Research
Current Projects
When Protection Fails: Effects of Military Bases on Sexual Violence in Colombia (with Felipe Parra) Download Online Appendix
Presented at: Kyoto Summer Workshop on Applied Economics 2025, NBER SI Gender 2025, West Point Social Science Seminar 2025, NEUDC 2024, SEA 2024, Empirical Studies of Conflict (ESOC) 2024, PacDev 2024, SITE 2024.
Does the presence of government soldiers increase sexual violence against civilians? We study the long-run effects of military base expansion in Colombia using a novel municipality-level panel tracking military base presence and an event-study design suited for staggered treatment timing. We find that base presence increases reported sexual violence by 72% over 16 years, with effects concentrated in areas staffed by conscripts. These effects are not driven by demographic change, conflict intensity, or reporting behavior. By providing causal evidence of civilian harm from state military deployment, our findings highlight the overlooked costs of government-led security interventions in conflict zones.
Willing but Unable: Social Norms and Costs of Hiring Women in Pakistan (with Zunia Tirmazee and Hana Zahir) Download
Despite 74% of employers in the garment manufacturing industry in Punjab, Pakistan believing women are as capable as men at on-site production jobs, few hire women on factory floors. While much research has been conducted into the constraints women face in obtaining out-of-home employment, this paper instead investigates: What deters firms from hiring women? We use unique firm and worker survey data, complemented by behavioral experiments to measure willingness to comply with gender norms and estimate the impact of economic costs on hiring decisions. We find that top managers exhibit low willingness to comply with segregation norms and do not expect resistance from male workers. However, economic costs, particularly those related to providing safe transportation, significantly constrain female hiring, reducing the likelihood by 15%. These findings indicate that reducing economic burdens, such as transportation costs, could effectively increase female employment, highlighting the need for targeted policy interventions.
Watch Your Step:The Economic and Behavioral Responses of Rural Households to Landmines during Conflict (with Felipe Parra) Download
Presented at: APPAM 2024, SEA 2024.
Antipersonnel landmines, though intended to target combatants, disproportionately impact civilians, disrupting economic activity and altering household decision-making processes. This paper examines how rural households in Colombia adjust their labor market decisions and healthcare-seeking behavior in response to recent and nearby landmine events, using detailed spatial data on landmine events combined with longitudinal household survey data. Our findings show that individuals engage less in risky labor activities following recent landmine events, but these responses are heavily influenced by liquidity constraints. Specifically, liquidity-unconstrained individuals are 28\% less likely to work in occupations other than agricultural day labor, particularly in agriculture, and 12\% less likely to spend time on agricultural tasks in their own fields. These households hire additional agricultural workers after landmine exposure, substituting external labor for their own. In contrast, liquidity-constrained individuals are 45\% more likely to engage in agricultural day labor to compensate for income losses stemming from reduced non-agricultural employment. Moreover, landmine events deter both adults and children from seeking formal preventative medical care. This study highlights the differences in responses between liquidity-constrained and unconstrained individuals to shifts in perceived security during conflict.
The Effects of Internally Displaced Peoples on Consumption and Inequality in Mali (with Jeremy Foltz)
Revise and Resubmit at the Journal of African Economies
A series of civil conflicts in Mali has generated more than 346,000 internally displaced people (UNHCR,2020). This study estimates the effect of conflict-generated internal displacement on consumption, poverty, and inequality in host communities. Using comprehensive nationwide household survey data this study finds that wealth at the commune and household level is non-decreasing in internally displaced people (IDP) hosting communes relative to non-IDP host communes. We also find some partial evidence of increasing consumption at the household level although inequality and poverty at the commune level remain the same. The evidence suggests a fairly successful hosting and aid process inMali for IDP in terms of mitigating economic disruption for host communities.