Working Papers

“Targeting men, women or both to reduce child marriage.” – Submitted

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

We ask whether it is more effective to target men, women, or both – with the same intervention in the same context – to improve women’s outcomes when behaviour is governed by gendered social norms. We conduct a clusterrandomized controlled trial of an edutainment intervention in Pakistan – aimed at delaying marriage of adolescent girls, whereas community norms favour early marriage. We find that targeting men, either alone or jointly with women, reduces child marriages in households directly targeted by the intervention. Targeting women, however, either alone or jointly with men, leads to sustained reductions in child marriages at the village level. To rationalize this pattern of results, we build on a model of Bayesian persuasion in the household, where women are more hesitant to deviate from social norms. We extend this by allowing for gender-segregated information transmission from targeted spouses to other households in the village.

“Keeping the peace while getting your way: Information, persuasion and intimate partner violence”  – Submitted

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

We study the effects on intimate partner violence (IPV) of new information received by women only, men only, or both, relevant to a high-stakes joint household decision. We model communication between spouses as Bayesian persuasion where disagreements elevate the risk of IPV. Our framework predicts that IPV will be lower when only one spouse is informed,
compared to when both are, as the opportunity for persuasion by one spouse leads to more agreement. To test the model’s predictions we leverage an existing randomized controlled trial
of an edutainment intervention addressing child marriage decisions for girls in rural Pakistan, targeted at men, women, or both. Our empirical findings confirm the prediction that the likelihood of IPV is highest when men and women are jointly targeted. Due to systematic gender differences in preferences, our persuasion model further predicts that marriage delays are largest when targeting men alone or jointly with women and smallest when targeting women alone, predictions that are also confirmed in the data.

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)