Working Papers

“Father of the Bride, or Steel Magnolias? Targeting men, women or both to reduce child marriage.”

(with Rachel Cassidy, Wendy Janssens, Umair Kiani & Karlijn Morsink) 

Interventions that aim to change outcomes for women and children typically target women. Yet in contexts where men are the dominant decision-makers, male preferences and beliefs may remain the binding constraint. We ask – when we target men, women or both, with the same intervention in the same context – how their information and beliefs about private and social returns, versus their power to change household outcomes, trade off. We conduct a cluster-randomized control trial of an edutainment intervention aimed at delaying marriage of adolescent children in rural Pakistan. Our treatment arms target men and boys, women and girls, or both. We find that targeting men, or both genders jointly, significantly reduces child marriage of girls in targeted households. Underlying this, we show that whenever men are treated, they focus on private returns to the household; whenever women are treated, they focus on both private and social returns; and only when both genders are treated jointly, does the focus on social returns also become salient to men.

“Interventions that disrupt the peace: Intimate partner violence when targeting men, women or both”

(with Dan Anderberg, Rachel Cassidy,Wendy Janssens, Karlijn Morsink & Anouk van Veldhoven)

A potential increase in intimate partner violence (IPV) should be an important concern when targeting interventions at households, especially when they address outcomes subject to joint decision-making by partners. We study the effects on IPV of targeting women only, men only, or both with the same information, in the same context: the context of marriage timing decisions for daughters in rural Pakistan. We formulate a model of Bayesian persuasion, where IPV may arise from disagreements between spouses about the marriage timing. First, the model predicts the highest likelihood of disagreements and IPV when new information about the marriage timing decision is targeted at both spouses, as compared to when targeting spouses alone. Intuitively, when both spouses are fully informed, no strategic information-sharing -- which may mitigate disagreements -- is possible. Second, marriage delay is predicted to be largest when targeting men, and smallest when targeting women, with an in-between effect when targeting both. We empirically test the model by leveraging an existing randomized controlled trial of an edutainment intervention addressing child marriage decisions in rural Pakistan. Consistent with the model's predictions, we find IPV to be most likely when men and women are jointly targeted, and observe significant reductions in child marriage when men are targeted, alone or jointly with women.

Work in Progress

“Learning to work towards goals: The impact of a goal setting intervention on improving learning outcomes. Experimental evidence from Uganda and Kenya.” (with Guthrie Gray-Lobe, Michael Kremer, Joost de Laat & Karlijn Morsink).

“Intimate partner violence and women’s economic decision-making. Experimental Evidence from Ethiopia.” (with Dan Anderberg, Rachel Cassidy, Melissa Hidrobo, Jessica Leight & Karlijn Morsink) 

“LinkinOut harassment: A targeted social media experiment to reduce workplace harassment towards women.” (with Diego Dabed)  

“Building Soft Skills to Navigate Hard Realities: Designing Targeted Behavioral Interventions that Improve Learning Outcomes and Well-Being.” (with Karlijn Morsink)