Research

Research Focus

My research focuses on structural econometrics, causal inference (point and partial identification), robust inference, and applied microeconometrics, with applications in health, population, and development economics. I am particularly interested in policy evaluation and the theoretical foundations of econometric identification.

Working Papers

• The Heterogeneous Returns to Antenatal Care: Evidence from Childhood Immunization in Senegal
  Abstract

  Antenatal care (ANC) serves both as a medical input and as a source of health information in the child health production function. We use seven waves of the Senegal Demographic and Health Surveys matched with regional health-facility data to estimate the effect of ANC adherence on childhood vaccination outcomes. We address endogeneity arising from unobserved heterogeneity in ANC utilization using a two stage copula-based control-function approach. We find that ANC adherence has no effect on full child immunization but significantly increases uptake of the three-dose diphtheria–pertussis–tetanus (DTP3) and measles vaccines by 8.2 and 6.3 percentage points, respectively. These effects are concentrated among less-educated mothers. We also document an urban son-preference bias and find no effects for unintended births.

• Help Me! If You Help Him, Are You Really Helping Him? (with Liliane Bonnal and Pascal Favard)
• The Heterogeneous Effects of Informal Care on Formal Care Use and Mental Well-being among Single-Living Elderly in Europe: A Two-Stage Free IV Approach
  Abstract

  We study how informal care affects formal long-term care use and older adults’ mental well-being, and how these effects vary by recipient gender and institutional context. To address endogeneity of informal care while overcoming the weak and limited relevance of standard child-based instruments in subgroup analyses, we implement a copula-based control-function approach (2sCOPE). Using data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe covering 25 countries, we show that treating informal care as exogenous yields biased estimates. Accounting for endogeneity, we find substantial but incomplete substitution between informal and formal care: informal domestic care reduces formal domestic care use by 19.5 percentage points, while informal personal care reduces formal personal care use by 5.8 percentage points. Informal care also improves recipients’ mental well-being. Among women, informal domestic care reduces depressive symptoms by 31.4 percentage points and loneliness by 22.3 percentage points, while the corresponding effects for men are negligible. We further document strong institutional heterogeneity: substitution and mental-health effects are largest in Central Europe across care types, whereas domestic care has no significant mental-health effects in Southern Europe. Our findings highlight task-specific effects of informal care that vary across gender and LTC systems.

• The Formal–Informal Care Relationship: Heterogeneous Effects by Care Needs, Social Capital, and Psychosocial Well-Being (with Liliane Bonnal, Pascal Favard and Cornel Oros)

Work in Progress

• Female Autonomy and Child Health Outcomes: Evidence from Developing Countries
• The Effect of Family Size on Childhood Vaccination Outcomes: Evidence from Senegal
• Identification in Recursive Multivariate Probit Models: Do Exclusion Restrictions Really Matter?