Abstract: Historians have long argued that Bible translations played a central role in language development of African languages through the creation of standardized written scripts. In this paper, I investigate their long-run consequences by assembling data on the location and time of Bible translation, the activity of missionaries from multiple missionary atlases and contemporary surveys. Areas with historical Bible translations show improved education and health outcomes even after controlling for a host of geographical, historical and even missionary characteristics. To lend causal interpretation, I predict Bible translation using the proclivity of missionary societies to translate scripture throughout the world. In a matched event study, translation immediately increases the presence of foreign missionaries who then in infrastructure such as printing presses, high schools and hospitals. There is evidence for the persistence of this infrastructure to modern times. I also find that Bible translations played an important role in the promotion of languages as media of instruction in post-independence schools. The long-run education effects are focused among those whose ancestral language is used in schools, but the same is not true of health effects.

Paper

Accepted, American Economic Review: Insights (with Morgan Hardy, Isaac Mbiti, Jamie McCasland, and Isabelle Salcher)

Abstract: We use a field experiment to test whether financial incentives can improve the quality of apprenticeship training. Trainers (firm owners) in the treatment group participated in a tournament incentive scheme where they received a payment based on their apprentices’ rank-order performance on a skills assessment. Trainers in the control group received a fixed payment based on their apprentices’ participation in the assessment. Performance on the assessment was higher in the treatment group. Two years later, treated apprentices scored 0.15σ higher on a low-stakes oral skills test and earned 24% more in total earnings, driven by higher self-employment profits.

Paper

Abstract: Ethnic-based discrimination has been noted as a main factor in the pervasiveness of conflict throughout Africa. I explore how education policies designed at promoting indigenous languages may address this discrimination. For this analysis, I have hand-coded a novel dataset on the use of each African language in primary education for 49 African countries from 1960 to 2011.  Given the level of linguistic diversity in Africa, I extend the notion of use in schools to account for linguistic distance between languages.  I pair this information with conflict data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) to assess the effects. In preliminary results, I find that for each additional grade where the local African language is used as a medium of instruction there are 10% fewer conflict events. This negative association is especially strong with regards to violent conflict.