I am a 5th year Econ PhD student at Chicago Booth, and I study (1) human capital investment decisions for teenage girls, and (2) economic informality. I am currently working on projects in India, Pakistan, Uganda, and the Philippines.
You can email me at emma.zhang@chicagobooth.edu
A Pathway to working: Impacts of paid internships on parent-daughter decision making in India (Joint with Rubina Hundal)
Full experiment in the field. RCT registered here!
Abstract: Many girls in India self-report interest in working outside of the home, but parents face social and financial pressure to marry off their daughters if they are not able to find a job or enroll in further education. We investigate parent-child decision making around a daughter’s transition out of high school by cross-randomizing two shocks to a daughter’s perceived income generating ability during high school: (1) a short, 80-hour internship and (2) a 750 INR payment framed as a wage (5% of monthly household income). We randomly inform half of parents that the payment is a “reward” for working, and the other half that the payment is a “gift” selected via lottery. Pilot results find that post high school graduation, girls who were randomly paid for their internship are 161% more likely to have participated in the labor force than those who did an unpaid internship. The effect is driven entirely by parents who received the “reward” framing, suggesting that parents interpret payments as a signal of income generating ability in daughters. Our pilot suggests that paid internships during high school are an effective way of boosting parental encouragement for female labor force participation in lieu of earlier marriage.
Intra-household incentive design: an experiment on parent-daughter decision making dynamics in Pakistan (Joint with Hamna Ahmad, Zunia Tirmazee and Rebecca Wu)
Working paper here! 1-year follow-up launching in Winter 2025
Abstract: How should we design and target incentives for skills investment in young adults who live with their parents? We study the role of intra-household payment and information targeting on the effectiveness of a conditional cash transfer (CCT) program using a randomized control trial. The program aims to boost completion of a digital skills training program among young females in urban Pakistan, a population for which low basic digital skills hinder other types of human capital formation. Fixing the incentive size and daughters’ knowledge about it, we cross vary (1) the payment split between parents and daughters and (2) whether parents receive information about the daughters’ incentive. We find that under asymmetric information about the CCT, incentivizing parents leads to a 103% increase in training completion compared to incentivizing daughters, allowing us to reject a unitary household model of decision making. We also find that even after conditioning on parental consent, paying parents decreases the probability that girls lose interest in the program, suggesting that payments to parents may act as commitment device for daughters. Finally, when both parents and daughters know about the CCT, completion rates do not vary by the incentive split, consistent with the efficient collective household model. Our results suggest that in this parent-child context, incomplete information sharing is the main barrier to the optimal incentive targeting, instead of bargaining frictions on the future payment.
What supports persistent improvements in girls educational outcomes? Evidence from teachers, students, and parents from a curriculum on social action in rural Uganda. (Joint with Vesall Nourani)
Data collection complete. Email for latest version. Previous version submitted as Booth third year paper.
Abstract: We find large, persistent effects of a pedagogical teacher training program that promotes advances in scientific competencies to improve learning outcomes. Utilizing a matched pairs RCT, we find that girls who were enrolled in treatment schools in 2018 are 3pp more likely to be enrolled in school after the covid-lockdowns, and they perform 0.3 standard deviations higher on a standardized assessment relative to girls who are in control schools. Notably, treatment effect sizes were similar across girls and boys. We find treated teachers are more likely to question traditional gender norms, thus pushing them to focus extra effort on girls, who are at baseline lagging the boys. Heterogeneity analysis finds that our results on student-level educational outcomes are significantly amplified for both girls and boys when they interact with gender equitable teachers.
Sibling socialization and the formation of labor force norms in India (Joint with Rubina Hundal) – Pilot complete. Launching Spring 2025. RCT Registered here!
Informal lending and the demand for business loans in Pakistan (Joint with Hamna Ahmed and Zunia Tirmazee Saif) – Launching Winter 2025. RCT Registered here!
Informal labor and scalable waste-management solutions: evidence from Delhi (Joint with Ashton Pallottini, Yixin Sun and Jun Wong) – Pilot launching Winter 2025. Media coverage is here!
Urban Water Shortages: Impacts and adaptation (Joint with Ashton Pallottini and Jun Wong) – Household survey in development
Rubbish economics: crowd-sourcing community participation on digital platforms for solid-waste management in Bangalore (Joint with Ashton Pallottini, Yixin Sun and Jun Wong) – Prototyping in progress. Develop for Good Summer 2024.
Algorithm aversion and the scaling of disaster-resistant slum housing in the Philippines – Prototyping in progress. Booth Social New Venture Challenge 2024.