NBER Publications by Nava Ashraf

The controversy over whether and how much to charge for health products in the developing world rests, in part, on whether higher prices can increase use, either by targeting distribution to high-use households (a screening effect), or by stimulating use psychologically through a sunk-cost effect. We develop a methodology for separating these two effects. We implement the methodology in a field experiment in Zambia using door-to-door marketing of a home water purification solution. We find that higher prices screen out those who use the product less. By contrast, we find no consistent evidence of sunk-cost effects.

This paper investigates the impact of rich-country agricultural support on the poor. Using non-parametric analysis we establish that the majority of poor countries are consistently net importers of food products that are heavily supported by OECD governments. Using a cross-country regression framework we measure the overall impact of agricultural support policies in rich countries on poverty and average incomes in poor countries. We find no support in the cross-country analysis for the claim that OECD polices worsen poverty in developing countries. To better understand what might drive these results, we turn to national employment and household consumption and expenditure surveys from Mexico. There are four important findings from the country case study: (1) the majority of the poorest co...