Frank Schilbach

Research Associate
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Department of Economics

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Lives vs. Livelihoods: The Impact of the Great Recession on Mortality and Welfare
February 2024 - Working Paper32110
Author(s) - Amy Finkelstein, Matthew J. Notowidigdo, Frank Schilbach & Jonathan Zhang
We leverage spatial variation in the severity of the Great Recession across the United States to examine its impact on mortality and to explore implications for the welfare consequences of recessions. We estimate that an increase in the unemployment rate of the magnitude of the Great Recession...
Depression and Loneliness Among the Elderly Poor
September 2022 - Working Paper30330
Author(s) - Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Erin Grela, Madeline McKelway, Frank Schilbach, Garima Sharma & Girija Vaidyanathan
The mental health of the elderly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is a largely neglected subject, both by policy and research. We combine data from the health and retirement family of surveys in seven LMICs (plus the US) to document that depressive symptoms among those aged 55 and above...
Blue Spoons: Sparking Communication About Appropriate Technology Use
September 2022 - Working Paper30423
Author(s) - Arun G. Chandrasekhar, Esther Duflo, Michael Kremer, João F. Pugliese, Jonathan Robinson & Frank Schilbach
An enduring puzzle regarding technology adoption in developing countries is that new technologies often diffuse slowly through the social network. Two of the key predictions of the canonical epidemiological model of technology diffusion are that forums to share information and higher returns to...
Not Learning from Others
August 2022 - Working Paper30378
Author(s) - John J. Conlon, Malavika Mani, Gautam Rao, Matthew W. Ridley & Frank Schilbach
We provide evidence of a powerful barrier to social learning: people are much less sensitive to information others discover compared to equally-relevant information they discover themselves. In a series of incentivized lab experiments, we ask participants to guess the color composition of balls in...
The Long-Run Effects of Psychotherapy on Depression, Beliefs, and Economic Outcomes
May 2022 - Working Paper30011
Author(s) - Bhargav Bhat, Jonathan de Quidt, Johannes Haushofer, Vikram H. Patel, Gautam Rao, Frank Schilbach & Pierre-Luc P. Vautrey
We revisit two clinical trials that randomized depressed adults in India (n=775) to a brief course of psychotherapy or a control condition. Four to five years later, the treatment group was 11 percentage points less likely to be depressed than the control group. The more effective intervention...
Learning in the Household
May 2021 - Working Paper28844
Author(s) - John J. Conlon, Malavika Mani, Gautam Rao, Matthew W. Ridley & Frank Schilbach
We study social learning between spouses using an experiment in Chennai, India. We vary whether individuals discover information themselves or must instead learn what their spouse discovered via a discussion. Women treat their 'own' and their husband's information the same. In sharp contrast, men's...
Do Financial Concerns Make Workers Less Productive?
January 2021 - Working Paper28338
Author(s) - Supreet Kaur, Sendhil Mullainathan, Suanna Oh & Frank Schilbach
Workers who are worried about their personal finances may find it hard to focus at work. If so, reducing financial concerns could by itself increase productivity. We test this hypothesis in a sample of low-income Indian piece-rate manufacturing workers. We stagger when wages are paid out: some...
Poverty, Depression, and Anxiety: Causal Evidence and Mechanisms
May 2020 - Working Paper27157
Author(s) - Matthew W. Ridley, Gautam Rao, Frank Schilbach & Vikram H. Patel
Why are people living in poverty disproportionately affected by mental illness? We review the interdisciplinary evidence of the bi-directional causal relationship between poverty and common mental illnesses depression and anxiety and the underlying mechanisms. Research shows that mental illness...
It’s the Quality of Sleep that Counts for Boosting Productivity
April 1, 2020 - Article
Author(s) - Pedro Bessone, Gautam Rao, Frank Schilbach, Heather Schofield & Mattie Toma
Productivity of workers in Chennai, India benefited less from increased sleep time at home, where sleeping conditions were poor, than from high-quality naps at their workplace. P oor urban residents of developing nations sleep relatively little, and a new study from India suggests why. Its not that...
The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor
February 2020 - Working Paper26746
Author(s) - Pedro Bessone, Gautam Rao, Frank Schilbach, Heather Schofield & Mattie Toma
The urban poor in developing countries face challenging living environments, which may interfere with good sleep. Using actigraphy to measure sleep objectively, we find that low-income adults in Chennai, India sleep only 5.5 hours per night on average despite spending 8 hours in bed. Their sleep is...
Poverty and Cognitive Function
November 30, 2017 - Chapter
Author(s) - Emma Boswell Dean, Frank Schilbach & Heather Schofield
This paper is a primer for economists interested in the relationship between poverty and cognitive function. We begin by discussing a set of underlying aspects of cognitive function relevant to economic decision-makingattention, inhibitory control, memory, and higher-order cognitive...
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