Contact Information

Department of Economics
Northwestern University
2211 Campus Drive
Evanston, IL 60208

Email: ddecet@u.northwestern.edu
Website: www.devisdecet.com

Education

Ph.D., Economics, Northwestern University, 2025 (expected)
MA, Economics, Northwestern University, 2020
MA, Economics, University of Bologna, 2018
BA, Economics and Management, University of Trento, 2016

Primary Fields
Development Economics, Public Economics

Secondary Fields
Environmental Economics

Curriculum Vitae
Download Vita (PDF)

Job Market Paper
“Organizing Fiscal Capacity”,
[Download]
This paper evaluates a reform of the Brazilian tax authority that closed one-fourth of the existing local offices, resulting in a more centralized structure with fewer but larger offices. Leveraging regional variation induced by the reform, I employ a matched difference-in-differences design to document substantial heterogeneity within the centralized regions in how the reform impacts tax revenues. Tax revenues decline in areas previously served by a closed office but increase in areas served by an office that expanded. Following the closures, increased distance between tax offices and the areas they need to monitor reduces tax revenues, particularly in areas where accessing local information on taxable activity is more valuable. Consistent with the hypothesis that centralization allows for improved targeting of enforcement resources, areas served by an expanded office experience a larger revenue increase when they have higher revenue potential compared to other areas newly assigned to the same office. Additionally, I present evidence in line with economies of scale arising from high-quality managers overseeing larger offices after the reform. On net, aggregate tax revenues in centralized regions increase. These findings highlight the importance of how bureaucracies are organized across the territory for their effectiveness.

Other Research Papers
“Water Wars”
with Andrea Marcucci
[Download]
We study the relationship between access to water resources and local violence in Africa. Due to limited irrigation, rural communities rely on rainfall, rivers, and lakes for their economic needs. Rainfall scarcity can make access to water from rivers and lakes more valuable, thereby generating conflicts in rural settings. We explore this hypothesis by integrating granular data on the river network with high-resolution data on rainfall and violent conflict events in Africa from 1997 to 2021. We find that reduced rainfall in a location leads to more conflict in neighboring areas that are water-rich and located upstream along the river network. These are the sites that exert more control over the river flow. The effect is more pronounced in regions experiencing a long-term decline in water presence. Additionally, the impact is more pronounced in regions with unequal water distribution among ethnic groups, highlighting how cooperation costs are an important friction preventing peaceful sharing of water resources.

“Child Labour, Human Capital and Beliefs”
with Kaman Lyu
[Download]
In contexts where child labour is pervasive, household decisions about allocating children’s time between school and work involve a trade-off: current returns from child labour versus future returns from education. This paper tests for the existence of a third factor: future returns from child labour, as parents view farm work as an investment in agricultural skills. We provide evidence on each component of this trade-off in the context of rural Ghana by leveraging four waves of survey data on 5,000 households, exogenous shocks to agricultural productivity, and a vignette survey design to elicit parental beliefs.

Work in progress

“State Capacity and Environmental Protection”
with Marie-Louise Decamps

“The Geography of State Capacity in Africa”

Teaching Assistance

Download Teaching Evaluations (PDF)

References

Prof. Christopher Udry (Committee Chair)
Prof. Seema Jayachandran
Prof. Nancy Qian
Prof. Edoardo Teso
Prof. Silvia Vannutelli