Research

Publications:

Hans, I., Naso, P. (2025). When Boys Become Men: Economic Benefits of Male Adulthood in Female-Headed Households in Burundi, Review of Economics of the Household.

Naso, P. (2025). Religious Priming, Risk-Taking, and the Activation of Religiosity, Journal of Economics, Management and Religion. [Working Paper]

Naso, P. (2024). Delegation of Environmental Regulation and Perceived Corruption in South Africa, Resource and Energy Economics.

Naso, P., Haznedar, O., Lanz, B., Swanson, T. (2022). A Macroeconomic Approach to Global Land Use Policy, Resource and Energy Economics.

Naso, P., Lanz, B., Swanson, T. (2020). The Return of Malthus? Resource Constraint in an Era of Declining Population Growth, European Economic Review. [VoxColumn]

Naso, P., Bulte, E., Swanson, T. (2020). Legal Pluralism in post-conflict Sierra Leone, European Journal of Political Economy.

Naso, P., Yi, H., Swanson, T. (2020). The Impact of Environmental Regulation on Chinese Spatial Development, Economics of Transition and Institutional Change.

Working Papers:

Recalling the Past: Memory and Forecasting in Burundi

Many smallholder farmers in developing countries rely on memory to make investment decisions. With limited access to technology and finance, forecasting errors can reduce welfare—especially as climate variability intensifies. This paper combines a recall experiment, survey data, and secondary sources to study how farmers in Burundi recall and forecast rainfall, output, and crop prices. I find that recall accuracy is high and stable for the main crop price in each season but mixed for rainfall, with better performance in the longer rainy season. I also find evidence of memory interference: non-agricultural events during the recall period reduce accuracy. I then examine how recalled values shape forecasts and find signs of both recency bias and long-lasting effects. Finally, I assess forecast accuracy by comparing farmers’ predicted prices with realized prices. Forecast errors can be large, but perfect recall would generally improve them. A simple statistical model does not always outperform farmers, but when it does, the gains are substantial.

The Economic Consequences of Knowledge Hoarding, with Luisa Cefala, Frank Irakoze and Nick Swanson. [Development Impact Blog]

Social learning is an important source of knowledge diffusion in low-income countries. However, because developing country markets are often highly localized, individuals with social ties may compete more directly for the same economic rents, creating incentives for individuals to “hoard” their knowledge. This paper studies the impact of knowledge hoarding on the diffusion of profitable skills and technologies in rural Burundi, and measures its aggregate and distributional consequences for the village economy. In a field experiment covering 223 villages (labor markets), workers skilled in high-return agricultural technologies are encouraged to share their knowledge with unskilled individuals. We randomize at the local labor market level whether the unskilled worker is a competitor (i.e., someone from the same labor market) and whether the training is about a technology with rivalrous rents (row planting, which commands a wage premium in the labor market). We first establish that knowledge hoarding indeed reduces social learning. When incumbents are matched with an individual from the same labor market, knowledge transmission occurs only 3% of the time but reaches 43% if the unskilled worker is not a competitor. In contrast, transmission of technologies with nonrivalrous rents (e.g., composting) is high regardless of the unskilled worker’s identity. Next, we show that knowledge hoarding creates winners and losers: by hoarding knowledge, incumbents earn 6% more, and the skilled equilibrium wage is 3% higher. Instead, unskilled workers’ earnings and farm output are 7% and 20% lower, respectively. Altogether, knowledge hoarding reduces technology adoption by over 20%, suggesting substantial yield losses. Finally, our results suggest that fear of social sanction is a mechanism that sustains knowledge hoarding among the incumbents, highlighting how social ties can foster social learning but also inhibit it when knowledge diffusion threatens incumbents’ rents.

Labor Augmenting Technology and Firm Employment, with Michel Ndayikeza. PEDL

Closing the gap between rich and poor countries will require firms in developing countries to adopt modern technologies. An important question is how these technologies affect firm dynamics, particularly employment. We conduct a randomized controlled trial with 537 micro tailor shops in rural Burundi. Our intervention is a labor-augmenting technology: we convert manual sewing machines into automatic machines. We measure firm outcomes three and six months after the intervention. Full-time employment increases at both horizons, while part-time employment and monthly wages rise after three months. Investment and number of machines also increase in the short run. Tailor shops shift from products that benefit less from the automatic machines to those that benefit more. We find no effects on revenue or non-wage costs. Standard firms expand employment more than cooperatives or independent tailors sharing costs. Our results demonstrate that labor-augmenting mechanization can raise employment in low-income settings.

Under-Training by Employers in Spot Labor Markets: Evidence from Burundi, with Luisa Cefala, Michel Ndayikeza and Nick Swanson. [Development Impact Blog] [VoxDevColumn]

Workers in LMICs obtain limited human capital through on-the-job experience, but the reasons for this are unclear. We test whether one friction contributes to low worker productivity: firms’ unwillingness to train because they do not appropriate the returns from training. We study casual labor markets in Burundi, where employers can train workers in a newly introduced agricultural practice in the region, row planting—a technique that substantially raises yields. In a first field experiment, in some randomly selected local labor markets (villages), we induce one-third of employers to train workers in row planting, which leads to a 20 p.p. increase in the share of skilled workers in the village. Training generates meaningful economic returns: Employers in treated villages increase their adoption of row planting by 10 p.p. (20%), which raises farm profitability by 9%. However, employers fail to appropriate most of this surplus: Two-thirds of it is captured by non-training employers because many of the trained workers work for other people after the training. In a second experiment, we randomize employers into a condition that increases the likelihood that the worker will return to work for the employer in the future. Employers receiving this guarantee are 50 p.p. likelier to train the worker. This suggests that the wedge between the private and social returns from investments meaningfully reduces worker productivity.

Deterring Environmental Corruption: Experimental Evidence from Burundi, with Jean Budurha and Diomede Manirakiza.

One obstacle to reducing environmental degradation in developing countries is environmental corruption—the abuse of public power for private gain that harms the environment. This paper studies how a government with limited resources can deter such corruption. We run a lab-in-the-field experiment in Burundi, where forest users and local authorities play a game reflecting real-world interactions. Lowering permit costs and raising official salaries reduce corruption, but more monitoring and higher fines can backfire. A reduced version of the experiment with farmers, representing the general population, shows that policy effects may depend on contextual knowledge. We also show that risk preferences interact with policy tools, producing heterogeneous effects across risk groups. Improvements in traits like honesty, environmental awareness, and governance beliefs appear to have limited impact on environmental corruption.

Land Use in the Long-Run: What is the Future of Global Biodiversity?, with Tim Swanson.

Church Services and Religious Change in Burundi, with Jean Budurha.

Forest Plantations in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with Adolphe Mukenge and Diomede Manirakiza.

Using Information to Improve Global Cooperation: A Climate Change Experiment, with Tania Theoduloz, Nicholas Tyack, Dambala Gelo, Mare Sarr and Tim Swanson.

Heterogeneous Impacts of School Fee Elimination in Tanzania: Gender and Colonial Infrastructure, with Roxana Manea.

Promoting Grain Storage in Burundi

Work in Progress:

Religion and the Conservation of Forests, with Jean Budurha and Franck Irakoze.

Saving Genetic Information, with Rob Hart and Bjorn Lindahl.

Organized Crime, Corruption and Politicians in Mexico, with Claudia Pfeifer Cruz.

Spillover Impact of a Market Access Program in Kenya, with Mare Sarr and Edouard Mensah.

Shocks and Religiosity in Burundi, with Franck Irakoze.