Anant Nyshadham
Biographic Data
| ID | 962818 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Anant Nyshadham |
| GIVEN NAMES | Anant |
| FAMILY NAME | Nyshadham |
| SIGNATURE | NYSHADHAM A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Michigan |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9165-5528 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 71 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Sotto Voce
We conducted a randomised controlled trial in which we enabled workers to directly and anonymously communicate with human resources through mobile-phone-based technology. Treated workers were much more likely to know about the tool than controls, though usage was low: only 5% of treated workers reported ever using it. Despite this, turnover and absenteeism were 10% and 5% lower, respectively, for treated versus control workers. Together these fin…
No Line Left Behind
We leverage the high degree of worker mobility across production lines in a large Indian manufacturer to estimate the sorting of workers to managers, using data on daily worker productivity. We find negative assortative matching (NAM): better workers tend to be matched with worse managers. Estimates of the production technology, however, reveal that productivity would increase by up to 4% under positive sorting. Exploiting a survey of managers an…
Dust and Death
Using two decades of data from 12 low-income countries in West Africa, we show that dust carried by harmattan trade winds increases infant and child mortality. Health investments respond to dust exposure, consistent with compensating behaviours. Despite these efforts, surviving children still exhibit negative health impacts. Our data allow us to investigate differential impacts over time and across countries. We find declining impacts over time, …
Fetal Origins of Mental Health
Mental health disorders represent a substantial portion of the global disease burden, and the treatment gap is higher in developing countries. Accounting for location and year-of-birth fixed effects and using data on 19 African countries, we find temperature shocks in utero increase depressive symptoms in adulthood. Effects are present for several depressive symptoms and are greatest in younger cohorts
The health costs of dirty energy
Returns to On-the-Job Soft Skills Training
Formal Employment and Organised Crime
Safety net programs, common in settings with high informality like Latin America, often use a means test to establish eligibility. We ask: in settings in which organised crime provides lucrative opportunities in the informal market, will discouraging formal employment via benefits eligibility criteria increase criminal enterprise activity? We link administrative socioeconomic microdata with the universe of arrests in Medellín over a decade, and e…
Helping Children Catch Up
Children who face significant disadvantage early in life are often found to be worse off years or even decades later. Can conditional cash transfer programs mitigate the negative consequences and help these children catch up with their peers? We answer this question using data from rural Mexico, where rainfall shocks can have substantial effects on household income. We find that adverse rainfall in a child's year of birth decreases grade attainme…
Expectations, Wage Hikes and Worker Voice
Enabling worker voice could improve worker retention and effort by providing workers the chance to improve their situation or an outlet to express discontent. We provide a test of this hypothesis via a randomised controlled trial in Indian garment factories. Just after what proved to be a disappointing wage hike, workers were chosen at random to participate in an anonymous survey in which they were asked for feedback on job conditions, supervisor…
(Mis)information and anxiety
Management and Shocks to Worker Productivity
The assignment of workers to tasks is an important feature of the organization of production within firms. We study how task allocation across workers changes in response to productivity shocks. Pairing hourly productivity data from a ready-made garments firm with granular data on exposure to particulate matter pollution, we show that productivity suffers as a result of pollution shocks; this effect is heterogeneous across workers and tasks. Mana…
When It Rains It Pours
In 1924, the Morton Salt Company began nationwide distribution of iodine-fortified salt. Access to iodine, a key determinant of cognitive ability, rose sharply. We compare outcomes for cohorts exposed in utero with those of slightly older, unexposed cohorts, across states with high versus low baseline iodine deficiency. Income increased by 11%, labor force participation rose 0.68 percentage points, and full-time work went up 0.9 percentage points…
The Light and the Heat
We study the adoption of energy-efficient LED lighting in garment factories around Bangalore, India. Combining daily production line–level data with weather data, we estimate a negative, nonlinear productivity-temperature gradient. We find that LED lighting raises productivity on hot days. Using the firm's costs data, we estimate that the payback period for LED adoption is less than one-third the length after accounting for productivity co-benefi…
Resources, conflict, and economic development in Africa
Early Life Circumstance and Adult Mental Health
We show that psychological well-being in adulthood varies substantially with circumstance in early life. Combining a time series of real producer prices of cocoa with a nationally representative household survey in Ghana, we find that a one standard deviation rise in the cocoa price in early life decreases the likelihood of severe mental distress in adulthood by 3 percentage points (or half the mean prevalence) for cohorts born in cocoa-producing…
Health, Enterprise, and Labor Complementarity in the Household
Endowments at Birth and Parents’ Investments in Children
Do parents invest more in higher quality children, or do they compensate for lower quality by giving more to children with lower endowments? We answer this question in the context of a large-scale iodine supplementation programme in Tanzania. We find that children with higher programme exposure were more likely to receive necessary vaccines and were breastfed for longer. Siblings of treated children were also more likely to be immunised. Fertilit…
Early Life Circumstance and Adult Mental Health
We show that psychological well-being in adulthood varies substantially with circumstance in early life. Combining a time series of real producer prices of cocoa with a nationally representative household survey in Ghana, we find that a one standard deviation rise in the cocoa price in early life decreases the likelihood of severe mental distress in adulthood by 3 percentage points (or half the mean prevalence) for cohorts born in cocoa-producing…
