Research

Job Market Paper

Who Holds the Conditional Cash Transfer? A Structural Evaluation of Shifting Benefit Recipients from Mothers to Adolescents

Abstract: Conditional cash transfer programs typically direct cash benefits to mothers to promote child welfare. Growing adolescent autonomy, however, raises questions about whether mothers remain the best recipients. This paper examines how the identities of conditional cash transfer (CCT) recipients—mothers versus adolescents—shape schooling, intrahousehold decision-making, and individual welfare. Using Mexico’s 2015 Pilot Program for Changing PROSPERA High School Scholarship Recipients (PCRB), which randomly reassigned scholarship payments from mothers to adolescents, I estimate a three-member collective labor-supply model with a father, a mother, and an adolescent. Household members derive utility from leisure, private consumption, and public goods, such as the adolescent’s schooling time and a joint monetary investment in the adolescent’s education. The model, estimated using detailed PCRB follow-up data, assumes Cobb-Douglas preferences and includes random coefficients to capture heterogeneity in preferences for adolescent education. The ongoing estimation will quantify household members’ willingness to pay for adolescent education and assess treatment effects on structural outcomes, including Pareto weights and welfare indices. Planned counterfactuals will evaluate alternative designs, including replacing cash with in-kind education support, additional time commitments, and reallocating transfers across members.

Working Papers

Public Works and Children’s Human Capital Formation: Evidence from Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program

Abstract: Conditional cash transfer programs typically direct cash benefits to mothers to promote child welfare. Growing adolescent autonomy, however, raises questions about whether mothers remain the best recipients. This paper examines how the identities of conditional cash transfer (CCT) recipients—mothers versus adolescents—shape schooling, intrahousehold decision-making, and individual welfare. Using Mexico’s 2015 Pilot Program for Changing PROSPERA High School Scholarship Recipients (PCRB), which randomly reassigned scholarship payments from mothers to adolescents, I estimate a three-member collective labor-supply model with a father, a mother, and an adolescent. Household members derive utility from leisure, private consumption, and public goods, such as the adolescent’s schooling time and a joint monetary investment in the adolescent’s education. The model, estimated using detailed PCRB follow-up data, assumes Cobb-Douglas preferences and includes random coefficients to capture heterogeneity in preferences for adolescent education. The ongoing estimation will quantify household members’ willingness to pay for adolescent education and assess treatment effects on structural outcomes, including Pareto weights and welfare indices. Planned counterfactuals will evaluate alternative designs, including replacing cash with in-kind education support, additional time commitments, and reallocating transfers across members.

Is Universal Scholarship Good for Everyone? The Role of Cash Transfers on School Choice," with Victor Delgado and Rui Zeng.

Abstract: This paper studies how Mexico's transition from targeted education transfers to a universal transfer affects high school choice and allocation outcomes, using administrative data from Mexico City's centralized public high school assignment system. To capture the effects at equilibrium, we estimate a structural model of school choice using the novel Robust Stability approach to recover students' responsiveness to transfer incentives. We then use counterfactual simulations to compare pre-reform and model-implied post-reform assignments to analyze the effects of the reform. The model also allows us to compare alternative transfer designs, providing policy recommendations to balance admission equity and government cost.

Who Eats and Who Learns? Food Transfers, Schooling, and Children's Welfare in India, with Tanmay Devi

Abstract: India’s food security system relies on two large programs: the Public Distribution System (PDS), which provides subsidized food to most households, and the Mid-Day Meal (MDM) scheme, which offers free school meals to children. Despite substantial public spending, child undernutrition remains widespread, and existing evidence on program effectiveness is mixed. This paper develops a structural model of household decision making to study how families value children’s development and how food security programs shape investments in schooling and nutrition. The analysis jointly examines the PDS and MDM, assessing whether they act as substitutes or complements and whether they protect children’s development against adverse shocks. The framework is used to conduct counterfactual policy experiments, offering guidance on how food subsidy design can be improved to enhance child outcomes.

Work In Progress

The Impact of Being "Left Behind" on Children's Health Development: A Consequence of China's Immigration Restriction