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]
Which tax administration reforms can improve fiscal capacity in developing countries? This paper evaluates a reform of the Brazilian tax authority that centralized the structure of local tax offices, closing some offices and expanding others. Leveraging regional variation in the reform, I employ a matched difference-in-differences strategy to document how a more centralized structure affects fiscal capacity. I obtain three main findings. First, tax revenues decline in areas previously served by an office that was shut down but increase in areas served by an expanded office; the net effect is an increase in revenues in centralized regions. Second, one reason for the decline in revenues is that increased distance between tax offices and the areas they oversee reduces tax agents’ ability to visit these places and gather local information. Third, one reason for the rise in revenues is that the reform has improved the allocation of resources by enabling the tax authority to focus staff effort on high-revenue potential areas and to give talented managers a larger span of control. These findings suggest that centralization can increase overall revenues but exacerbate regional inequality in tax enforcement.

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

Teaching Assistance

Download Teaching Evaluations (PDF)

References

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