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”. Diop is pronounced j-oh-b / joob.

Selected work in progress

“Upgrade or Migrate: the Effects of Fertilizer Subsidies on Rural Productivity and Migration”
[paper | twitter thread | mastodon thread]

abstract

Rural development programs often emphasize investments in agriculture, but farmers may instead prefer to divest and leave. I explore how input subsidy programs allow adjustments across two margins: agricultural upgrades and out-migration. Using a large-scale Zambian program and a difference-in-differences design, I find that subsidies increased both fertilizer adoption (upgrades, +79%) and out-migration (+12%). Out-migration rose, funded by farmers re-selling subsidized inputs in the short term (+11%) and using income from productivity gains in the medium term (+14%). Estimates from a choice model show that resales efficiently reallocate fertilizer, and that the ISP achieved higher agricultural upgrades than revenue-neutral cash-transfers.

“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