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With research staff from more than 60 countries, and offices across the globe, IFPRI provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries.

researcher spotlight

Liangzhi You

Liangzhi You is a Senior Research Fellow and theme leader in the Foresight and Policy Modeling Unit, based in Washington, DC. His research focuses on climate resilience, spatial data and analytics, agroecosystems, and agricultural science policy. Gridded crop production data of the world (SPAM) and the agricultural technology evaluation model (DREAM) are among his research contributions. 

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experts

Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion

James Allen IV

Associate Research Fellow

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@JEAllenIV
ORCiD

Bio

James Allen IV is an Associate Research Fellow in the Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion Unit. A development economist, his research aims to improve poverty, health, and education in Africa by studying policies and interventions via randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and natural experiments. James has a PhD in economics and public policy from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree in agricultural, food, and resource economics from Michigan State University. He also served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Mali (2010–2012).

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Publications

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Working Paper

Would you rather? Household choice between cash transfers or an economic inclusion program

2024Allen IV, James; Gilligan, Daniel O.; Kurdi, Sikandra; Yassa, Basma
Details

Would you rather? Household choice between cash transfers or an economic inclusion program

We study households’ choice between continued cash transfers and a new economic inclusion program—two global prevalent social protection programs—offered by the Egyptian government. Lower-than-expected early adoption of the new program is correlated with differing perceptions on its design. We randomize official messaging to households describing the new program’s (i) consumption support duration and (ii) income-earning potential. Both treatments increase respondents’ likelihood of recommending the new program. A theoretical model estimated using households’ perceptions of program design predicts interest in the new program, and how it diminishes with increasing effort costs, asset loss probability, risk aversion and loss aversion.

Year published

2024

Authors

Allen IV, James; Gilligan, Daniel O.; Kurdi, Sikandra; Yassa, Basma

Citation

Allen IV, James; Gilligan, Daniel O.; Kurdi, Sikandra; and Yassa, Basma. 2024. Would you rather? Household choice between cash transfers or an economic inclusion program. MENA Working Paper 44. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/158340

Country/Region

Egypt

Keywords

Africa; Northern Africa; Social Protection; Poverty; Poverty Reduction; Cash Transfers

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Record type

Working Paper

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Brief

Overlapping school and farming calendars in Madagascar: Simulating gains of alternative school calendars

2024Allen IV, James
Details

Overlapping school and farming calendars in Madagascar: Simulating gains of alternative school calendars

This report summarizes ongoing analysis of overlap between school and farming calendars in Madagascar in collaboration with the World Bank office in Madagascar. Following IFPRI Discussion Paper 2235 (Allen 2024), I develop a community-based measure of overlap as the number of days that the school calendar overlaps with crop calendars that weights the relevance of each crop by the community crop share and then aggregates across crops. A policy simulation of alternative school calendars identifies early January as the best time to start Madagascar’s national school calendar (assuming the same structure as the actual school calendar) to avoid overlap with peak farming periods. Further, it finds additional gains can be made to reducing overlap by decentralizing school calendars to the local level and adopting each community’s overlap-minimizing calendar. Next steps in 2025 include an empirical analysis that estimates the correlation between overlap and key education outcomes that simulates the potential gains of a locally decentralized overlap-minimizing school calendar.

Year published

2024

Authors

Allen IV, James

Citation

Allen IV, James. 2024. Overlapping school and farming calendars in Madagascar: Simulating gains of alternative school calendars. Project Note December 2024. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute.

Country/Region

Madagascar

Keywords

Africa; Eastern Africa; Southern Africa; Crop Calendar; Farming Systems; Policies; Schools

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Project

Fragility, Conflict, and Migration

Record type

Brief

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Journal Article

Correcting misperceptions about support for social distancing to combat COVID-19

2024Allen IV, James; Mahumane, Arlete; Riddell IV, James; Rosenblat, Tanya; Yang, Dean; Yu, Hang
Details

Correcting misperceptions about support for social distancing to combat COVID-19

Can informing people of high community support for social distancing encourage them to do more of it? We randomly assigned a treatment to correct individuals’ underestimates of community support for social distancing. In theory, informing people that more neighbors support social distancing than expected encourages free riding and lowers the perceived benefits from social distancing. At the same time, the treatment induces people to revise their beliefs about the infectiousness of COVID-19 upward; this perceived-infectiousness effect and the norm-adherence effect increase the perceived benefits from social distancing. We estimate the effects on social distancing, which are measured by using a combination of self-reports and reports of others. While experts surveyed in advance expected the treatment to increase social distancing, we find that its average effect is close to zero and significantly lower than expert predictions. However, the treatment’s effect is heterogeneous as predicted by theory: it decreases social distancing where current COVID-19 cases are low (where free riding dominates) but increases it where cases are high (where the perceived-infectiousness effect dominates). These findings highlight that correction of misperceptions may have heterogeneous effects depending on disease prevalence.

Year published

2024

Authors

Allen IV, James; Mahumane, Arlete; Riddell IV, James; Rosenblat, Tanya; Yang, Dean; Yu, Hang

Citation

Allen IV, James; Mahumane, Arlete; Riddell IV, James; Rosenblat, Tanya; Yang, Dean; and Yu, Hang. 2024. Correcting misperceptions about support for social distancing to combat COVID-19. Economic Development and Cultural Change 73(1): 221-242. https://doi.org/10.1086/727192

Keywords

Community Development; Covid-19; Behaviour; Physical Distancing; Infectious Diseases; Public Health; Health Policies; Behavioural Sciences

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open Access

Links

https://doi.org/10.1086/727192 Source record

Record type

Journal Article