Research

with Michel Tenikue

This paper estimates the causal effects of healthcare user-fee exemptions for vulnerable populations in Senegal, exploiting two sharp age-based eligibility thresholds under the country's Universal Health Coverage program: children under five and seniors aged sixty and older. Using nationally representative household survey data and a regression discontinuity design, we find that the symmetric policy architecture produces strikingly asymmetric impacts. For children, losing eligibility raises the cost of care for families without reducing their use of formal healthcare. The exemption functions as a financial shield rather than a driver of access. For seniors, gaining eligibility produces no detectable change in either utilization or out-of-pocket expenditure. The contrast between the two programs points to differences in awareness, rather than statutory design. Heterogeneity analysis confirms that both findings hold broadly across gender, poverty status, and geographic access to facilities.

with Felix Stips and Konstantinos Tatsiramos

This paper studies how extended potential benefit duration (PBD) in unemployment insurance reshapes reemployment quality in Germany. Using German administrative data, we exploit four sharp age-based discontinuities in PBD to trace how the effect of extended coverage on wage-loss probability varies with the duration of the preceding nonemployment spell. Workers who exit nonemployment early are less likely to suffer wage losses and form more durable matches, while those who stay on for longer durations face sharply elevated wage-loss and job-separation rates. Geographic mobility emerges as a last-resort margin rather than a first choice, observed primarily among workers who find jobs around the point of benefit exhaustion.