Carolina Kansikas
Research interests: development, environmental, political economy
Working papers
Structuring cash transfers: cash flow preferences, seasonality, and financial decisions in rural Kenya (with Anandi Mani and Paul Niehaus)
Working paper
- We examine the preferences of low-income households in Kenya over the structure of unconditional cash transfers. Most preferred lumpy transfers, and some preferred deferred receipt—in contrast to the typical structures of safety-net programs, but consistent with evidence on the financial challenges of poverty. Turning to consequences, receiving transfers later in the year raised income 1.5 years later—but willingness to defer receipt was sensitive to small changes in cash flow around the time of decision-making. Taken together, these results illustrate how adapting cash transfer design to the decision-making environment of those in poverty could improve financial choices and outcomes.
Gender equality through turnover: Quasi-experimental evidence from term limit reforms in Italy (with Manuel Bagues)
- We study whether term limits can accelerate women's access to top political positions by analyzing two reforms in Italian local elections that extended mayoral term limits from two to three five-year terms. The first reform affected municipalities with fewer than 3,000 inhabitants in 2014, and the second those below 5,000 in 2022 -- a period marked by rapid growth in women's political participation. Using a difference-in-discontinuities design, we find that longer term limits restrict opportunities for early-career politicians, with substantial effects for female representation: the share of female mayors would be 8 percentage points higher without the term limit extensions. The impact is larger in municipalities with more women in lower political positions and where gender quotas for council members are present, suggesting that entry-level quotas can be more effective when paired with policies promoting turnover in top positions.
Work in progress
Roots of renewal? Evidence from carbon capture in the Northern Kenya Rangelands
Group-level frictions in climate change adaptation
Missing secondary markets and technology adoption (with H. Alperen Tosun) - Principal investigator, STEG PhD Grant n.2635
Teaching
Teaching - fall 2024
- EC910 Quantitative methods: Econometrics B
- EC203 Applied econometrics
Teaching - spring 2025
- EC310 Topics in development economics
- EC902 Quantitative methods: Econometrics A
Office hours
- By appointment (via e-mail)
Contact me: name.surname@warwick.ac.uk