Nava Ashraf
Nava Ashraf is Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She was previously an Assistant Professor in the Negotiations, Organizations, and Markets Unit at Harvard Business School. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University in 2005, and her BA in Economics and International Relations from Stanford University. Her research combines psychology and economics, using both lab and field experiments to test insights from behavioural economics in the context of development projects in the Philippines, Kenya and Zambia. Her experiments address behaviour change in health, agricultural production, and microfinance. She has conducted research on questions of intra-household conflict and bargaining in decisions related to finance and fertility, with a special focus on women’s empowerment. Her research is published or forthcoming in leading journals including the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the Journal of Economic Perspectives. She is a Faculty Affiliate of the Jameel Poverty Action Lab at MIT, dedicated to the use of randomized trials as a tool for learning what works in international development, and a Fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Prior to joining Harvard, she worked at the World Bank on trade negotiations between Morocco and the European Union, as a consultant for several nonprofit organizations in developing countries, and as founder of a business skills training institute for women in west Africa. She has been awarded a Queen’s Jubilee Medal for service by the Government of Canada.
Content by Nava Ashraf
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Project
The impact of career opportunities on aspirations and educational outcomes
Issues surrounding recruiting and motivating a high-performing public workforce are central to efforts to improve state effectiveness. The research team conducted a national recruitment experiment in Zambia - embedded in the 2012 launch of a new cadre of community health workers (CHW) - the Community Health Assistant (CHA). In contrast to volunteer CHWs, CHAs are government...
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Project
Negotiating a better future: Tracking girls for post-secondary follow-up
This study evaluates the long-term effects of a randomised control trial that taught Zambian adolescent girls negotiation skills in 2013. The study focused on adolescent girls both because growing evidence suggests that adolescence is a critical period for the development of non-cognitive interpersonal skills (Choudhury, Blakemore, and Charman, 2006), and because...
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Project
Learning to learn by learning to teach
Motivating public service workers is a primary concern of government institutions as they pursue approaches to improve state effectiveness. From a staffing perspective, several state-funded public service workers are public school teachers. This is the case in Uganda, which has very high rates of teacher absenteeism, even though its teachers seem to be more competent than...
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Blog post
Learning to teach by learning to learn: Measuring the effects of an innovative teacher training programme in Uganda
In 2007, Uganda became the first African country to introduce free universal secondary education. Yet, in 2017, 79% of students who began primary school, which is also free, did not make it to secondary school at all.[1] How can the delivery of education be improved to address this issue?A unique teacher training programme in Uganda has begun and is providing significant...
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Blog post
Is the rule of law good for women? Evidence from micro-entrepreneurs in Lusaka, Zambia
The rapidly growing cities of the developing world can be an engine for private sector growth (Krugman, 1991; Glaeser, 2011). However, the positive externalities of living in urban areas become lost opportunities when people cannot safely trade with each other. This can happen either because of lack of mutual confidence or weakness in the rule of law. Across countries,...
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Publication - Policy Brief
Women, entrepreneurship, and institutions
This project aims to investigate whether improving enforcement of rule of law benefits female entrepreneurs more than male entrepreneurs, thus serving to reduce the gender gap in entrepreneurship. The project builds upon previous work that collected data on the distribution of all businesses across Lusaka. This brief presents new analysis of this data which reveals...
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Publication - Project Report
Missing links and mismatches: Data challenges with policy implications
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Publication - Project Report
Decentralisation in Zambia: A comparative analysis of strategies and barriers to implementation
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Publication - Policy Brief
Maternal mortality risk and gender gap in desired fertility
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Publication - Project Report
Maternal mortality risk and the gender gap in desired fertility
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Publication - Policy Brief
Urban density, trust, and knowledge sharing in Lusaka, Zambia
This project aims to investigate the channels through which urban agglomeration can foster (or hinder) firm growth in developing countries. This brief presents the first stage of this research agenda, the collection of a new dataset mapping the spatial distribution of all the businesses in Lusaka: the Lusaka Census of Urban Entrepreneurs (47,428 firms),...
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Publication - Project Report
Evaluating Zambia's 2013 salary reform
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Project
Maternal mortality risk and gender gap in desired fertility
High rates of urbanisation generate both positive and negative externalities in developing countries. While urbanisation is linked to productivity and economic growth, it places a strain on the already meager public infrastructure, leaving the housing, health, and education needs of the urban poor largely unmet. In Zambia, 36% of the population resides in urban cities and,...
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Multimedia Item - Video
Motivating public sector workers
Nava Ashraf, IGC lead academic for Zambia, presents the latest evidence on how to motivate workers and recruit the best candidates for the public sector and why it's essential for effective service delivery.
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Project
Productivity in the civil service: Understanding the impact of payroll reform on worker performance
The provision of public services depends critically on the skills and motivation of the agents tasked with providing them. And yet, civil servant underperformance plagues many countries, with cross-national studies reporting average daily absenteeism rates among public health workers and teachers of 19 and 35 percent, respectively. This project covers the initial steps...
