Contact Information
Department of Economics
Northwestern University
2211 Campus Drive
Evanston, IL 60208
Phone: 757-274-9979
kristinamanysheva2021@u.northwestern.edu
Education
Ph.D., Economics, Northwestern University, 2022 (expected)
M.A., Economics, Northwestern University, 2017
M.A., Policy Economics, Williams College, 2014
B.A., Economics, Belarusian State University, 2011
Primary Fields of Specialization
Macroeconomics
Secondary Fields of Specialization
Economic Development and Growth
Curriculum Vitae
Job Market Paper
“Land Property Rights, Financial Frictions, and Resource Allocation in Developing Countries”
Download Job Market Paper (PDF)
What effect do weak land property rights and limited access to finance have on aggregate productivity and the allocation of resources, and what is the role of their interaction? To answer these questions, I develop a dynamic general equilibrium model and use it to quantify the aggregate and distributional impacts of land and financial market imperfections connected via the collateral channel. I discipline the model with longitudinal micro data from Tanzania and show that substantial frictions in land and financial markets affect resource allocation and economic efficiency in agriculture. In the model, these distortions reduce aggregate productivity by allocating land and capital to less efficient producers and by preventing households from moving out of agriculture and limiting entrepreneurship. An economy-wide land reform that improves land property rights leads to increases in agricultural and non-agricultural output by 7.4% and 8.2%, respectively, as well as a decline in agricultural employment by 8.6%. A land reform also results in higher financial inclusion, especially among the poorest, as land market frictions amplify the effects of financial markets imperfections. While a financial reform can deliver comparable aggregate effects, land reform is more pro-poor and reduces consumption inequality.
Coverage: World Bank Development Impact Blog
Other Research Papers
“Global Innovation Spillovers and Productivity: Evidence from 100 years of World Patent Data” with Enrico Berkes and Martí Mestieri
We use a panel of historical patent data covering an extensive range of countries over the past century to study the evolution of innovation across time and space and its effect on productivity. We document a substantial rise of international knowledge spillovers as measured by patent citations since the 1990s. This rise is mainly accounted for by an increase in citations to the U.S. and Japanese patents in fields of knowledge related to computation, information processing, and medicine. We estimate the causal effect of innovation induced by international spillovers on output per worker and TFP growth in a panel of countries-sectors from 2000 to 2014. To assess causality, we develop a shift-share instrument that leverages pre-existing citation linkages across countries and fields of knowledge and heterogeneous countries’ exposure to technology waves. On average, an increase of one standard deviation in log-patenting activity increases output per worker growth by 4.7%. We find an effect of similar magnitude when considering long-run income per capita growth for the post-war period.
“Gendered Impacts of Covid-19 in Developing Countries” [Slides]
with Titan Alon, Matthias Doepke and Michèle Tertilt
In many high-income economies, the recession caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in unprecedented declines in women’s employment. We examine how the forces that underlie this observation play out in developing countries, with a specific focus on Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa. A force affecting high- and low-income countries alike are increased childcare needs during school closures; in Nigeria, mothers of school-age children experience the largest declines in employment during the pandemic, just as in high-income countries. A key difference is the role of the sectoral distribution of employment: whereas in high-income economies reduced employment in contact-intensive services had a large impact on women, this sector plays a minor role in low-income countries. Another difference is that women’s employment rebounded much more quickly in low-income countries. We conjecture that large income losses without offsetting government transfers drive up labor supply in low-income countries during the recovery.
Work In Progress
“Persistence of Inequality after the Apartheid: Assessing the Role of Geography and Skills” with Martí Mestieri and Johanna Schauer (STEG Small Research Grant)
Description: This paper intends to understand and quantify how initial spatial, financial, and educational segregation conditions persist after segregation policies stop being enforced. The specific setting we analyze is the evolution of inequality pre- and post-apartheid in South Africa. More specifically, we explore the hypothesis that inequality in South Africa remains very high due to the substantial spatial and economic segregation between urban areas and “townships” that has persisted until today. We look at nationally representative household datasets on the data front to establish stylized facts about the differences in socioeconomic outcomes between urban centers and townships. We then incorporate our data analysis into a quantitative macro model to formalize the links between residential choice, education, and production.
“What is the Aggregate Impact of Pandemic Education Disruptions in Low-Income Countries” with Titan Alon, Matthias Doepke and Michèle Tertilt
Description: The Covid-19 pandemic has led to prolonged school closures in most countries around the world. This paper aims to quantify the potential impact of pandemic learning losses in developing countries, with a specific focus on sub-Saharan Africa. We argue that both micro and macro channels imply that the repercussions of pandemic education disruptions are more severe in poorer countries than richer economies. First, the evidence suggests that children in low-income countries suffer more significant learning losses. This obtains partly because of the lower availability and efficiency of alternative learning channels such as virtual instruction and partly because of a higher impact on dropout rates, which are amplified by income losses during the pandemic. Second, a given learning loss has a more significant medium-run impact on the economy because recent school graduates make up a larger fraction of the total labor force in low-income economies and because older cohorts have relatively little formal education. We quantify these channels using a macro-development model that matches household-level and aggregate data from Nigeria.
“The Impacts of Mobile Money on Village Economies: A General Equilibrium Approach”
Description: This paper aims to assess the aggregate effects and the distributional consequences of the adoption of mobile money technology for the rural economy. I propose a two-sector heterogeneous agent model that incorporates occupational choice, endogenous wages, and forward-looking saving decisions. The more developed (urban) sector is motivated to make transfers to a less developed (rural) sector. Moreover, due to limited access to financial services in rural areas, saving technology is subject to potential losses. The introduction of mobile money technology reduces transfer friction between the urban and rural parts of the household and improves rural saving technology. I use existing micro evidence on the effects of mobile money to discipline the model.
References
Prof. Matthias Doepke (Committee Chair)
Prof. Christopher Udry
Prof. Martí Mestieri