Together with Josephine Baako-Amponsah & David Stadelmann

Sub-Saharan Africa is widely regarded as one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable regions, yet large-scale evidence linking temperature exposure to individual-level welfare remains fragmented. In this paper, we provide a unified assessment of temperature exposure across multiple time horizons by linking daily, monthly, yearly, and long-run average temperature data to 168,585 geo-referenced households in 28 African countries. Our results consistently reveal a statistically robust negative association between higher temperatures and individual living standards, whether arising from short-term weather shocks or long-run climatic conditions. Quantitatively, these effects are modest, particularly once individual characteristics and local geographic conditions are accounted for. Notably, we find no substantive differences between impacts of short-term temperature and long-run climatic effects, suggesting limited past adaptation to sustained heat exposure. The fact that temperature-related welfare losses are differentially stronger among rural and agriculturally engaged households further highlights the persistent vulnerability of climate-sensitive livelihoods. Crucially, however, local infrastructural endowments emerge as an important moderating factor, significantly weakening the association between temperature exposure and individual-level deprivation. This finding points to scope for adaptation through investments in basic infrastructure and service provision.

Together with David Stadelmann

We investigate georeferenced household-level data consisting of up to 128,609 individuals living in 11,261 localities across 17 coastal sub-Saharan African countries over 20 years. We analyze the relevance of coastal proximity, measured by the geographic distance to harbors, as a predictor of individual economic living standards. Our setting allows us to account for country-time fixed effects as well as individual-specific controls. Results reveal that individuals living further away from the coast are significantly poorer, measured along an array of welfare indicators. Our findings are robust to the inclusion of other geographic covariates of development such as climate (e.g., temperature, precipitation) or terrain conditions (e.g., ruggedness, land suitability). We also explore mechanisms through which coastal proximity may matter for individual welfare and decompose the estimated effect of coastal proximity via formal mediation analysis. Our results highlight the role of human capital, urbanization, and infrastructural endowments in explaining within-country differences in individual economic welfare.

Together with Josephine Baako-Amponsah & David Stadelmann

Whether terrorism strengthens or undermines citizens’ trust in political institutions remains strongly contested. In this article, we argue that whether individuals ``rally'' behind or ``blame'' political leadership depends distinctly on their spatial proximity to the attack. To test this geographic moderation mechanism, we analyze 53,326 geo-referenced Afrobarometer interviews across 17 African countries that were quasi-randomly interrupted by terrorist attacks between 2002 and 2020. We find that terrorism increases institutional trust among individuals living near an attack, but the effect declines steeply with distance and becomes statistically indistinguishable from zero beyond about 62 miles (100 km). Concerning the mechanisms behind this spatial contingency, we find evidence consistent with psychological threat-regulation processes: proximate respondents report stronger anxiety, observe heightened security measures in their locality, and judge government performance more favorably than those farther away. Taken together, the results help reconcile conflicting findings on ``rally'' versus ``blame'' effects. The broad, socially diverse, and terror-affected African context provides a powerful testbed for understanding how terrorism shapes institutional trust.

Together with Annica Wattler & David Stadelmann

Over the past decade, a substantial body of research has emerged leveraging large‑scale educational policy reforms in Africa, so‑called Free Primary Education (FPE) policies, to estimate the causal effects of education on women's sexual and reproductive health (SRH). Yet, the resulting evidence is characterised by modest effect sizes and substantial cross-contextual variation, to the extent that zero mean impacts cannot be ruled out. A key contributor to this inconsistency is the literature's disproportionate focus on a small set of repeatedly studied countries, alongside pronounced divergence in empirical implementation across studies. To establish a benchmark for the region, this paper provides a systematic, harmonised, continent-wide evaluation of FPE policies and women's SRH. Moving beyond the prevailing country‑case paradigm, we pool all available Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data from FPE‑implementing countries and apply a unified, data‑driven regression discontinuity framework with best-practice bias‑correction and honest inference. Our findings challenge the assumption of a uniform causal return to schooling for SRH. While FPE policies increase educational attainment and literacy in some countries, these effects are neither universal nor robust. More importantly, we find no consistent evidence that FPE-induced schooling improves women's SRH outcomes on average. Any observed improvements are confined to specific contexts, particularly in settings with very low baseline education and high fertility, and are sensitive to specification. Taken together, these results suggest that removing financial barriers to primary education alone is insufficient to generate broad-based improvements in women's schooling and reproductive health.

I investigate the impact of the East African Community (EAC) on household welfare using three distinct sets of longitudinal, geo-referenced household-level surveys from the three founding members Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. I thereby treat the re-establishment of the EAC in 2001 – and the expansion to a customs union and common market in 2005 and 2010, respectively – as a regional policy intervention having differential effects on individual households governed by their geo-spatial location within the countries, a prediction I derive formally from a canonical New Economic Geography (NEG) model, i.e. from a quantitative spatial equilibrium with heterogenous intra-national space. To test this hypothesis, I employ a difference-in-differences specification with treatment intensity given by households’ road distance to internal EAC border crossings, effectively comparing outcomes between ‘interior’ and ‘border’ households (first difference) before and after the intervention (second difference). Results reveal that households located closer to the internal EAC border did not experience positive welfare effects following the re-establishment. Rather, the results hint at the concentration of economic activity, as measured by increased consumption as well as extensive and intensive labor market opportunities in agglomerations. 

Together with Raymond B. Frempong  & David Stadelmann

In this paper, we investigate how ethnic identity shapes individual attitudes towards integration and immigration (ATII) in Sub-Saharan Africa. Drawing on survey data from 42,640 respondents across 32 countries, we find that individuals who identify more strongly with their ethnic group – as opposed to their national identity – are significantly less likely to exhibit positive attitudes. We also explore the critical influence of ethnic legacies and find that separatism, experiences of past discrimination, and loss of political autonomy further intensify ethnically motivated opposition to integration. Finally, our analysis highlights the importance of regional context; in areas with higher immigrant shares and greater ethno-linguistic diversity, the negative relationship is even more pronounced.