WORKING PAPERS
WORKING PAPERS
ABSTRACT
This paper provides new causal evidence on the environmental consequences of minimum wage (MW) policies by investigating the effects of statutory MW increases on the intensity of toxic emissions in the U.S. manufacturing sector. Exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in state-level MW hikes between 2011 and 2017 and leveraging a border-county staggered difference-in-differences design, I link policy shocks to detailed facility-level data from the Environmental Protection Agency's Toxics Release Inventory. I find that MW hikes significantly increase pollution intensity — measured as toxic releases per $100 million of manufacturing output — without reducing employment or hours worked. A $0.89 increase in hourly MW raises toxic release intensity by 11 percentage points, equivalent to 2.18 million additional pounds of pollution, with the effect concentrated in air and water emissions. Sectoral heterogeneity is pronounced: the effects are largest in high-emitting industries such as chemicals, food, and leather manufacturing, and among early-adopting states. Mechanism analysis reveals that facilities respond to wage-induced cost pressures not solely through scale expansion but by systematically disinvesting in non-revenue-generating pollution prevention activities, including improved workforce training, material handling, and toxic chemical transfer protocols. These disinvestments exacerbate environmental externalities, suggesting that statutory wage floors — while enhancing worker welfare and productivity — may carry unintended environmental costs. Placebo tests, robustness checks, and dynamic event studies support the causal interpretation. The findings underscore the need for complementary environmental safeguards when designing labour market regulations.
Keywords: Minimum Wage Policy, Toxic Releases, Manufacturing Emissions, Pollution Abatement, Environmental Externalities
Formerly, "Unforeseen Minimum Wage Consequences".
Download: emissions_journal_main.pdf
ABSTRACT
This paper provides new causal evidence on the environmental and health co-benefits of residential energy efficiency policies in developing countries, focusing on South Africa’s National Energy Efficiency Strategy (NEES). Leveraging exogenous variation in programme eligibility among grid-connected low-income households and repeated cross-sectional data from the 2005–2018 Generalised Household Survey, I estimate intent-to-treat effects using two-way fixed effects and dynamic event studies. NEES significantly increased the adoption of energy-efficient appliances---raising uptake from 22% to 41%---and increased domestic electricity use by 7.4 percentage points. It also reduced perceived environmental pollution, especially air and water pollution, asbestos exposure, and littering, with refrigerator and freezer ownership driving the strongest effects. Furthermore, NEES reduced non-chronic morbidity incidence by 3 percentage points, particularly tuberculosis and diarrhoea, via environmental improvements and behavioural substitution away from polluting fuels. Mechanism analyses identify both direct pollution-reduction pathways and indirect health gains through improved food preservation, reduced cooking frequency, and structural housing upgrades. These findings highlight how energy efficiency interventions, when equitably targeted, can deliver multidimensional welfare gains in low-income settings, advancing climate mitigation and public health objectives in tandem.
Keywords: Energy Efficiency, Health Outcomes, Difference-in-Differences, Developing Economies, Environmental Pollution
Download: nees_journal_ph.pdf
ABSTRACT
We incorporate weakly informative priors to examine the impact of modern energy access, particularly rural household electrification (RHE) and solar electrification, on educational outcomes in rural developing countries, including study hours, school enrollment, and educational attainment. Using Robust Bayesian Meta-Analysis to synthesize evidence from $33$ studies with $301$ effect sizes, we find substantial boosts in educational outcomes by $15.4$ percentage points, particularly among children. Both RHE and Solar electrification drive this effect. Specifically, RHE significantly increases school enrollment, and children's daily study hours by $55$ minutes, thereby enhancing lifetime earnings potential through additional schooling, highlighting the transformative potential for economic mobility. Solar electrification, while less impactful than grid-based electrification, also yields meaningful gains, increasing children's daily study hours by $42$ minutes. Heterogeneity in the effect sizes highlights the importance of contextual factors, such as geography and demographics in shaping these outcomes. Importantly, we detect no significant publication bias, underscoring the reliability of these findings. However, the study identifies relatively weaker effects on adult literacy and learning outcomes, suggesting that energy access must be complemented by targeted educational interventions. Hamiltonian Markov Chain meta-regressions further reveal that household-level experimental designs and contextual adjustments yield more reliable estimates, strengthening their utility for policymaking. These results underscore the transformative role of modern energy infrastructure in bridging educational gaps and fostering sustainable development in underprivileged regions. Policymakers are encouraged to prioritize investments in rural electrification and integrate energy access with broader educational and economic strategies.
