Ashu Handa's Research Page
CV (PDF file) Updated April 2010

  • Research Interests
    My research area is household economic and demographic behavior in developing countries. Current projects I am working on include:
    1) An investigation of the longer term effects of early childhood nutrition using panel data from various developing countries. One paper looks at the impact of early nuritional status on later schooling (see link below); another paper investigates whether the potential for catch-up growth exists.
    2) The optimal design of poverty and social programs. A recent paper reviews the experience of conditional cash transfer programs in Latin America and the Caribbean (link below); another paper estimates the income and substitution effects of Mexico's Progresa program.
    3) Household behavioral responses to exogenous shocks (such as macroeconomic crises) and their impact on household welfare. One paper estimates the impact of the 1991 financial liberalization episode in Jamaica on children's nutritional status (see link below). A more recent paper assesses the impact of the elimination of the EU sugar trade preeference arrangement on poverty in Jamaica (see paper).
    4) The optimal design of poverty alleviation programs and the performance of alternative techniques of program evaluation (propensity score matching, randomized trials, etc.). In two separate papers, I assess the performance of propensity score matching as a non-experimental impact evaluation method using experiemntal data from Mexico (link below)and Nicaragua.

  • I have an edited (with Stephen Devereux and Doug Webb) book coming out entitled Social Protection for Africa's Children, published by Routledge. The book presents the a theoretical framework for thinking about Social Protection for Children, and then covers three areas withr egard to policy and programming. In the first section we discus targeting of cash transfer programs and review the Kenya CT-OVC program. The second section provides evidence of impacts on children of cash transfer programs from Ethiopia, Malawi and South Africa. The third section links social Protection with Social Justice, the 'Transformative' element of Social Protection. Buy the book or get your friendly librarian to buy it! Here is the web link for more information:

    Routledge page on Social Protection for Africa's Children

  • UNICEF (www.unicef.org)
    I spent almost 2 years with UNICEF, working on Social and Economic Policy in Eastern & Southern Africa, and based in Nairobi, Kenya. My work entailed research and advocacy around Social Protection and budget allocations for investment in the MDGs. I co-authored UNICEF's regional strategy on social protection (see below), which lays out a framework for social protection, and then discusses child centered social protection and highlights 4 high impact social protection interventions for children. Some of my UNICEF related research is available at the links below.
  • UNICEF Eastern & Southern Africa Social Protection Strategy (UNICEF Publication)
  • Policy brief on social cash transfers as an AIDS Mitigation intervention (pdf)
  • Policy simulations on the effectiveness of alternative targetting schemes for cash transfers (UNICEF Working Paper)
  • Changes in the Determinants of Child Mortality in Eastern & Southern Africa (Working Paper)
  • Economic Losses due to malnustrition in Eastern & Southern Africa (off-print) (published by Consultative Group on Early Childhood Development)

  • Recent Publications

    Matching the Gold Standard: Results from Randomized Experiment in Nicaragua, Economic Development & Cultural Change, Vol. 58(3): 415-447, 2010.(with John Maluccio). (pdf)

    Non-Formal Education as a Development Priority: Evidence from Nicaragua, Economics of Education Review, Vol. 28(4): 512-522, 2009.(with F. REgalia, N. Gurdian, Y. Areas, H. Pineda) (pdf)

    Child Mortality in Eastern & Southern Africa, Population Review, Vol. 49(1): 8-35. (with Stephen Koch and Shu Wen Ng) (pdf)

    Assessing the 'Orphan Effect' in Determining Development Outcomes for Children in 11 Eastern and Southern African Countries, Vulnerable Children and Youth Studies, Vol. 5(1): 12-32, 2010 (with P. Campbell, m. Moroni, S Odongo and T. Palermo)

    Child Health and School Enrollment. Journal of Human Resources, Vol. 42(4):863-880, 2007. (with Amber Peterman). (pdf)

    The Experience of Conditional Cash Transfers in Latin America and the Caribbean. Development Policy Review, Vol. 24(5): 513-536, 2006. (with Benjamin Davis) (pdf)

    An Assessment of Propensity Score Matching as An Impact Evaluation Estimator: Evidence from Mexico's Progresa Program. Journal of Human Resources, Vol 41(2): 319-345, 2006. (with Juan Jose Diaz) (pdf)

    Quality or Quantity? The Supply Side Determinants of Primary Schooling in a Poor Rural Economy. Journal of African Economies, Vol.15(1):59-90, 2006. (with Ken Simler) (pdf)

  • Crisis, Poverty and Long-Term Development: Mexico in the 1990s. CEPAL Review, Vol. 82(April), 2004. (with Benjamin Davis and Humberto Soto)

    Adjustment with a Human Face: Evidence from Jamaica. World Development Vol. 31(7), 2003. (with Damien King) (pdf)

    The Welfare Effects of Balance of Payments Reform: A Macro-Micro Simulation Applied to Jamaica.
    Journal of Development Studies, Vol. 39(3), 2003. (with Damien King) (pdf)

    Raising Primary School Enrolment in Developing Countries: The Relative Importance of Supply and Demand.
    Journal of Development Economics, Vol. 69(1), 2002. (pdf)

  • Unpublished Stuff

    Agricultural Subsidies, Human Capital Development and Poverty Reduction: Evidence from rural Mexicon (pdf)
    The Mexican Government initiated two innovative programs cash transfer schemes in the last decade: PROGRESA, a national anti-poverty scheme directed at chronic rural poverty, and PROCAMPO, a scheme designed to compensate farmers for the negative price effects of NAFTA. The analysis of data collected for an evaluation of PROGRESA suggests that the overall level of food consumption and health check-ups is lower among PROGRESA households that also participate in PROCAMPO. This may be due to lower outcome levels at baseline, but also because PROCAMPO households are agricultural producers and thus face a higher shadow price of time in the face of credit or labor market imperfections. The overall conclusions are that program conditionality does influence longer-term (human capital) and medium term (productive) investment decisions, the receipt of multiple forms of treatment by beneficiaries can affect the overall impact of each individual program, and conditional transfers may have muted effects among agricultural households in the face of market imperfections.

    • Using Clinic Based Data to Estimate the Impact of a Nutrition Intervention (pdf)
    Most large scale nutrition interventions cannot afford to undertake a costly social experiment to measure program impact, leading to the question of whether program impact can be adequately estimated using non-experimental techniques. This study uses anthropometric data on beneficiary children taken from health centers to estimate the impact of Mexico's PROGRESA program, and compares these estimates to those from a social experiment designed to accompany the PROGRESA program. The results show that the clinic based estimates are significantly smaller than those from the experiment. This result is caused by two factors. First, significant differences between actual and listed treatment causes the impact estimator based on listed treatment to be biased downward. Second, the clinic based data does not allow for the inclusion of an extensive set of control variables beyond child’s age and sex. The omitted variables are positively associated with program participation but negatively associated with child height, resulting in a further downward bias in program effects.