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Blog post
Bride & prejudice: The price of education
Leveraging the cultural practice of bride price could help amplify investments in female education and improve effects of large-scale school-building programmes. Without other subsidies, well-intentioned activism against bride-price may cause more harm than good for investing in girls’ education. Bride price, a common custom in parts of sub-Saharan Africa and Asia,...
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Publication - Working Paper
Do-gooders and go-getters: Career incentives, selection, and performance in public service delivery
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Project
Recruiting and motivating community health workers: Measuring impact through a nationwide household survey
This is a follow-up project from Recruiting and motivating health workers in Zambia. We study how career incentives affect who selects into public health jobs and, through selection, their performance while in service. We collaborate with the Government of Zambia to design a field experiment embedded in the national recruitment campaign for a new health worker...
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Project
Growing together: Trust, spontaneous clusters, and the growth of micro, small, and medium enterprises in cities
The rapid growth of cities in the African continent provides a new opportunity for the spread of innovative ideas and creates the conditions for the accumulation of social capital through repeated interactions. Urban density and social proximity can foster cooperation in the provision of public goods and the creation of win-win solutions which relax the economic constraints...
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Project
Infrastructure, incentives and institutions
Expensive infrastructure is ineffective if it doesn't travel the last mile. In nineteenth-century New York and modern Zambia, disease spread when urbanites chose not to use newly built sanitation infrastructure to save money. Either subsidies or Pigouvian fines can internalise the externalities that occur when people don't use sanitation infrastructure, but with weak...
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Project
Negotiating a better future: The impact of teaching negotiation skills on girls’ health and educational outcomes (Pilot)
The formation of human capital lies at the core of individual well-being and national economic development; it is intricately tied to overcoming the global health challenges (such as high rates of malnutrition, maternal mortality, and HIV/AIDS prevalence) that constrain economic growth in developing nations. A large variety of development interventions thus target...
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Multimedia Item - Video
Prof. Nava Ashraf discusses poverty and depression on BBC World News
New report by WHO predicts that the economic cost of depression and anxiety could cost the global economy $925Bn each year. Professor Nava Ashraf discusses the link between poverty and depression and the broader impact depression and anxiety might be having on labour productivity, particularly in developing countries.
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Project
Pilot study on productivity in the civil service: Understanding the impact of compensation as a driver of worker performance
While the effect of performance related incentives on productivity has been widely addressed in the literature (e.g. Bandiera, Barankay, and Rasul (2005), (2007), (2009); Ashraf, Bandiera, and Jack (2014); Hearer (2004); Duflo, Hanna, and Ryan, (2012); Lazear (2000); Fryer (2011); Muralidharan and Sundararaman (2011)), the impact of an exogenous increase in wages in the...
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Project
Decentralisation of Government in Zambia: Baseline survey and a global comparative analysis of strategies and barriers to implementation
A decentralised public service is widely perceived to more effectively respond to local community needs. As in other post-colonial states, there has been a push toward decentralisation in Zambia since independence; implementation, however, has lagged due largely to uncertainty on optimal rollout strategies given capacity limitations at the local level. With the change in...
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Publication - Project Memo
Recruiting and motivating health workers in Zambia (Project Memo)
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Publication - Project Memo
Scoping study on Urbanisation in Zambia (Project Memo)
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Project
Water connections in urban Zambia: Measuring the private and social benefits of water
The rapid growth of cities on the African continent brings tremendous economic potential, facilitating the spread of innovation, industry and education. However, this promise is blighted by significant negative externalities associated with big city density, including congestion and contagious disease. There is a view among urban economists that one of the most...
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Project
Scoping study on Urbanisation in Zambia
Urbanisation in Zambia has the potential to help the country to grow from poverty into prosperity Researchers met with about 50 different stakeholders to understand the country’s urbanisation challenges With the support of the Zambian government, two urbanisation projects were commissioned from this visit Developing countries are rapidly urbanising...
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Multimedia Item - Video
Growth Week 2014: Framework Session - Cities
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Multimedia Item - Video
Video: Health workers in Zambia - Co-producing knowledge
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Project
Negotiating a better future: The impact of teaching negotiation skills on girls’ health and educational outcomes
Randomised controlled trial in Zambia providing girls with negotiation and communications skills The girls reported less hunger and more control over their future life Pilot scaled up in late 2014 This is a scale-up project of this pilot project. This project is the pilot phase of a study exploring if, and how, a behavioral intervention with...
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Project
Recruiting and motivating health workers in Zambia
Incentives in the selection of public service delivery workers are essential to improving their motivation. Researchers used field experiments with community health assistants in Zambia to evaluate different recruitment strategies. Compared to social incentives, career incentives attract more productive applicants. The findings from this project...