Keywords: Energy Access, Electrification, Solar, Education, Meta-Analysis, Meta-Regressions
ABSTRACT
This paper provides the first causal evidence of how energy efficiency policies shape housing markets in developing economies, exploiting the staggered rollout of South Africa's National Energy Efficiency Strategy (NEES). Using a quasi-experimental design and nationally representative household stated preferences, we show that low-income households adopting NEES-compliant appliances experienced a 3.3 percentage points increase in house prices and an 8-percentage point rise in rents. Dynamic event studies reveal persistent effects, with prices rising by 12 percentage points and rents by 21 percentage points seven years post-intervention. Mechanism analyses indicate these gains are driven by direct capitalisation of energy-efficient upgrades, remittance-financed appliance purchases, reduced air pollution, and linked income channels. Effects are concentrated in urban areas and among Black and Coloured homeowners, underscoring heterogeneous socioeconomic impacts. The results highlight energy efficiency's role as a “first fuel” for sustainable development, demonstrating its potential to simultaneously mitigate climate externalities and stimulate housing market dynamism. Policy implications emphasize targeting rebate programs to low-income households, integrating efficiency incentives with broader social policies, and monitoring rebound effects to maximize net emissions reductions. By bridging the gap between environmental economics and housing market research, this study offers actionable insights for designing equitable climate policies in resource-constrained settings.
Keywords: Energy Efficiency, Housing Markets, Difference-in-Differences, Developing Economies, Socioeconomic Disparities, Climate Policy
Work in Progress
Objective:
To design and implement a rigorous experimental framework aimed at increasing customer in-app purchases, leveraging behavioral insights and data analytics to inform personalized marketing strategies.
Key Details:
Study Design:
A Randomized Control Trial (RCT) was employed randomly assigning customers into treatment and control groups to minimize selection bias.
The treatment group received tailored interventions such as promotional offers, personalized recommendations, or reward incentives, while the control group experienced standard in-app conditions.
Segmentation and Targeting:
Customers were segmented based on historical usage patterns, purchase behaviors, and demographic data, using clustering algorithms such as K-means and Hierarchical Clustering.
Factors included frequency of app usage, recency of purchases, average transaction value, and in-app engagement metrics.
Intervention Strategies:
Dynamic Discounts: Offered time-sensitive discounts to incentivize immediate purchases.
Gamification Elements: Introduced loyalty rewards, where repeated purchases unlocked higher-tier rewards.
Personalized Messaging: Leveraged Natural Language Processing (NLP) to craft personalized messages based on user preferences and behaviors.
Implementation and Monitoring:
The trial will span 24 weeks, with ongoing monitoring through a real-time dashboard built in Tableau.
Customer responses were tracked using MTN’s internal CRM system, integrated with the app’s analytics API for seamless data flow.
Data Collection and Metrics:
Primary metrics included conversion rates (percentage of users making purchases), average revenue per user (ARPU), and customer lifetime value (CLV).
Secondary metrics captured engagement rates (time spent in-app, click-through rates) and customer retention post-intervention.
PUBLICATIONS
ABSTRACT: The debates on how inequality, economic development and urbanization affects the environment has been intense, but lacks the African perspective. Hence, this study examined these relationships, as well as other pathways to environmental degradation in Africa and her regions, such as FDI. Also, it explored the relationships amongst urbanization, economic development and inequality. Using Pedroni’s cointegration and Quantile regression over 1996–2014 period, findings show cointegration and regional heterogeneities on the environmental, urbanization, economic development and inequality transmissions. Particularly, in Africa, inequality engenders more environmental degradation across all quantiles. Moreover, Africa and her regions are characteristic of a homogenous N-shaped relationship between economic development and environmental degradation. Similarly, a homogenous pollution haven hypothesis is true for Africa. However, EKC between economic development and inequality holds for countries with low and median initial levels of income inequality, but do not hold for countries with the highest initial levels. Furthermore, the EKC hypothesis holds between urbanization and inequality and, between urbanization and environmental degradation. Thus, urbanization complemented with employment creation strictly reduces inequality. Consequently, amongst policy targets are to bridge the income gap, reduce environmental degradation via strict environmental laws on imports, and building more sustainable urbanization and economic development processes for African countries.
