This paper evaluates a scalable psychosocial intervention designed to improve economic outcomes among individuals exposed to trauma and displacement. Guided Mental Experiencing (GME) is a group-based program that trains participants to construct vivid, emotionally coherent simulations of future scenarios. Motivated by a conceptual framework linking trauma to impairments in episodic future simulation, we test GME in two randomized controlled trials. In Ethiopia, where GME was delivered to newly arrived refugees, it increased employment, hours worked, and well-being.

In this paper we propose a theory to investigate the importance of investment-specific technical change (ISTC) in shaping the short run response of macroeconomic aggregates to energy price shocks. In absence of ISTC, aggregate energy efficiency in an economy (i.e, the amount of energy use per unit of capital) responds to changes in energy prices.

Adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices that can reduce land degradation and buffer households vis-a-vis intensifying weather fluctuations is notably low in sub-Saharan Africa, and one underexplored constraint in a context of thin labor markets and restrictive gender norms is the ability to optimally allocate labor within a spousal unit.  This randomized trial in rural Ethiopia explores the salience of this constraint in the context of a bundled intervention providing training and inputs to encourage uptake of fruit trees intercropped with home gardens, and fertilized with compost.

A pesar de que los cierres de las escuelas son frecuentes y afectan de manera importante los resultados educativos de los niños, la evidencia respecto a cómo proteger el logro educativo de los niños en esos contextos es aún escasa. Este artículo explora el impacto de entregar alimentación escolar para consumo en casa como una alternativa para proteger el logro educativo de los niños cuando las escuelas están cerradas.

Many eligible families fail to apply for social programs due to multiple frictions such as information constraints and application complexity. This study evaluates a large-scale randomized controlled trial (RCT) testing interventions to increase take-up of the 25% reservation for disadvantaged children in private schools under India's Right to Education (RTE) Act. Conducted across urban and rural areas in Chhattisgarh, the experiment evaluates the effects of information provision and application assistance --- both independently and in combination.

This paper investigates the impact of resource booms on export value, concentration, composition, and sophistication in resource-rich developing economies. Using a shift-share instrument that leverages heterogeneous exposure to Chinese demand after China’s 2001 WTO accession and the ex-ante composition of export baskets, I examine the causal effects on export baskets and sectoral employment of Brazilian local economies.

This paper examines whether female leadership can reduce violence in the context of the Colombian conflict. To identify the effect, I leverage closely contested local elections between male and female candidates, alongside a novel dataset with the location and gender of guerrilla unit commanders. I find that female leadership has a negative effect on conflict violence that amounts to a 60% reduction in the most demanding specification.

This paper examines the impact of the Rehabilitation & Reintegration initiative, a prison-based job training and skills development program, on recidivism, labor market, and social outcomes. I use a difference-in-differences strategy to assess the causal impact of the program, introduced in the Netherlands in 2007. Drawing on rich administrative data from Statistics Netherlands and the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security, I find that prisoners eligible in the program are 4.5 percentage points (14%) less likely to reoffend over a period of three years.

The transport sector is the backbone of international trade and has faced multiple disruptions in recent years. I study the substitutability between different transport modes and how mode-specific trade cost shocks affect international trade flows. I use the closure of Russian airspace in 2022 as an exogenous change in transport costs to provide novel estimates of the elasticity of substitution between transport modes. To quantify the importance of this margin of adjustment in equilibrium, I develop a Ricardian model of international trade with multiple transport modes.

Youth clubs are community-based after-school programmes, typically offeredfree of charge to teenagers in underprivileged neighbourhoods. I provide the firstcausal estimates of their effects on education and crime, leveragingquasi-experimental variation from austerity-related cuts, which led to the closureof 30% of youth clubs in London between 2010 and 2019. I usedifference-in-differences research designs and novel data to compareneighbourhoods affected by closures with those unaffected. Teenagers in areasaffected performed nearly 4% worse in national high-school exams.