About Me
I am a PhD Candidate in the Economics Department at UC Berkeley. I will be on the 2024-25 Academic Job Market.
My research and teaching interests are development economics, industrial organization, and healthcare economics.
You can find my CV here.
Working Papers
Who calls the shots? Financial incentives and provider influence in the adoption of a new health technology
Job Market Paper
In healthcare, the decision to adopt a product is a joint problem between the healthcare professional and the patient. At the same time, subsidies and incentive programs in low and middle-income countries (LMIC) have become an important policy tool to increase the adoption of new health technologies. Using data from a randomized control trial (RCT) in Kenya, this paper employs a structural model of patient demand and provider counseling to study the welfare effects to the patient from the introduction of demand and supply side subsidies for a new contraceptive technology. The experimental variation and structural model allow to study the channels that lead to the diffusion of the new health technology, including the role of provider counseling, provider financial incentives and altruism, and patient’s preferences. Taken together, the results suggest that the provider’s counseling role is key in increasing adoption of the new technology and making subsidy programs successful, regardless of whether the subsidies target the patient or the provider.
Targeting Impact versus Deprivation
With Johannes Haushofer, Edward Miguel, Michael Walker and Paul Niehaus
Conditional accept, American Economic Review
A large literature has examined how best to target anti-poverty programs to those most deprived in some sense (e.g., consumption). We examine the potential tradeoff between this objective and targeting those most impacted by such programs. We work in the context of an NGO cash transfer program in Kenya, employing recent advances in machine learning methods and dynamic outcome data to learn proxy means tests that jointly target both objectives. Targeting solely on the basis of deprivation is not attractive in this setting under standard social welfare criteria unless the planner’s preferences are extremely redistributive.
Works in progress
Using Diagnosis Contingent Incentive Contracts to Improve Malaria Treatment
With Maria Dieci, Paul Gertler, and Jonathan Kolstad
Demand for generic medications and unobserved product quality in Mexico
With Adrian Rubli
Optimal incentive contracts for malaria case-management
With With Maria Dieci and Paul Gertler