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Working Paper
Nonlinear Pricing in Village Economies
This paper examines the price of basic staples in rural Mexico. We document that nonlinear pricing in the form of quantity discounts is common, that quantity discounts are sizable for typical staples, and that the well-known conditional cash transfer program Progresa has significantly increased quantity discounts, although the program, as documented in previous studies, has not affected on average unit prices. To account for these patterns, we propose a model of price discrimination that nests those of Maskin and Riley (1984) and Jullien (2000), in which consumers differ in their tastes and, ...
Working Paper
Does Unconditional Cash during Pregnancy Affect Infant Health?
This paper examines how cash transfers that are not conditional on employment affect infant health. Leveraging variation in the amount of pandemic-era stimulus and child tax credit payments that families received based on household composition, I find that an additional $100 in transfers reduces the prevalence of low birthweight by 2-3 percent. Effects are larger for payments received later in pregnancy, but are of a similar magnitude across the population. These additional resources increased prenatal care and improved maternal health in ways that are consistent with families both increasing ...