Research

Job Market Paper

1. Regenerative Agriculture and Farmer Profitability: Modeling Adoption for Scalable Climate Mitigation Link

Abstract: Agriculture is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, but large-scale climate mitigation in this sector depends on whether conservation practices are privately profitable for farmers. This paper studies two core regenerative practices in U.S. row-crop systems — cover cropping and no till — and asks whether adoption improves farm profitability while building soil carbon. Empirically, I combine a panel of corn, soybean, and wheat farmers in the Midwest from 2010 - 2025 with a machine-learned county-year soil panel trained on ground-truth soil tests to examine farmer decisions and outcomes to changes in the soil. I estimate reduced-form using a staggered difference-in-difference design to address endogenous adoption. I then map the estimated relationships into a structural model of farmer decision-making to evaluate adoption incentives under heterogeneous farm conditions. I find that long-run improvements in soil organic carbon (SOC) drive long-run production gains, but profitability is muted by switching costs of adoption. This suggests that large-scale climate mitigation in row crop production is limited not by agronomic potential, but by private adoption costs, which can be addressed through appropriately designed policy interventions.

2. Scaling Education Reform: Evidence from Morocco’s Pioneer Schools Program Link

Abstract: Can governments sustain large learning gains when evidence-based interventions move from pilot implementation to national scale? We study this question using Morocco’s Pioneer School Program (PSP), a nationwide reform that combines two Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel ``great buy’’ approaches: structured pedagogy and targeted remediation by learning level. The reform was rolled out in phases, expanding from 626 schools in 2023-24 to 4,626 schools in 2025-26, which allows us to compare effects across exposure duration and rollout cohorts. We estimate intent-to-treat effects using a matched-pair difference-in-differences design built from rich administrative records on all public primary schools and original student assessment data in Arabic, French, and mathematics. Student achievement is measured using psychometrically linked test scales (IRT), and identification is strengthened with post-double-selection LASSO controls and pre-trend evidence from seven years of historical data. Three findings emerge. First, PSP generates large gains in foundational learning relative to comparison schools. Second, treatment effects vary across cohorts and years of exposure, consistent with changes in implementation conditions during rapid scale-up. Third, estimated impacts remain large in global comparative perspective, placing Morocco’s reform among the higher-effect government-led interventions in recent evidence syntheses. Motivated by these patterns, we use the voltage-effect framework (List, 2026) to interpret how implementation quality, sample composition, and effective dosage can mediate the pilot-to-scale transition. The results contribute to the economics of education reform by showing both the promise of system-level scaling and the constraints that determine whether early gains persist as reforms expand through public delivery systems.

Working Papers

Economic Contribution of Wild Pollinators: An Application of Gross-Ecosystem Product (GEP), joint with Subin Poudel and Lingling Liu. Link

Unintended Consequences of Lockdowns, COVID-19 and the Shadow Pandemic in India. A Reproduction Study of Ravindran and Shah. (Nature Human Behavior, 2023) Link

Outsourcing Education: Experimental Evidence from Liberia. A Replication Study of Romero, Sandefur, and Sandholtz (American Economic Review, 2020) Link

Publications

Environment Papers

The Political Consequences of Resource Scarcity: Targeted Spending in a Water-stressed Democracy. A Replication Study of Mahadevan and Shenoy (Journal of Public Economics, 2023), joint with Matthew Braaksma. World Development Perspective. 2025, 39 (100707). Link

Development Papers

Impact Evaluation of the Darsel Math Personalized Learning Platform in Jordan, joint with Caroline Krafft, Paul Glewwe, Tessa Bold, Abdulhamid Haidar, Paola Giannattasio, and Mojtaba Mahdipour. Journal of Development Economics. Stage 1 Conditionally Accepted. Link

Market Access and Quality Upgrading: Evidence from Four Field Experiments. A Replication Study of Bold et al. (American Economic Review, 2022), joint with Karim Nchare and Pu Sun. Journal of Comments and Replications in Economics. 2024, 3 (2024-2). Link

Cruising Through School: General Equilibrium Effects of Cruise Ship Arrivals on Employment and Education. The American Economist. 2022, 67 (1), 5 – 23. Link

The Impact of Early Childhood Development Interventions on Children’s Health in Developing Countries: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials, joint with Pallavi Prabhakar and Ayo Ellis. NHH Dept. of Economics Discussion Paper. 2022, (14/2022). Link

Business Papers

Does Board Gender Diversity and Remuneration Impact Earnings Quality? An Empirical Analysis of Spanish Firms, joint with Paolo Saono, Laura Muro, and Pablo San Martin. Gender in Management: An International Journal. 2024, 39 (1), 18 – 51. Link

Contrasting Incentives for Earnings Management: Board Activity and Board Remuneration in Spanish Firms, joint with Paolo Saono, Laura Muro, and Mauricio Jara-Bertin. ResearchGate Working Paper Series. 2019 (2.2.11103.00163) Link

Labor Papers

Spatial Polarisation. A Replication Study of Cerina et al. (The Economic Journal, 2023) joint with Noah Arman Kouchekinia and Xu Xu Cong. Journal of Applied Econometrics. 2026. Forthcoming. Link

Methodology Papers

Comparing Human-Only, AI-Assisted, and AI-Led Teams on Assessing Research Reproducibility in Quantitative Social Science, joint with Abel Brodeur, David Valenta, Alexandru Marcoci, et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences. 2026, 123 (22). Link

Reproducibility and Robustness of Economics and Political Science Research, joint with Abel Brodeur, Derek Mikola, Nikolai Cook, Edward Miguel, et al. Nature. 2026, 652 (8108), 151 – 156. Link

Stata Tip: Consistency and Communication in Team Dofiles, joint with James Allen IV and Hang Yu. SSRN Working Paper Series. 2021, (3965114) Link