of labor market imperfections in Africa" with C. Arciniegas
"Child fostering and nutrition in South Africa" with A. Gosselin-Pali and E. Gautrain