This paper investigates the hidden yet persistent cost of conflict to birth weight outcomes for 53 developing countries experiencing conflict in the past three decades (1990-2018). Exploiting the variation across districts and conception months-years, we find that intrauterine exposure to armed...

This paper evaluates the impacts of education on women’s relational empowerment, within a context of 70 developing countries across the world. Exploiting the variation in educational attainment between biological sisters, we find that education is positively associated with women’s...

COVID-19 outbreak has resulted in the largest number of lockdowns worldwide in history. While lockdowns may reduce the spread of COVID-19, the downside costs of this approach could be dreadful. By exploiting the differential timing of lockdown implementation across the United States within a...

This paper explores the role of teacher race/ethnicity in the teacher-perceived relationships with early elementary school students. Employing a model with both student and teacher fixed effects, we discover a positive link between the racial/ethnic match and the teacherreported relationships...

This paper investigates the extent to which in-utero exposure to temperature shocks affects birth weight outcomes in Vietnam. Exploiting the variations across districts and conception timing within districts, we show that a one standard deviation increase in temperature relative to the local...

This paper explores the role of teacher race/ethnicity in the teacher-perceived relationship with early elementary school students. Employing a model with both student and teacher fixed effects, I discover a positive link between the racial/ethnic match and the teacher-reported relationship with...

While the robust and positive association between education and political engagement has been widely documented, the direct causal link is still a subject of debate. This study contributes to the ongoing debate by examining whether there exists a causal effect of education on political...

Climate change has drastically altered precipitation patterns across the globe and has caused an increase in rainfall variability, including the incidence of extreme rainfall events such as droughts and floods. Exploiting the exogenous variation in rainfall to which children were exposed during...

This paper provides evidence that the Allied bombing of Vietnam, the longest and heaviest aerial bombardment in the history, imposed detrimental effects on educational attainment of school-age individuals. By exploiting the plausibly exogenous district-by-cohort variation in bomb destruction...

This paper provides the first empirical evidence on the existence of negative spillover effects from children exposed to corporal punishment in the home. We find that interactions with peers who suffer from physical punishment significantly depress achievement in both math and language among...