My work aims to understand migration and location choices of people under constraints, both positive (driven by central policy choices) and normative (from fairness principles). I will join Boston College as an Assistant Professor after two postdocs at the Stanford King Center and at the Yale EGC — [CV].

If you are referring to me on a ‘first-name-basis’, please call me “Binta” or “Zahra”. If you need to use my full name, please use “Binta Zahra Diop“.

Work in progress

“Upgrade or Migrate: The Consequences of Input Subsidies on Household Labor Allocation”
[paper | twitter thread | mastodon thread]

Rural development programs often focus on increasing agricultural investment. Yet, many farmers can benefit from investing in a different technology: outmigration. I explore how one common class of policies \textemdash\ input subsidy programs (ISPs) \textemdash\ allows households to sort based on the relative returns of these two technologies. First, I exploit area-by-year variations in the roll-out of a large-scale Zambian ISP and use a difference-in-differences strategy. I show that the ISP fosters specialization by farmers based on their comparative advantage, resulting in increases in both agricultural yields and outmigration. Second, I estimate a structural model that incorporates a positive learning externality related to fertilizer adoption. With this externality, the ISP offers advantages relative to alternative revenue-neutral policy counterfactuals. Compared to an untargeted cash transfer, I find that an ISP that allows for re-selling of fertilizer would increase migration out of agriculture. A more targeted cash transfer, or an ISP without resale markets, would reduce migration. All three counterfactual policies reduce fertilizer use relative to the ISP and hinder the process of specialization.

“The Productivity and Allocation of Labor across Ghana’s Health Facilities”
BZ Diop, K Awoonor-Williams, H Ismaila, A Ofosu, MJ Williams

“An Experiment to Elicit Preferences Over Definitions of Algorithmic Fairness”
BZ Diop, A Panin, M Cissé

Publication

“The relatively young and rural population may limit the spread and severity of Covid-19 in Africa: a modelling study” (2020), BMJ Global Health [paper]
BZ Diop, M Ngom, C Pougué Biyong, JN Pougué Biyong

Comparison between predictions and actual COVID19 progressions (click to uncover)

Predictions of the model:

The actual progression of infections:

Policy Reports (Pre-PhD)

“Using Behavioral Science to Improve Criminal Justice Outcomes” [paper]
B Cooke, BZ Diop, A Fishbane, J Hayes, A Ouss, AK Shah