Research

WORKING PAPERS

The Political Consequences of Controversial Education Reform: Lessons from Wisconsin’s Act 10 – New!
(with Barbara Biasi)
We study the electoral consequences of Wisconsin’s Act 10, a controversial law that weakened teachers’ unions and enabled flexible teacher pay. Exploiting variation in the timing of implementation of the reform across districts, we first show that it raised student test scores, reduced union revenues, and created winners and losers among teachers in terms of pay. We then show that the reform increased the vote share for the incumbent GOP governor by about 2 pp and lowered Democratic campaign contributions from teachers and unions. The electoral gains were driven by districts with ex ante stronger unions and more potential winners among teachers and students.

The politics of public service reform – Revise & Resubmit, AEJ: Applied Economics
This paper provides experimental evidence on the electoral effect of a large education reform in a developing democracy. Despite significantly improving school quality, the reform reduced the incumbent party’s presidential vote share by 3 percentage points (9%). This does not imply that ordinary voters opposed the policy’s aims: electoral effects were positively correlated with school quality effects, and household surveys showed strong support. However, the reform also reduced teachers’ job satisfaction, support for the incumbent government, and political activity. The reform lost the most votes where it caused the greatest political disengagement of teachers.
VoxDev column – Medium post – CESifo Working Paper 10633 – SSRN working paper

Sibling Spillovers and Free Schooling – Under Review
(with João Ferreira)
We use administrative data to measure sibling spillovers on academic performance before and after Tanzania’s introduction of Free Secondary Education (FSE). Prior to FSE, students whose older siblings narrowly passed the secondary school entrance exam were less likely to go to secondary school themselves; with FSE, the effect became positive. A triple differences analysis, using geographic variation in FSE exposure, shows that FSE caused the reversal. Negative pre-FSE spillovers were concentrated in poorer regions. Positive post-FSE spillovers were largest for lower-performing younger siblings. Our results demonstrate that FSE alleviated financial constraints, allowing families to distribute educational investments more equitably rather than concentrating resources on high-performing children.
CESifo Working Paper 11436 – IZA Discussion Paper 17228 (short paper version)

Secondary school access raises primary school achievement – Under review
I use variation in ex-ante school fee payments to measure how Free Secondary Education (FSE) affected primary students in Tanzania. I first confirm FSE increased secondary access: secondary enrollments rose, household spending on secondary school fees plummeted, and elites’ transition premium disappeared. I then show that FSE increased primary exam pass rates by 6% and secondary transition rates by 23%. This was not due to supply inputs: there was no effect on school entry, and class sizes rose. Instead it appears to be driven by demand-side investments: primary students selected into better schools, attended more, and worked less.
CESifo Working Paper 11343

Tax morale, public goods, and politics: Experimental evidence from Mozambique – Under review
(with Pedro C. Vicente)
Tax revenue is vital for development, but governments must balance raising revenues with maintaining political support. Partnering with a city government in Mozambique, we experimentally test a grounded hypothesis: that tax morale and political support are increased by information highlighting 1) public good provision and 2) local political autonomy. We find that the treatments have different strengths. Public goods information raises tax morale, driven by areas of low baseline public good provision, but has no effect on voting. The political message increases electoral support but raises tax morale only among co-partisans. Balancing tax morale and political support requires careful communication.
IGC Working Paper MOZ-22067

On the Political Economy of Urbanization: Experimental Evidence from Mozambique
(with Alex Armand, Frederica Mendonça, and Pedro Vicente)
Urbanization is a force for economic structural change and is underway in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, the slow pace of these transformations in some countries likely results from contrary political interests at the central level. We study the political impacts of a randomized program integrating rural migrants in Mozambique, sponsored by a city government. In the program, local leaders had an active role in the face-to-face coaching of migrants. When looking at behaviors around the municipal elections of 2023, we find that the program increased the political mobilization of local leaders whom we observe conducting more electoral campaigning. Migrants turn out to the election more often, measured by recording inked fingers, and are observed to use more political objects, despite the limited labor market impacts of the integration program. We conclude that helping urbanization can be in the political interest of local governments.

Priming the pump: Can upfront interest payments increase savings? – Under review
(with Peter Carroll, Flora Myamba, Daniel Nielson, Joseph Price, and Phillip Roessler)
We encouraged an NGO’s cash transfer recipients in Tanzania to keep 10% of the transfer in their mobile money account until a certain date. We randomized whether doing so would permit them to keep a bonus provided upfront, receive an equivalent amount of “interest” at the end, or confer no benefit. Mobile wallet administrative data show that the Upfront group were 14pp (74%) more likely to reach the savings target (net of the bonus). This was driven by participants with higher balances ex-ante. Offering interest payments at the end had no effect on saving, despite a significantly above-market interest rate.
IPA summary

The road to reelection: Political returns to highway construction
(with Daniel Leff Yaffe and Alejandro Nakab)
Do voters reward public good provision? We measure the electoral effect of construction of the US Interstate Highway System (IHS). We construct a shift-share instrument for highway construction at the county×year level, interacting state×year congressional apportionments with the share of a state’s total planned IHS mileage accounted for by each county. We find that completing one extra highway mile in an election year increases incumbent party vote share for governors and congresspeople by 2.7 and 1.5 percentage points respectively. We also find spillover effects on neighboring counties.

publications

Outsourcing Education: Experimental Evidence from Liberia
(with Mauricio Romero and Justin Sandefur)
American Economic Review, Volume 110, No. 2, 2020
In 2016, the Liberian government delegated management of 93 randomly selected public schools to private providers. Providers received US$50 per pupil, on top of US$50 per pupil annual expenditure in control schools. After one academic year, students in outsourced schools scored 0.18σ higher in English and mathematics. We do not find heterogeneity in learning gains or enrollment by student characteristics, but there is significant heterogeneity across providers. While outsourcing appears to be a cost-effective way to use new resources to improve test scores, some providers engaged in unforeseen and potentially harmful behavior, complicating any assessment of welfare gains.
AEA registry

Work in progress