Scholars@Duke
Erica Field

Erica Field CV

James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of Economics
Economics
field.erica@duke.edu
Box 90097, Durham, NC 27708
319 Social Sciences, Box 90097, Durham, NC 27708-0097
CV

Selected Publications

Drivers of Change: Employment Responses to the Lifting of the Saudi Female Driving Ban

Journal Article American Economic Review · September 1, 2025 We conduct a field experiment to quantify the impact of the lifting of the Saudi women’s driving ban on women’s employment by randomizing rationed spaces in driver’s training. Treated women are 41 percent more likely to be employed yet are 19 percent less ... Full text Cite

Are Behavioral Change Interventions Needed to Make Cash Transfer Programs Work for Children? Experimental Evidence from Myanmar

Journal Article Economic Development and Cultural Change · April 1, 2025 We experimentally evaluate the effect on child malnutrition of a maternal cash transfer program in Myanmar that was supplemented with social behavior change communication (SBCC) in a subset of villages. The combination of interventions significantly reduce ... Full text Cite

COVID-19, Job Loss, and Intimate Partner Violence in Peru

Journal Article Economic Development and Cultural Change · October 1, 2024 A large literature has explored the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on intimate partner violence (IPV) worldwide. However, few studies provide clear evidence on the mechanisms through which the pandemic exacerbated violence, and many rely on hotline or pol ... Full text Cite

Investing in the Next Generation: The Long-Run Impacts of a Liquidity Shock

Journal Article American Economic Review · September 1, 2024 Poor entrepreneurs must frequently choose between business investment and children’s education. To examine this trade-off, we exploit experimental variation in short-run microenterprise growth among a sample of Indian households and track schooling and bus ... Full text Cite

A comparison between different models of delivering maternal cash transfers in Myanmar

Journal Article Health Policy and Planning · August 1, 2024 As part of a randomized controlled trial conducted in Myanmar between 2016 and 2019, we explore the performance of a maternal cash transfer program across villages assigned to different models of delivery (by government health workers vs loan agents of a n ... Full text Cite

A Signal to End Child Marriage: Theory and Experimental Evidence from Bangladesh

Journal Article American Economic Review · October 1, 2023 Child marriage remains common even where female schooling and employment opportunities have grown. We experimentally evaluate a financial incentive to delay marriage alongside a girls’empowerment program in Bangladesh. While girls eligible for two years of ... Full text Cite

Measuring time use in rural India: Design and validation of a low-cost survey module

Journal Article Journal of Development Economics · September 1, 2023 Time use data facilitate understanding of labor supply, especially for women who often undertake unpaid care and home production. Although assisted diary-based time use surveys are suitable for low-literacy populations, they are costly and rarely used. We ... Full text Cite

On her own account: How strengthening women's financial control impacts labor supply and gender norms

Journal Article American Economic Review · July 1, 2021 Can increasing control over earnings incentivize a woman to work, and thereby influence norms around gender roles? We randomly varied whether rural Indian women received bank accounts, training in account use, and direct deposit of public sector wages into ... Full text Cite

Loss in the time of cholera: Long-run impact of a disease epidemic on the urban landscape

Journal Article American Economic Review · January 1, 2020 How do geographically concentrated income shocks influence the long-run spatial distribution of poverty within a city? We examine the impact on housing prices of a cholera epidemic in one neighborhood of nineteenth century London. Ten years after the epide ... Full text Cite

Do dehydroepiandrosterone, progesterone, and testosterone influence women's depression and anxiety levels? Evidence from hair-based hormonal measures of 2105 rural Indian women.

Journal Article Psychoneuroendocrinology · November 2019 Depressive and anxiety disorders substantially contribute to the global burden of disease, particularly in poor countries. Higher prevalence rates for both disorders among women indicate sex hormones may be integrated in the pathophysiology of these disord ... Full text Cite

Traditional Beliefs and Learning about Maternal Risk in Zambia.

Conference The American economic review · May 2017 Full text Cite

Moving to opportunity or isolation? Network effects of a randomized housing lottery in urban India

Journal Article American Economic Journal Applied Economics · January 1, 2017 A housing lottery in an Indian city provided winning slum dwellers the opportunity to move into improved housing on the city's periphery. Fourteen years later, winners report improved housing but no change in tenure security, family income, or human capita ... Full text Cite

Gender Gaps in Completed Fertility

Journal Article Journal of Demographic Economics · June 2016 Full text Cite

Friendship at work: Can peer effects catalyze female entrepreneurship?

