I am a Kuznets Postdoctoral Associate at Yale EGC. I will join Boston College as an Assistant Professor in 2025 — [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 prefer to divest and leave. I explore how input subsidy programs (ISP) affect two margins of structural transformation: agricultural technology upgrades and out-migration. I show that a large-scale Zambian ISP increased upgrades (+25pp) and out-migration (+5pp). Out-migration increased driven by short-term input resale and medium-term productivity gains. The presence of resale markets changes the evaluation of ISPs relative to common anti-poverty policies. I estimate a choice model and show that resales efficiently reallocate fertilizer making ISPs reach higher upgrades than revenue-neutral cash transfers while achieving similar incomes gains.

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

abstract

We study the productivity of healthcare labor in Ghana with a unique administrative panel of over 9,000 health facilities, and 100,000 workers from 2014 to 2019. First, we use an event study design to estimate the effect of a marginal change in the number of nurses on measures of healthcare outcomes in small rural facilities. We find that the addition of one nurse significantly increases the quantity of services delivered, but productivity per worker decreases. Second, we assume a structure of the production function of healthcare in larger facilities to estimate the elasticities of outputs for a range of healthcare workers and facilities. We find a zero outpatient elasticity of labor. However, other measures of output, such as maternal health visits and antenatal care visits (for which there is an outside option of home delivery) show high elasticity of output with respect to labor staffing and capital. We also find that quality measures of health show high responsiveness to nurses. Our findings provide some of the first estimates of the marginal productivity of health workers at the level of an entire national healthcare system, and suggest that large potential improvements in the allocation of labor and capital may be possible.

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