In this paper, we examine the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the livelihoods of the poor. We use an unusually rich data set from a 'financial diaries' study known as the Hrishipara Daily Diaries Project. The data set tracks the economic and financial transactions of 60 individuals...

We study the lasting repercussions of the 1918 influenza (‘Spanish Flu’) pandemic on healthmeasures and literacy rates in Sao Paulo, Brazil, the most populous city in South Americatoday, but significantly poorer a century ago. Leveraging temporal and spatial variation indistrict-level...

Partnering with a major telecommunications company, we field communication interventions that provide mobile calling credits to a nationally representative set of low-income adults in Ghana during the COVID-19 pandemic. Individuals’ inability to make unexpected calls, the need to borrow SOS...

Epidemics are on the rise, yet the social disruption they engender is not well understood. This paper provides causal evidence of the impact of a rapidly spreading epidemic on civil violence and sheds light on its drivers. New data at high spatial and temporal resolution of the Ebola outbreak in...

Malaria still claims a heavy human and economic toll, specifically in sub-Saharan Africa. Even though the causality between malaria and poverty is presumably bi-directional, malaria plays a role in the economic difficulties of the region. This article provides an analysis of the economic...

Mental health disorders account for a significant share of the overall global disease burden. The economic losses from such disorders are staggeringly large, particularly in low-income countries, where people are faced with several unexpected shocks. We test whether improved communication can...

We analyze the repercussions of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic on demographic measures, human capital, and productivity markers in Sao Paulo, Brazil, the most populous city in South America today. Leveraging temporal and spatial variation in district-level estimates of influenza-related deaths for...

Epidemics can worsen social inequality by increasing gender gaps in educational attainment through raising the direct and opportunity costs of investing in girls, particularly in poorer countries. We investigate this hypothesis by examining the effects of sudden exposure to the 1986 meningitis...

The COVID-19 pandemic represents a massive global health crisis. Because the crisis requires large-scale behaviour change and places significant psychological burdens on individuals, insights from the social and behavioural sciences can be used to help align human behavior with the...

In response to COVID-19 most governments used some form of lockdown policy to manage the pandemic. This required making iterative policy decisions in a rapidly changing epidemiological environment resulting in varying levels of lockdown stringency over time. While studies estimating the labour...