Replication Package: Article_10_Data_Code.zip
ABSTRACT: Unlike the extant literature, this study revisited the tourism-growth relationship in Africa and accounted for the moderating effects of climatic factors, infrastructural development, and political risk on this relationship. The study used the system GMM technique, the panel Granger causality framework, and annual panel data of 41 African countries from 2009 to 2018. Contrary to the tourism-led growth hypothesis, we find that the role of tourism as a driver of economic growth in Africa is predominantly negligible, which in turn suggests that Africa is yet to exploit its tourism potential to drive growth during the post-global Financial Crisis period. The study concludes that there is a need for African leaders to coordinate policy efforts toward harnessing the tourism potentials on the continent to diversify their economies, counter instability in global commodity markets, drive sustainable growth, and fight the twin evils of poverty and unemployment.
Replication Package: Article_12_Data_Code.zip
ABSTRACT: Based on the fact that Africa has not fared well in attracting foreign direct investments in the last decade compared to other regions of the world, especially during periods of high uncertainty occasioned by one crisis or another, this study investigated: the impacts of global uncertainty and economic governance institutions on FDI inflow to Africa; the moderating effect of economic governance institutions on global uncertainty-FDI relationship in Africa; and other significant drivers of FDI inflow to Africa. The study used the system GMM modeling framework and a panel of 46 African economies over the period 2010–2019. The results indicate that global uncertainty has a significant dampening effect on FDI inflow to Africa, and economic governance institutions on the continent amplify this effect rather than mitigate it. The results further indicate that natural resource endowment, market size, and initial FDI inflows are robust drivers of FDI inflows to Africa, while the roles of financial development and trade openness remained muted. Overall, the study concludes that policymakers in Africa should take urgent steps to strengthen the quality of economic governance institutions as a means of mitigating the excruciating effect of global uncertainty on FDI inflows to Africa.
Replication Package:
ABSTRACT: This study examined the effects of both aggregate and disaggregated infrastructural development indices (such as transport, electricity, ICT, and water and sanitation infrastructure indices) on economic performance in Africa. The study used the dynamic system GMM framework and found that both aggregate and disaggregated infrastructural development indices impact positively on GDP per capita growth in Africa. These impacts were shown to be significant in all cases, except for the transportation infrastructure index. The results overwhelmingly confirmed the prevalence of the symmetric hypothesis in the infrastructure–growth relationship in Africa. The study also found some evidence in support of the significant roles of capital, labour and initial GDP per capita in Africa’s economic performance, while the role of trade remained negative and muted. The study concluded that through effective public administration, African leaders and policymakers can promote economic performance on the continent by evolving policies that favour increased infrastructural development, human capital development and capital accumulation.
Replication Package:
ABSTRACT: The market-based monetary policy framework has been favoured by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) economies. Hence, this study aims to investigate the effect of monetary policy channels on the sectoral value-added and sustainable economic growth in ECOWAS. Data from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund over 2013–2019 were sourced for thirteen member countries. ECOWAS is found to have very high inflation levels, interest, and exchange rates. The study adopted the Driscoll–Kraay fixed-effects ordinary least squares regression (OLS) estimator. The findings revealed that while the effect of monetary policy channels on the agricultural sector value added is largely heterogeneous and significantly in-elastic, the ones on the industrial and services sectors are overwhelmingly homogeneous and negative, but insignificant for the services sector. Moreover, the effect of monetary policy channels on sustainable economic growth is also homogeneously asymmetric, with imminent stagflation, while the interactive effects of monetary policy channels are heterogeneous on sustainable economic growth and economic sectors. Therefore, an inflation-targeting monetary policy stance is generally recommended with prioritised exchange rate stabilisation amid sufficient fiscal space.
