Contact Information
Department of Economics
Northwestern University
2211 Campus Drive
Evanston, IL 60208
Email: jimmylee@u.northwestern.edu
Phone: (+1) 773-681-6337
Education
Ph.D., Economics, Northwestern University, 2024 (Expected)
MA, Economics, Northwestern University, 2018
MPhil, Economics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2017
BSSc, Economics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2015
Research Fields
Development Economics, Household Economics, Organizational Economics
Teaching Fields
Development Economics (undergraduate and graduate levels),
Microeconomics and Macroeconomics (undergraduate level),
International Trade and Causal Inference (undergraduate level)
Curriculum Vitae
Job Market Paper
Information Interventions and Intergenerational Responses to School-based Agricultural Extension in Liberia (latest draft)
(3 out of 4 surveys completed)
Teaching improved farming practices in schools can transform the lives of rural students and their households, but students’ adoption depends on what their parents expect about them, and students may be unsure of their parents’ expectations. In a field experiment with 197 schools in Liberia, I study the effects of (i) a randomly assigned school-based agricultural extension program; and (ii) different strategies to engage households using information interventions. In 50 randomly selected program schools, I provide promotional videos to a parent or guardian (henceforth elder) and show that this leads elders to anticipate growth in students’ farming skills. I then randomize whether to reveal elders’ expected growth to students. After one year, the program increases students’ adoption of soil management techniques by 0.2 standard deviations, but this increase happens only with information interventions. The video treatment increases households’ adoption of soil management techniques, but revelation alters household responses — increasing students’ management of farms and adoption of a commercial-oriented cultivation style. When households receive a video that includes testimonials from authority figures, adding revelation increases students’ farm incomes by 87% and school enrollment by 5 percentage points. I show that adding communication frictions in a collective household model explains household responses to information interventions. Taken together, the results highlight sizable returns from tackling intergenerational communication in information campaigns.
Research Grants
Weiss Fund ($4,900; Summer 2022)
USAID Development Innovation Ventures ($395,000; Summer 2022)
Wellspring Foundation ($192,185; Spring 2022)
Fund for Innovation in Development ($1,016,641; Summer 2021)
Food and Agriculture Organization ($68,000; Spring 2021)
National Science Foundation ($451,135; January 2020)
Weiss Fund ($28,815; Spring 2020)
Global Poverty Research Lab ($18,807; November 2019)
Buffett Institute for Global Affairs ($5,000; October 2019)
Work in Progress
Evaluating a System of School-based Agricultural Extension in Liberia (3 out of 4 surveys completed, joint with Christopher Udry)
We evaluate a school-based agricultural extension program in Liberia, which is unique in its systems approach — it leverages the educational infrastructure of rural schools and the efforts of science teachers and students to achieve multiple goals: amplifying the diffusion of agricultural technologies, improving students’ education, skills and livelihoods, and introducing experiential elements in science pedagogy. Tackling multiple issues at once can be potentially cost-effective, especially if the program increases the retention of teachers and students and generates income for rural schools. Our randomized trial in 197 program and control schools is designed to evaluate several premises of the systems approach. First, the system as a whole can be effective in achieving its goals. Second, the program can generate positive spillovers to nearby communities as well as untrained teachers and students. Third, randomized sub-treatments (such as program promotional videos and annual farmer field day) can increase program effectiveness. Three survey rounds have been completed — the fourth round will take place in late 2024, evaluating long-term program impacts such as the functioning of schools, yields and sales of sampled households, and spillovers to untrained farmers.
A Two-Pronged Approach to Estimating the Situational Effects of Agricultural Technologies (financed by Weiss Fund; pilot in progress)
Ample evidence suggests that the usefulness of agricultural technologies is strongly affected by the heterogeneous environments of smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa. This project proposes a two-pronged approach to evaluate how the situation-specificity of technologies affects farmers’ adoption decisions and the usefulness of technologies. First, farmers are asked whether they face agronomic situations that motivate the introduction of agricultural technologies, and whether they correctly identify promoted practices as ways of solving particular agronomic issues. Second, I randomize the timing of introduction of (or emphasis on) particular technologies across regions. Using the randomization status as instruments, this two-pronged approach allows the researcher to causally estimate how farmers’ knowledge of particular practices affects their management of farms and welfare, and how such effects vary with the relevance of agronomic situations to farmers. This work will enable a richer understanding of how farmers consider the heterogeneous impacts of agricultural technologies in adoption decisions and provide better feedback to agronomic research and development.
References