with Nério Simão Cá

In rural areas of low-income countries, mothers are traditionally the primary caregivers while also carrying most housework and working in agriculture. When seasonal labor demand peaks, competition for mothers' time intensifies, yet preschools operate on fixed schedules year-round. We randomly assigned preschools in Guinea-Bissau to extend hours from half-day to full-day during the cashew harvest, and elicited mothers’ willingness to pay for this service across the agricultural calendar. Willingness to pay is higher during the harvest months, but remains below the cost of provision. Take-up is nearly universal: treated children spend more time in preschool, substituting primarily for maternal care, most of it passive care provided alongside other activities. On average, access to the preschool extension does not affect mothers’ labor supply or earnings, but reduces multi-tasking and improves maternal mental health. For mothers with intermediate potential hourly earnings during the harvest --high enough to make extra market work worthwhile, but not so high that the income effect dampens the labor supply response-- we find suggestive evidence of increased market work and decreased housework. The findings point to nonstandard benefits of increased childcare provision during periods of peak labor demand in low-income, rural settings.  

with Mauricio Romero

In this paper, we study the impact of an at-scale school pay-for-performance program with a rank-order tournament structure in Mexico. Public schools were grouped by observable characteristics, and the highest-performing schools on a standardized test in their group received a bonus to be divided between the principal and teachers. Leveraging idiosyncratic variation in the school’s distance to the bonus threshold, we identify the program’s heterogeneous effects on students’ academic performance. Contrary to what we expected (higher effects for schools closer to the threshold), preliminary results indicate that schools further away — ranked lower in their group — experience larger test score gains. These results are similar to those found in low-stakes accountability programs that publish school rankings.

with Gustavo Acosta and Muchin Bazan

This paper studies how the targeting of in-kind transfers by school location affects the education market, including how students sort between schools and across sectors. When governments allocate transfers tied to school location rather than students, families may trade off school quality to access this benefit, potentially pushing students toward lower-quality schools. We study this in the context of Peru's Qali Warma school meal program, which provides more generous benefits (breakfast and lunch versus breakfast only) to public schools depending on their location.