Working Papers

"Concessions, Land Segregation, and Spatial Development: Evidence from Mozambique", (Job Market Paper), 2025

[PDF]

Abstract: Concessions to private companies were a common form of economic and administrative organization during the colonial era in Africa. This paper examines the long-run legacy of the Mozambique Company, one of the largest and most enduring concessionary firms of the twentieth century, which governed central Mozambique from 1891 to 1942 under a Portuguese colonial charter. I exploit the Company’s historical boundaries to estimate its impact on contemporary local development, measured by household wealth and nighttime luminosity. Using spatial regression discontinuity (RD) designs across the concession area, at its border, and within the concession by colonial district type, I find that areas historically ruled by the Company are significantly better off today. However, these effects are not uniform, reflecting colonial land segregation between settler areas and indigenous reserves, with gains concentrated in the former. Drawing on original historical data from before, during, and after the concession period, I show that this spatial heterogeneity was driven by greater investment in road infrastructure and the creation of a specialized labor force serving settler-driven activities. My findings show that even within a single concession, variation in private colonial governance produced lasting development gaps, highlighting the role of private capital in contexts of weak state capacity.

Research in Progress

"Linguistic Divides: Gendered Language and Gender Norms in India", (with N. Mantha and B. Pattath)

Abstract: A common feature of many languages is grammatical gender, where nouns are assigned to sex-based categories. This paper examines whether speaking a gendered language affects women’s educational attainment and economic opportunities in South India. We exploit variation within the Dravidian language family, where Telugu uniquely classifies nouns as masculine or non-masculine, while Tamil, Kannada, and Malayalam do not. Our empirical strategy combines ordinary least squares with linguistic border variation, exploiting differences in both individual mother tongue and the surrounding linguistic environment. This two-dimensional approach allows us to disentangle cognitive effects, arising from personally speaking a gendered language, from cultural effects, stemming from residence in a society where a gendered language is spoken. We find that Telugu exposure is associated with poorer educational and labor market outcomes for women, especially when individual language use coincides with residence in Telugu-speaking regions. Supporting evidence suggests stronger gender norms reinforcing separation between masculine and feminine social roles among Telugu speakers. These findings highlight the importance of distinguishing cognitive from cultural channels when studying gender inequality and the role of language in shaping gender norms.

"Carbon Colonialism", (with E. Le Rossignol and G. Pincus)

[Project Description] [PPT]

Funding: Wheeler Institute for Business and Development, ReCIPE 

Abstract: Voluntary carbon markets have expanded rapidly across sub-Saharan Africa, channeling private climate finance into large-scale land-based carbon concessions. This paper constructs a novel geocoded dataset of certified carbon concessions and examines their allocation and local economic effects. At the country level, participation in voluntary carbon markets is associated with ecological endowments and institutional capacity. Within countries, concessions are disproportionately located in forested and agriculturally suitable areas, often overlapping with territories inhabited by politically marginalized groups. Using a staggered difference-in-differences design, we find that concession exposure leads to a persistent decline in local economic activity, as proxied by nighttime lights, with no evidence of differential pre-trends. The contraction is concentrated in conservation-oriented projects, public lands, and areas facing forest pressure, while afforestation projects exhibit weaker effects. These findings suggest that contemporary carbon concessions reshape local land governance through enforceable land-use restrictions, generating local economic costs. 

Policy Publications

"Asia-Pacific SDG Partnership Report. Inclusive Urban Futures: From Inequality to Opportunity", 2026

[Publisher's Version] [Media]

"Birth Registration in Asia and the Pacific: A Classification and Regression Trees Analysis to Identify the Furthest Behind Children", 2023

[Publisher's Version]

"The Workforce We Need: Social Outlook for Asia and the Pacific", 2022

[Publisher's Version]

"The Protection We Want: Social Outlook for Asia and the Pacific", 2020

[Publisher's Version] [Media]

"Closing the Gap: Empowerment and Inclusion in Asia and the Pacific", 2019

[Publisher's Version]

"Poorly Protected: Social Outlook for Asia and the Pacific", 2018

[Publisher's Version]

"Inequality of Opportunity Policy Papers", 2018–2024

[Birth Registration] [Pandemic Preparedness] [Intimate Partner Violence] [Financial Inclusion] [Women's Sexual and Reproductive Health] [Water and Sanitation]