Journal Article American Economic Journal Economic Policy · May 1, 2016 Does the lack of peers contribute to the observed gender gap in entrepreneurial success? A random sample of customers of India's largest women's bank was offered two days of business counseling, and a random subsample was invited to attend with a friend. T ... Full text Cite

Iron deficiency and schooling attainment in Peru

Journal Article American Economic Journal Applied Economics · January 1, 2016 Do nutritional deficiencies contribute to the intergenerational persistence of poverty by reducing the earnings potential of future generations? To address this question, we made available supplemental iron pills at a health center in rural Peru and encour ... Full text Cite

Do group dynamics influence social capital gains among microfinance clients? Evidence from a randomized experiment in urban India

Journal Article Journal of Policy Analysis and Management · September 1, 2014 As an intrinsic part of the classic microfinance model, group meetings are intended to employ social capital to ensure timely repayment. Recent research suggests that more frequent meetings can increase social capital among first-time clients. Using random ... Full text Cite

Household bargaining and excess fertility: An experimental study in zambia

Journal Article American Economic Review · January 1, 2014 We posit that household decision-making over fertility is characterized by moral hazard since most contraception can only be perfectly observed by the woman. Using an experiment in Zambia that varied whether women were given access to contraceptives alone ... Full text Cite

Does the classic microfinance model discourage entrepreneurship among the poor? Experimental evidence from India

Journal Article American Economic Review · October 1, 2013 Do the repayment requirements of the classic microfinance contract inhibit investment in high-return but illiquid business opportunities among the poor? Using a field experiment, we compare the classic contract which requires that repayment begin immediate ... Full text Cite

Repayment flexibility can reduce financial stress: a randomized control trial with microfinance clients in India.

Journal Article PloS one · January 2012 Financial stress is widely believed to cause health problems. However, policies seeking to relieve financial stress by limiting debt levels of poor households may directly worsen their economic well-being. We evaluate an alternative policy - increasing the ... Full text Cite

Social security health insurance for the informal sector in Nicaragua: a randomized evaluation.

Journal Article Health economics · September 2010 This article presents the results from an experimental evaluation of a voluntary health insurance program for informal sector workers in Nicaragua. Costs of the premiums as well as enrollment location were randomly allocated. Overall, take-up of the progra ... Full text Cite

Muslim family law, prenuptial agreements, and the emergence of dowry in Bangladesh

Journal Article Quarterly Journal of Economics · August 1, 2010 We explain trends in dowry levels in Bangladesh by drawing attention to an institutional feature of marriage contracts previously ignored in the literature: mehr or traditional Islamic bride-price. We develop a model of marriage contracts in which mehr ser ... Full text Cite

Globalization, Crop Choice, and Property Rights in Rural Peru, 1994-2004

Journal Article · May 13, 2010 This chapter describes the results of initial work analysing a panel of rural households in Peru between 1994 and 2004 to determine household responses to changes in relative prices of traditional versus export-oriented products. Our principal interest was ... Full text Cite

Iodine deficiency and schooling attainment in Tanzania

Journal Article American Economic Journal Applied Economics · October 1, 2009 Cognitive damage from iodine deficiency disorders (IDD) has important implications for economic growth through its effect on human capital. To gauge the magnitude of this influence, we evaluate the impact on schooling of reductions in IDD from intensive io ... Full text Cite

Educational debt burden and career choice: Evidence from a financial aid experiment at NYU law school

Journal Article American Economic Journal Applied Economics · January 1, 2009 This paper examines the influence of psychological responses to debt on career choices from an experiment in which alternative financial aid packages were assigned by lottery to a set of law school admits. The packages had equivalent monetary value, but on ... Full text Cite

Early marriage, age of menarche, and female schooling attainment in Bangladesh

Journal Article Journal of Political Economy · October 1, 2008 Using data from rural Bangladesh, we explore the hypothesis that women attain less schooling as a result of social and financial pressure to marry young. We isolate the causal effect of marriage timing using age of menarche as an instrumental variable. Our ... Full text Cite

Repayment frequency and default in microfinance: Evidence from India

Journal Article Journal of the European Economic Association · April 1, 2008 In stark contrast to bank debt contracts, most micro-finance contracts require that repayments start nearly immediately after loan disbursement and occur weekly thereafter. Even though economic theory suggests that a more flexible repayment schedule would ... Full text Cite

Entitled to work: Urban property rights and labor supply in Peru

Journal Article Quarterly Journal of Economics · November 1, 2007 Between 1996 and 2003, the Peruvian government issued property titles to over 1.2 million urban households, the largest titling program targeted at urban squatters in the developing world. This paper examines the labor market effects of increases in tenure ... Full text Cite

Property rights and investment in urban slums

Journal Article Journal of the European Economic Association · January 1, 2005 This paper examines the effect of changes in tenure security on residential investment in urban squatter neighborhoods. To address the endogeneity of property rights, I make use of variation in ownership status induced by a nationwide titling program in Pe ... Full text Cite