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Sports Betting: I first became aware of sports betting while spending time in Liberia. Every street corner had groups of young men, discussing and debating international football games and fervently placing bets on the day's matches. In Monrovia, a city with limited new investments and capital, it was striking to see international organizations flooding the market with electronic betting consoles linking local vendors to international betting odds. After getting to know and talking with many of the bettors themselves, it quickly became clear that these young men were spending considerable portions of their weekly income on sports betting (8-15%). With high expected losses from participation (~35-50%), I wanted to understand both the causes and consequences of such high levels of participation in economically disadvantaged populations. I was later forced to shift the project to Uganda where I saw a nearly identical system of sports betting with similar levels of popularity and intensity. Field work was conducted from September 2015-July 2016. The paper looks at the tension between betting and saving as competing strategies of liquidity generation in pursuit of large, lumpy expenditures. |
Betting shop in Kampala, Uganda
Betting stand in Monrovia, Liberia
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Insecurity and Industrial Organization: Evidence from Afghanistan (with Josh Blumenstock, Tarek Ghani, Ethan Kapstein, Tom Scherer, and Ott Toomet): Working Paper
One-fifth of the world's population lives in countries affected by fragility, violence and conflict, impeding long-term economic growth. However, little is known about how firms respond to local changes in security, partly because of the difficulty of measuring firm activity in these settings. This paper makes two contributions. First, we develop a method for observing private sector activity using mobile phone metadata, and validate this measure with administrative and survey-based data on over 2,300 firms in Afghanistan. Second, we use this new measure of rm activity to examine how local insecurity affects firm activity. We first illustrate this method using an empirical case
study of the 2015 Taliban attack on Kunduz, Afghanistan's fifth largest city. We then generalize this approach by studying how nationwide location decisions of the Afghan private sector respond to over 100 large terrorist attacks occurring over the course of four years. We find that firms reduce presence in districts following major increases in violence, that these effects persist for up to six months, and that larger firms are more responsive to violence. We discuss potential mechanisms, firms' strategic adaptations, and implications for policymakers.
Marriage Markets and Income Shocks (with Marieke Kleemans):
In societies where financial burdens associated with marriage are asymmetric, large correlated income shocks, such as those from rainfall, can shift both the supply and demand for brides in a marriage market. This project examines how marriage markets adjust to these shocks. Using data from Indonesia, we explore marriage timing, bride price, and migration as different responses to shocks that may allow marriage markets to re-balance and clear.
One-fifth of the world's population lives in countries affected by fragility, violence and conflict, impeding long-term economic growth. However, little is known about how firms respond to local changes in security, partly because of the difficulty of measuring firm activity in these settings. This paper makes two contributions. First, we develop a method for observing private sector activity using mobile phone metadata, and validate this measure with administrative and survey-based data on over 2,300 firms in Afghanistan. Second, we use this new measure of rm activity to examine how local insecurity affects firm activity. We first illustrate this method using an empirical case
study of the 2015 Taliban attack on Kunduz, Afghanistan's fifth largest city. We then generalize this approach by studying how nationwide location decisions of the Afghan private sector respond to over 100 large terrorist attacks occurring over the course of four years. We find that firms reduce presence in districts following major increases in violence, that these effects persist for up to six months, and that larger firms are more responsive to violence. We discuss potential mechanisms, firms' strategic adaptations, and implications for policymakers.
Marriage Markets and Income Shocks (with Marieke Kleemans):
In societies where financial burdens associated with marriage are asymmetric, large correlated income shocks, such as those from rainfall, can shift both the supply and demand for brides in a marriage market. This project examines how marriage markets adjust to these shocks. Using data from Indonesia, we explore marriage timing, bride price, and migration as different responses to shocks that may allow marriage markets to re-balance and clear.