Christopher Ksoll

University of Greenwich · Natural Resources Institute

Rural students in lower- and middle-income countries dramatically underperform their urban peers. Through a cluster randomized controlled trial, we explore live, interactive instruction via satellite as a potential solution. The studied program equipped 70 randomly selected schools in two areas of Ghana with technology to connect to a studio in Gha...

Remote Sensing affords the opportunity to monitor and evaluate data scarce regions where field collection efforts are costly. A particular challenge is monitoring and evaluation in regions with smallholder agricultural systems (∼1 ha) that are often subsistence focused, vulnerable to food insecurity and data scarce. Using multi-day moderate resolut...

Violent coniflicts, particularly at election times in Africa, are a common cause of instability and economic disruption. This paper studies how firms react to electoral violence using the case of Kenyan ower exporters during the 2008 post-election violence as an example. The violence induced a large negative supply shock that reduced exports primar...

Violent conflicts, particularly at election times in Africa, are a common cause of instability and economic disruption. This paper studies how rms react to electoral violence using the case of Kenyan ower exporters during the 2008 post-election vio- lence as an example. The violence induced a large negative supply shock that reduced exports primari...

The extended family household, in which multiple generations or married siblings of a family live together, is common in developing countries. We conducted a series of public goods experiments in such households in five villages in rural North India to shed light on decision-making efficiency within this household structure. In this experiment, we...

We use a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the impacts of an adult literacy program, targeting women in rural India, on a broad range of outcomes one year later. We show that the program had signi®cant impacts on multiple aspects of the women's lives, such as improvements in the women's health and hygiene practices, as well as increased invol...

Teacher absenteeism is an important obstacle to sustained learning gains in many developing countries. We report the results from a randomized evaluation of an adult education program in Niger, which included an additional intervention designed to improve teacher accountability and students’ learning. Villages were randomly assigned to one of three...

With over 700 million illiterate adults worldwide, governments in many developing countries have implemented adult literacy programs. Typically these programs have low rates of success partly because the quality of teaching is heterogeneous. Standardization of teaching provided by computer-aided instruction might be a solution. However, there is li...

With over 700 million illiterate adults worldwide, governments in many developing countries have implemented adult literacy programs. Typically these program have low rates of success partly because the quality of teaching is heterogeneous. Standardization of teaching provided by computer-aided instruction might be a solution. However, there is lit...

Following is a short URL link to the report. https://goo.gl/blsr1L The Millennium Challenge Corporation’s energy-sector project was designed to promote economic growth and curb poverty in Tanzania. Mathematica conducted an evaluation of two project components: impacts of building new lines to the electricity grid and outcomes from offering low-cost...

How do people reassess their beliefs in the light of new information? Do people follow the Bayesian rule of utility maximisation? Or are there other aspects that people take into account when updating their beliefs? In order to better understand this process, experiments were conducted amongst rural women in Uttar Pradesh. The results and questions...

The vast majority of the world’s poor live in rural areas of developing countries with little access to financial services. Setting up Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs) has become an increasingly widespread intervention aimed at improving local financial intermediation. Using a cluster randomized trial we investigate the impact of VSLAs...

The widespread growth of mobile phone coverage worldwide has offered new potential for increasing rural households’ access to information and public and private transfers. Yet despite the proliferation of mobile phone-based interventions in the agricultural sector, there is mixed evidence on their impact. We report the results of a randomized evalu...

In rural areas of developing countries, education programs are often implemented through community teachers. While teachers are a crucial part of the education production function, observing their effort remains a challenge for the public sector. This paper tests whether a simple monitoring system, implemented via the mobile phone, can improve stud...

The returns to educational investments hinge on whether such investments can improve the quality and persistence of educational gains. We report the results from a randomized evaluation of an adult education program in Niger, in which some students learned how to use simple mobile phones (Project ABC). Students in ABC villages achieved test scores...

Labor markets in developing countries are characterized by large spatial differences in earnings. While such spatial wage gaps could be partly due to differences in average returns to labor, they can also be attributed to credit and insurance market failures, as well as asymmetric information with respect to potential employment and wages. Mobile p...

This paper investigates the effects of ethnic violence on export-oriented firms and their workers. Following the disputed 2007 Kenyan presidential election, export volumes of flower firms affected by the ensuing violence dropped by 38 percent and worker absence exceeded 50 percent. Large firms and firms with stable contractual relationships in expo...

We report the short-term results from a randomized evaluation of a mobile phone literacy and numeracy program (Project ABC) in Niger, in which adult literacy students learned how to use mobile phones as part of a literacy and numeracy class. Students in ABC villages showed substantial gains in numeracy exam scores. There is also evidence of heterog...

We report the short-term results from a randomized evaluation of a mobile phone literacy program (ABC) in Niger, in which adult literacy students learned how to use mobile phones as part of a literacy class. Students in mobile phone literacy villages showed substantial gains in numeracy exam scores. There is also evidence of heterogeneity in progra...

While political instability is broadly believed to be bad for economic growth., firm performance and foreign direct investment, few studies convincingly identify the causal impact of conflict on firms and export performance. In this paper, we analyze the impact of the Kenyan post-election violence on a hugely successful export oriented industry, th...

This paper studies the effects of orphanhood on health and education outcomes of children in Tanzania. Using an original dataset on members of the extended family networks of orphaned children, I assess by how much the effects of orphanhood are reduced due to a systematic placement of the orphans within the family network. I find that orphanhood ha...

This technical report seeks to understand the impact of improved access to information technology on farmers' agricultural production and marketing practices in sub-Saharan Africa, with a specific focus on Niger. Related research suggests in that access to mobile telephony can reduce communication and search costs, thereby increasing rural househol...

This article investigates the importance of family networks in Africa in mitigating the impacts of orphanhood. We focus on a particular dimension, namely the placement of orphans within the family network upon the death of their parents. Using data on the extended families of or-phans from Tanzania, we find that families systematically place orphan...