We test whether the provision of multiple labeled savings accounts affects savings and downstream outcomes in an experiment with 761 microentrepreneurs in urban Malawi. Treatment respondents received one or multiple savings accounts, in the form of lockboxes or mobile money. We find that while...

We quantify the effect of market disruptions due to COVID-19 on the lives of households in rural areas of Liberia and Malawi, utilizing panel data from phone surveys that were implemented as part of a randomized cash transfer experiment. The surveys began collection several months before the...

While cash transfers consistently show large effects on immediate outcomes like consumption, limited access to markets may mute their impact on productive investment. In an experiment in Malawi, we cross-cut cash transfers with an “input fair”, designed to reduce transport costs to access...

How should the design of incentives vary with agent time preferences? We develop two predictions. First, "bundling" the payment function over time - specifically by making the payment for future effort increase in current effort - is more effective if individuals are impatient over effort....

Digital credit has expanded rapidly in Africa, mostly in the form of short-term, high-interest loans offered via mobile money. Loan terms are often opaque and consumer financial literacy is low, providing opportunities for predatory lending. A regression discontinuity analysis shows no negative...

While many developing-country policymakers see heavy fertilizer subsidies as critical to raising agricultural productivity, most economists see them as distortionary, regressive, environmentally unsound, and argue that they result in politicized, inefficient distribution of fertilizer supply. We...