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Welcome! I am Visting Faculty at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University during this academic year 2024/2025. I am on sabbatical leave during this year as Lecturer (Assistant Professor) of Economics at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. My main fields are in development economics and political economy. I am also interested in economic history and public health. I hold a PhD in Economics from the European University Institute in Florence and I spent the last three years of my doctorate at the University of California Berkeley as a Visiting Research Scholar. |
By Dani Machlis.
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Contact:
adagt[at]fas.harvard.edu adagt[at]bgu.ac.il |
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs Harvard University 61 Kirkland St, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA Department of Economics Ben-Gurion University of the Negev P.O. Box 653, Be'er Sheva 8410501, Israel |
WORKING PAPERS
Monitoring Harassment in Organizations (with Laura Boudreau, Sylvain Chassang and Rachel Heath) {AER Registry} [Submitted]
We evaluate secure survey methods designed for the ongoing monitoring of harassment in organizations. We use the resulting data to answer policy relevant questions about the nature of harassment: How prevalent is it? What share of managers is responsible for the misbehavior? How isolated are its victims? To do so, we partner with a large Bangladeshi garment manufacturer to experiment with different designs of phone-based worker surveys. Garbling responses to sensitive questions by automatically recording a random subset as complaints increases reporting of physical harassment by 288%, sexual harassment by 269%, and threatening behavior by 46%. A rapport-building treatment has an insignificant aggregate effect, but may affect men and women differently. Removing team identifiers from survey responses does not significantly increase reporting and prevents the computation of policy-relevant team-level statistics. The resulting data shows that harassment is widespread, that the problem is not restricted to a minority of managers, and that victims are often isolated in teams.
Coverage: World Bank Development Impact Blog ; Princeton Economics
Escrow Mechanisms for Group-based Reporting: Evidence from Bangladesh's Garment Sector (with Laura Boudreau and Sylvain Chassang) {OSF Registry} [accepted in the Journal of Development Economics via pre-results review]
In developing countries, misbehavior within organizations often goes unpunished due to weak governance. Employees whose livelihoods are precarious are especially vulnerable. Governance tools that safely provide voice and remedy may dramatically improve workers' welfare. Legal scholars have proposed reporting escrows to facilitate coordination among multiple victims of harassment (Ayres and Unkovic, 2012), but little is known about how they perform in practice. We collaborate with a worker helpline in Bangladesh’s apparel sector to experimentally test how the availability and design of a reporting escrow affects reporting of harassment and other workplace misconduct. In the project's first phase, callers from factories randomly assigned to the escrow are informed about it. In the second phase, training will be provided in a subset of factories to build common knowledge about the escrow among treatment workers.
Epidemics and Conflict : Evidence from the Ebola outbreak in Western Africa (with Elena Esposito) [revise & resubmit, Journal of the European Economic Association]
This paper provides causal evidence of the impact of a rapidly spreading epidemic on civil violence, and sheds light on its drivers. Novel data at high spatial and temporal resolution of the Ebola outbreak in Western Africa reveal that epidemics spark civil violence, driven by low trust in state institutions. Epidemics generate an increased demand for public goods, calling for a rapid response from the state, including its coercive power. However, its ability to respond is limited in weak institutional settings. We find that different types of containment efforts have opposite effects, depending on existing levels of trust. The provision of public health facilities unambiguously lowers violence, while area blockades lead to a rise in violence only among groups that mistrust the state. The effects of the epidemic on civil violence persist years after the outbreak ended.
Local Media and the Shaping of Social Norms: Evidence from the Ebola outbreak in Guinea [Submitted]
Media around the world is disseminated at the national level as well as at the local level. While the capacity of media to shape preferences and behavior has been widely recognized, less is known about the differential impacts of local media. Local media may have particularly important effects on social norms due to the provision of locally relevant information that becomes common knowledge in a community. I examine this possibility in a high-stakes context: the Ebola epidemic in Guinea. I exploit quasi-random variation in access to distinct media outlets and the timing of a public-health campaign on community radio. I find that 13% of Ebola cases would have been prevented if places with access to neighboring community radio stations had instead their own. This is driven by radio stations’ locality, not ethno-linguistic boundaries, and by coordination in social behaviors sanctioned locally.
SELECTED WORK IN PROGRESS
Disentangling political ideology from ethnic voting in Africa (with Madina Kurmangaliyeva)
Microfinance and psychological wellbeing: the role of financial literacy (with Olubunmi Samuel-Adeyemi) {AER Registry}
Whistleblowing and Worker Well-being (with Laura Boudreau and Sylvain Chassang)
Disentangling political ideology from ethnic voting in Africa (with Madina Kurmangaliyeva)
Microfinance and psychological wellbeing: the role of financial literacy (with Olubunmi Samuel-Adeyemi) {AER Registry}
Whistleblowing and Worker Well-being (with Laura Boudreau and Sylvain Chassang)
