Anushka Chawla*, Naël Shehadeh**

Internal seminars
phd seminar

Anushka Chawla*, Naël Shehadeh**

AMSE
The role of family members and social norms in the demand for maternal health services: Evidence from a field experiment in India*
Climate risks, fossil fuel prices and bank lending: Evidence from Colombia**
Joint with
Pooja Suri*
Camilo Bohorquez-Penuela, Joëlle Noailly**
Venue

IBD Amphi

Îlot Bernard du Bois - Amphithéâtre

AMU - AMSE
5-9 boulevard Maurice Bourdet
13001 Marseille

Date(s)
Tuesday, February 7 2023| 11:00am to 12:30pm
Contact(s)

Camille Hainnaux: camille.hainnaux[at]univ-amu.fr
Daniela Horta Saenz: daniela.horta-saenz[at]univ-amu.fr
Jade Ponsard: jade.ponsard[at]univ-amu.fr
Nathan Vieira: nathan.vieira[at]univ-amu.fr

Abstract

*In traditional societies like those of rural India, women continue to have limited agency over their health and decision-making, which makes information targeting difficult. In order to understand the importance of targeting crucial health information to different household members and to explore how social norms can affect simple health-seeking behaviors of young married women in rural India., we conduct a randomized controlled trial in 254 villages in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. To elicit the mother-in-law's central role in decision making for the pregnant women, we consider two treatments randomized at the individual level: 1) where the maternal health information is given to only the pregnant woman, and 2) where the information is given to both the pregnant woman and the mother-in-law. At the village level, we then experimentally vary whether this information is provided individually at the household or whether it is provided in groups. We find that our intervention improves knowledge as well as increases the number of antenatal care visits in the treatment groups versus the control group. We also find that training women in a group leads to a higher number of visits than training women individually at home. Further, while there is no significant difference in health seeking behavior based on the recipient of the information in the individual setting, also training the mother-in-law in a group setting leads to more antenatal visits. Our preliminary results show that women who received our health intervention are less likely to report post-delivery complications following similar patterns as the impact on the number of antenatal visits. The study thus provides a first causal evidence that there is indeed a positive relationship between preventative health measures and postpartum health of both the mother and the baby.

**Do banks price in environmental risks ? Using loan-level data from the credit registry of the Central Bank of Colombia matched with firm’s characteristics, we examine how the sudden drop in the valuation of fossil-fuel assets implied by the (exogenous) collapse of world oil prices in the second quarter of 2014 affected banks’ lending terms to the Colombian fossil fuel industry. In this work in progress, we differentiate firms in the fossil fuel industry from other firms and tentatively find that the collapse of oil prices led to a disproportionate increase in the probability of default of firms in the fossil fuel industry, particularly exposed to the shock.