Replication Package:
ABSTRACT: There are increasing debates on the relationship between economic complexity and environmental degradation. This study deepens our understanding of this nexus in 11 emerging economies given the moderating role of energy consumption while controlling for economic development, trade openness, and population growth. The findings from the quantile regression technique reveal that emerging economies are characteristic of low energy consumption, leading to insignificant contributions of economic complexity to environmental degradation across the spectrum as they also have very low trade openness. Further results show the invalidity of the EKC between energy use (such as fossil fuels) and environmental degradation in emerging economies. Moreover, the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) between economic development and environmental degradation is valid, especially for those countries in the low and median quantiles (Egypt, Indonesia, and Vietnam). Also, the EKC hypothesis between population and environmental degradation is valid only for countries in the high and highest quantiles (Korea Republic, Turkey, Mexico and Iran). Finally, the results revealed that trade openness strictly reduces environmental degradation across the spectrum. Policy implications, limitations of the study and direction for future research are discussed.
Replication Package:
ABSTRACT: Poverty and income inequality are the twin greatest menaces in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) with significant prevalence. This study decomposed their significance and probabilities in determining the quality of life (QOL) of individuals and households in SSA while controlling for household demographics. The household-level poverty (HLP) index and the indexes for QOL indicators were constructed from the national demographic and health surveys (DHS) for SSA countries. Data on consumption poverty thresholds and income inequality are from the Global Consumption and Income Project (GCIP) from 1985–2015. Findings reveal that, while the HLP index elicits more rural poverty across regions, consumption poverty thresholds are more urbanized and persistent across regions, except for Central Africa. The results for income inequality were found to be Gini −0.4396 and Atkinson index −0.4437, and more urbanized across regions. Furthermore, we found that SSA has made giant strides towards achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs) 6 and 3 but no information on the quality of healthcare. However, abysmal likelihoods exist for SDGs 4, 7, and 8 in SSA. Similarly, abysmal probabilities were also found for households’ access to adequate housing, a good environment, and insurance coverage. Indeed, SDG-4 is more significant for achieving SDG-8. HLP stands as a significant bottleneck to achieving SDG-7 and adequate housing, while income inequality mars SDG-3 targets and sustainable environmental conditions in SSA. Policy options are discussed.
Replication Package:
ABSTRACT: In recent years, the global economy has witnessed several uncertainty-inducing events. However, empirical evidence in Africa on the effects of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on economic activities remains scanty. Besides, the moderating effect of governance institutions on the uncertainty-economic performance relationship in Africa and the likelihood of regional differences in the response of economic activities to EPU on the continent is yet to be investigated. To address these gaps, we applied system GMM and quantile regressions on a panel of forty-seven African countries from 2010 to 2019. We find that while global EPU and EPUs from China, the USA, and Canada exert considerable influence on economic performance in Africa, the effects of domestic EPU and EPUs from Europe, the UK, Japan, and Russia were negligible, suggesting that African economies are resilient to these sources of uncertainty shocks. We also find that governance institutions in Africa are not significantly moderating the uncertainty-economic performance relationship. However, our results highlighted regional differences in the response of economic activities to uncertainty, such that when compared to East and West Africa, economic performance in Central, North, and Southern Africa is generally more resilient to global EPU and EPUs from China, USA, Europe, and the UK. We highlighted the policy implications of these findings.
Replication Package:
ABSTRACT: Peace has been deemed paramount to socioeconomic progress and economic development across nations. It is for this reason nations strive to improve the peaceful coexistence of citizens. This study investigates the effect of democracy, governance, and militarisation on peace in 43 African countries for the year 2018 in a cross-sectional framework. The ordinary least square (OLS), the Tobit regression, and the quantile regression (QR) were employed as estimation strategies. The empirical result first reveals that democracy increases peace in Africa, particularly in countries where the initial level of peace is at its highest level. Secondly, militarisation of Africa reduces peace in the region only in countries where the initial level of peace is at its highest level. Thirdly, the influence of governance on peace in Africa depends majorly on the measure of governance utilized. The control of corruption, government effectiveness, and regulatory quality increases peace where the initial level of peace is at its lowest level. Political stability increases peace across the entire quantiles utilized while rule of law increases peace in countries where the initial level of peace is low. In conclusion, governance in general increases peace in the countries where the initial level of peace is very low. Policy recommendations based on these findings are discussed.
