“Smart Thermostats, Automation, and Time-Varying Prices" was published in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics Vol. 17 No. 1 in January 2025. Read more at: https://doi.org/10.1257/app.20210618
Story by Gita Smith
This paper examines the relationship between growing up amid armed conflict and acceptance of violent behavior later in life. With this aim, we match data from 48 Demographic and Health Surveys in 23 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa with records of all conflict events in the region post-WWII. Our empirical strategy exploits within-country variation in conflict exposure across survey clusters and over birth years. We find that attitudes toward domestic violence vary with past exposure to a high-intensity conflict (war) during childhood, but the estimated association is small in magnitude.
In fragile and conflict-affected settings, instability can shape how people manage their money. This study, co-authored by Georgia Tech economist Robert Gonzalez, examines
how violence influences the adoption and use of mobile money in Afghanistan—a technology often viewed as a pathway to financial inclusion.
Moral hazard is the workhorse model of financial incentive provision in economics, with applications ranging from pay-for-performance in employer-employee relationships to the design of insurance premiums. While an extensive theoretical literature has delivered important qualitative insights about the properties that real-world incentive schemes ought to have, the practical implementability of these prescriptions is limited by the model's demanding assumption that the employer knows both the employee's performance capabilities and also how strongly he responds to financial incentives.
Shatakshee Dhongde published a new article on COVID-19 and mortality among infants: Evidence from India in the Journal of Health Economics, co-authored with Erdal Asker and Abu Shonchoy. In this article, the authors present the first survey-based evidence on infant mortality in a developing country during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors compile high-quality, nationally representative data from India on maternal and infant health.
I lead a team of developers at our client, Wakefern, and coordinate with other teams. My day-to-day involves making and managing Jira tickets, doing code reviews, designing features, and interfacing with the client. I don’t do as much development as I used to, but I still get my hands dirty with debugging, migrating, and setting up new applications.
