"Platforms and the exploration of new products" abstract The introduction of new but risky products and sellers are key to the growth of platforms. Exploration by current buyers helps future buyers better value these products and sellers. This externality across buyers raises the possibility that there may be too little exploration in the absence of…

"What Happens to Babies Born During Health-Worker Strikes?" abstract Health worker strikes are a growing but still under-studied phenomenon in Sub-Saharan Africa. In the past few years alone, health worker strikes limited service provision in more than 18 countries. We use panel data from Kenya linked with a newly compiled record of the timing and…

"How long do healthy habits last? The role of prices" Abstract When a policy gives temporary incentives for healthy behaviors, how long does the impact last? I study the U.S. Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, which gives vouchers for healthy foods. Using household-level scanner data, I find that the effect of…

"Selling Mechanisms for a Financially Constrained Buyer"

"The School-Entry-Age Rule Affects Redshirting Patterns and Resulting Disparities in Achievement" abstract Since, other things equal, older children do better in school, the extent and pattern of delayed entry affects observed patterns in academic performance. This paper provides three new sets of relevant findings, utilizing comprehensive data on birth cohorts of children who enrolled in…

"Juggling Work and Family: The Effect of Flexibility on Mental Health" abstract Flexible working practices can help parents maintain work and family life balance that can lead to increased productivity and improved mental health and well-being. However, they can also lead to increased stress and are instead detrimental. Applying a regression discontinuity design, this paper…

"Does revealing personality data affect prosocial behaviour?" Abstract Many modern organisations collect data on individuals’ personality traits as part of their human resource selection processes. We test experimentally whether revealing information on personality data impacts on pro-social behaviour as measured in a one-shot modified dictator game and a public goods game. Our focus is on…

"Uniform Price Auctions with a Last Accepted Bid Pricing Rule" abstract We model multi-unit auctions in which bidders' valuations are multidimensional private information. We show that the last accepted bid uniform-pricing rule admits a unique equilibrium with a simple characterization; in comparison, the commonly-studied first rejected bid uniform-pricing rule admits many equilibria, many of which…

"Talent Discovery, Layoff Risk andUnemployment Insurance"

"The Intergenerational Effects of Cash Transfers to Groups of Men and Women: Evidence from Northern Uganda" abstract This paper looks at the intergenerational effects of a cash transfer, the Youth Opportunities Program (YOP), on human capital investments in children in conflict-affected Northern Uganda. The YOP was primarily aimed at providing startup money to groups of…

"Keep calm and carry on: gender differences in endurance"

"Costly Verification in Collective decisions" Abstract We study how a principal should optimally choose between implementing a new policy and maintaining the status quo when the information relevant for the decision is privately held by agents. Agents are  strategic in revealing their information, but the principal can verify an agent's information at a given cost.…

"Roadway Density, Input Sourcing, and Patterns of Specialisation"

"Do parents know their children's ability? Evidence from parental choice of school starting age" ABSTRACT Parental ability to make optimal decisions about their children's education depend on whether parents are aware of the ability of their children. We investigate whether this is the case by means of a quasi-natural experiment: in Italy parents can choose…

"Police Patrols and Crime" Abstract An influential literature has used the aftermath of terrorist attacks to estimatelarge effects of police street deployment on crime. However, the elasticities obtainedin these settings may not easily extrapolate to more standard circumstances. Thispaper exploits a natural experiment that aimed to increase police presence in morethan 6,000 well-defined areas, by…