Replication Package:
ABSTRACT: Over the years, economic policy in Nigeria has been a subject of concern for policymakers. The effectiveness of this policy in providing basic necessities for Nigerians has also been in question. There have been several controversies in terms of its implementation and sustainability over the years. In this paper, we investigate the impact of economic policies on providing sustainable water and sanitation facilities in Nigeria. In our analysis, the binary logistic model is adopted to understand how effective these policies are in providing these facilities. The results show that expenditure on social and community service leads to an increase in the use of unsafe sanitation facilities in the country. Furthermore, our study also shows that expenditure in the health services sector helps in reducing the use of such unsafe facilities. From the results, we recommend that policies aimed toward providing sustainable water and sanitation facilities need proper checks, improvement, and effective implementation so as to achieve viable results. These can be done by implementing supervised community projects on sanitation facilities and also by educating local communities through organized symposiums and workshops in rural and certain urban areas in the country.
Replication Package:
ABSTRACT: Following the rising wave of terrorism in Africa, particularly in the last decade, this study investigated the effect of terrorism on economic complexity in the region as well as the moderating role of military expenditure in the terrorism–economic complexity relationship. A panel of 34 African economies was used over the period 2010–2021. The study also used the dynamic system generalized method of moments framework. We find that the unconditional effect of terrorism on economic complexity in Africa is predominantly negative and significant and that military expenditure in the region has been ineffective in moderating this adverse effect. This finding remained robust regardless of whether terrorism is measured by the number of terrorism incidents, fatalities, injuries, or hostages. However, our results showed that industrialization, urbanization, and governance institutional quality are potent channels for promoting economic complexity in Africa. Among others, the study emphasized the need for policymakers and leaders in Africa to collaborate at the level of the African Union to address the detrimental effects of terrorism on the continent.
Replication Package:
ABSTRACT: Motivated by the persistent fall in oil prices due to incessant uncertainty-inducing events in recent years, this study empirically examined if economic growth in Africa’s top five oil exporters (Algeria, Angola, Egypt, Libya, and Nigeria) is responding asymmetrically to changes in global economic uncertainty as well as uncertainties from U.S., Europe and China using nonlinear ARDL framework from 1997Q1 to 2021Q4. We find that rising global uncertainty hampers economic growth in these economies, while declining global uncertainty significantly enhances growth in Nigeria, Angola and Libya in the short run, but becomes growth-retarding in the long run. Thus, economic growth responds asymmetrically to global uncertainty, especially in the short run. The findings are robust to U.S., Europe, and China uncertainties, except that economic growth in Libya and Algeria remained unresponsive to U.S. and China uncertainties respectively. We concluded that Africa’s oil exporters should embrace policies that can strengthen their resilience to global economic uncertainty as well as uncertainties from U.S., Europe, and China.
Link: CEEOL - Article Detail
Replication Package:
ABSTRACT: Following the need for more recent rigorous empirical evidence on the role of institutions at sectoral level as well as the conflicting empirical evidences on the institutions-growth relationship in Africa, this study investigated the sectoral impacts of institutional quality in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The study also revisited the role of institutions in the aggregate economy. The system GMM estimation procedure and a panel of 42 SSA countries were used over the period 2010 to 2018. The results indicate that contrary to the widely held view that institutions foster growth and development, the role of institutional quality in sectoral and aggregate economic performance in SSA generally remained muted. However, the results indicate that initial level of real GDP and labor are robust drivers of growth, particularly in the aggregate economy. The study therefore concludes that the sub-region requires institutional reform, enhanced human capital development and capital accumulation to drive sectoral and aggregate economic performance in SSA.
Replication Package: Article_5_Data_Code.zip