Research

Unilateral Divorce Rights, Domestic Violence and Women's Agency: Evidence from the Egyptian Khul Reform (with Viola Corradini), Journal of Development Economics, 2023
[Published version] 

We investigate whether the introduction of the right to unilateral, no-fault, divorce for women has an impact on domestic abuse, investments in children’s human capital, women’s labor force participation, and other proxies of women’s agency in the context of the Egyptian Khul reform of 2000. We employ a difference in differences design, comparing mothers of children older than the age cutoffs used to assign the children’s custody to the mother, to mothers of younger children, before and after the reform. The first group of women is less affected by the legislative change in terms of being able to make credible divorce threats because it faces higher divorce costs, including the loss of alimony and the marital house. Results suggest that the introduction of Khul decreased domestic abuse and increased investments into children’s education while we do not find significant effects on labor force participation. 

Working Papers

Religious Messaging and Adaptation to Water Scarcity: Evidence from Jordan
[Draft]
George Borts' Prize for Best Economics Dissertation at Brown University
Joukowsky Family Foundation Award for Outstanding Dissertation at Brown University

Can religion drive behavioral change? I study this question using a randomized evaluation in the context of water preservation in Jordan. Water preservation is crucial in the face of rising scarcity, yet it is challenging to change behaviors. In an experiment involving women attending religious classes, those in treated classes receive messaging on the sanctity of water in Islam, while the others attend classes on an unrelated religious topic. The treatment fosters prosocial attitudes and conservation efforts regarding water resources. Relative to the control, treated women were 28% more likely to donate to a water charity. More importantly, after three months, they reduced objectively measured water consumption by 17%. Exploring mechanisms, the messages work by instilling religious beliefs about water, especially those firmly rooted in the religious canon. In contrast, I observe a backlash against new practices that have been recently accepted by religious scholars but are not grounded in the tradition. Effective religious leaders emphasize concepts of moral responsibility over ritual practice and adopt an interactive teaching style. My findings provide new evidence on the potential of harnessing religion to change behaviors and the inner workings of such religious interventions.

Familiar Taste, Safer Choices: Sensory Heuristics and the Adoption of Clean Water (with Martin Rossi)
[Draft]

We provide experimental evidence from rural Egypt on the benefits of incorporating sensory familiarity into the design of health interventions in developing countries. Using a ``taste-preserving” filtration technology that mimics the local water profile, we find adoption rates of 91 percent, far exceeding the 50 percent ceiling previously documented for chlorinated water. Willingness to pay is 61 percent higher for filtered water than chlorinated water. Mechanism tests show that familiar taste strongly shapes perceptions of water’s healthiness, suggesting that alignment with imprinted sensory preferences improves uptake of health technologies.

Religious Media, Conversion and its Socio-Economic Consequences: The Rise of Pentecostals in Brazil (with Marcela Mello)
[Draft]

We study the socioeconomic consequences of adherence to the Pentecostal movement, using exposure to a church-affiliated TV channel as a source of quasi-random variation in religiosity. Our empirical strategy exploits the placement of transmitters prior to the channel being religiously affiliated. Results show that exposure to this TV channel leads to an increase of 1 p.p. (+30%) in the share of Pentecostals. This large change in religious adherence allows us to study its socioeconomic consequences. Consistent with the church’s prescriptions, we find that places exposed to this TV channel had higher fertility rate (0.03 child per women on average), lower female labor force participation (0.9 p.p.), lower schooling for young women (1.4 p.p.), and more votes for Pentecostal candidates (0.29 p.p.). We find no effects for male labor force participation and schooling. In an event-study framework, we exploit the expansion of RecordTV over time to show that the effects are not driven by other expansion strategies of the church. We find that the increase in the number of Pentecostal churches occurred as a result of change in content, but did not predate it, ruling out reverse causality.

The Arab Slave Trade and the Diffusion of Islam in Africa   (with Lydia Assouad)
[Draft]

This paper investigates the role of the Arab slave trades in the diffusion of Islam in Africa. Islamic law prohibited the enslavement of free Muslims, making conversion a collective strategy to reduce raiding risk. Using newly digitized historical sources linked to contemporary data on religious affiliation and attitudes, we show that groups with greater historical exposure to Arab slaving routes exhibit a higher historical prevalence of Islam, as measured by the presence of mosques, and a higher contemporary share of Muslims. They also report stronger religiosity and more conservative political and gender norms. Results are robust to rich geographic and ethnographic controls, to using propensity-score matching and neighboring-group fixed effects, and to excluding areas historically under Muslim rule. We do not find any effect when analyzing the Atlantic route, run by Europeans, and where conversion offered no legal protection. Three additional patterns support the hypothesis of preventive conversion. First, effects dilute once an area has been exposed to raiding, in line with raiders not able to enslave more individuals and redirecting toward non-Muslim frontiers. We do not find similar timing pattern in the Atlantic route.  Second, effects are weaker in rugged terrain that impeded raids, where conversion incentives were therefore lower. Third, we find spillovers in areas not directly raided but adjacent to exposed groups, and these spillovers are stronger where historical cross-boundary mobility was easier.

The Rise of the Religious Right: Evidence from the Moral Majority and the Jimmy Carter Presidency (with Brian Knight)

[Draft]

We investigate the rise of the religious right in the context of the Moral Majority and Jimmy Carter, the first Evangelical President. During Carter's Presidency, the Moral Majority, an Evangelical group headed by televangelist Jerry Falwell, turned against the incumbent Carter, a Democrat, and campaigned for Ronald Reagan, a Republican, in the 1980 Election. To investigate the role of religious groups and leaders in the political persuasion of followers, we first develop a theoretical model in which single-issue religious voters follow better-informed religious leaders when choosing which candidates to support. Using data from county-level voting returns, exit polls, and surveys, we document that Evangelical voters indeed shifted their support from Carter in 1976 to Reagan in 1980. We also provide three pieces of evidence that the Moral Majority played a role in this switching: survey data on Moral Majority campaign issues, exposure to Jerry's Falwell's television ministry, and exposure to state headquarters of the Moral Majority.

Selected Work in Progress