Endowments at Birth and Parents’ Investments in Children
Do parents invest more in higher quality children, or do they compensate for lower quality by giving more to children with lower endowments? We answer this question in the context of a large-scale iodine supplementation programme in Tanzania. We find that children with higher programme exposure were more likely to receive necessary vaccines and were breastfed for longer. Siblings of treated children were also more likely to be immunised. Fertilit…
Returns to On-the-Job Soft Skills Training
Expectations, Wage Hikes and Worker Voice
Enabling worker voice could improve worker retention and effort by providing workers the chance to improve their situation or an outlet to express discontent. We provide a test of this hypothesis via a randomised controlled trial in Indian garment factories. Just after what proved to be a disappointing wage hike, workers were chosen at random to participate in an anonymous survey in which they were asked for feedback on job conditions, supervisor…
Resources, conflict, and economic development in Africa
Formal Employment and Organised Crime
Safety net programs, common in settings with high informality like Latin America, often use a means test to establish eligibility. We ask: in settings in which organised crime provides lucrative opportunities in the informal market, will discouraging formal employment via benefits eligibility criteria increase criminal enterprise activity? We link administrative socioeconomic microdata with the universe of arrests in Medellín over a decade, and e…
Health, Enterprise, and Labor Complementarity in the Household
Dust and Death
Using two decades of data from 12 low-income countries in West Africa, we show that dust carried by harmattan trade winds increases infant and child mortality. Health investments respond to dust exposure, consistent with compensating behaviours. Despite these efforts, surviving children still exhibit negative health impacts. Our data allow us to investigate differential impacts over time and across countries. We find declining impacts over time, …
Fetal Origins of Mental Health
Mental health disorders represent a substantial portion of the global disease burden, and the treatment gap is higher in developing countries. Accounting for location and year-of-birth fixed effects and using data on 19 African countries, we find temperature shocks in utero increase depressive symptoms in adulthood. Effects are present for several depressive symptoms and are greatest in younger cohorts
Helping Children Catch Up
Children who face significant disadvantage early in life are often found to be worse off years or even decades later. Can conditional cash transfer programs mitigate the negative consequences and help these children catch up with their peers? We answer this question using data from rural Mexico, where rainfall shocks can have substantial effects on household income. We find that adverse rainfall in a child's year of birth decreases grade attainme…
Endowments at Birth and Parents’ Investments in Children
Do parents invest more in higher quality children, or do they compensate for lower quality by giving more to children with lower endowments? We answer this question in the context of a large-scale iodine supplementation programme in Tanzania. We find that children with higher programme exposure were more likely to receive necessary vaccines and were breastfed for longer. Siblings of treated children were also more likely to be immunised. Fertilit…
Health, Enterprise, and Labor Complementarity in the Household
Early Life Circumstance and Adult Mental Health
We show that psychological well-being in adulthood varies substantially with circumstance in early life. Combining a time series of real producer prices of cocoa with a nationally representative household survey in Ghana, we find that a one standard deviation rise in the cocoa price in early life decreases the likelihood of severe mental distress in adulthood by 3 percentage points (or half the mean prevalence) for cohorts born in cocoa-producing…
When It Rains It Pours
In 1924, the Morton Salt Company began nationwide distribution of iodine-fortified salt. Access to iodine, a key determinant of cognitive ability, rose sharply. We compare outcomes for cohorts exposed in utero with those of slightly older, unexposed cohorts, across states with high versus low baseline iodine deficiency. Income increased by 11%, labor force participation rose 0.68 percentage points, and full-time work went up 0.9 percentage points…
The Light and the Heat
We study the adoption of energy-efficient LED lighting in garment factories around Bangalore, India. Combining daily production line–level data with weather data, we estimate a negative, nonlinear productivity-temperature gradient. We find that LED lighting raises productivity on hot days. Using the firm's costs data, we estimate that the payback period for LED adoption is less than one-third the length after accounting for productivity co-benefi…
Resources, conflict, and economic development in Africa
(Mis)information and anxiety
Management and Shocks to Worker Productivity
The assignment of workers to tasks is an important feature of the organization of production within firms. We study how task allocation across workers changes in response to productivity shocks. Pairing hourly productivity data from a ready-made garments firm with granular data on exposure to particulate matter pollution, we show that productivity suffers as a result of pollution shocks; this effect is heterogeneous across workers and tasks. Mana…
Expectations, Wage Hikes and Worker Voice
Enabling worker voice could improve worker retention and effort by providing workers the chance to improve their situation or an outlet to express discontent. We provide a test of this hypothesis via a randomised controlled trial in Indian garment factories. Just after what proved to be a disappointing wage hike, workers were chosen at random to participate in an anonymous survey in which they were asked for feedback on job conditions, supervisor…
The health costs of dirty energy
Returns to On-the-Job Soft Skills Training
Formal Employment and Organised Crime
Safety net programs, common in settings with high informality like Latin America, often use a means test to establish eligibility. We ask: in settings in which organised crime provides lucrative opportunities in the informal market, will discouraging formal employment via benefits eligibility criteria increase criminal enterprise activity? We link administrative socioeconomic microdata with the universe of arrests in Medellín over a decade, and e…
Helping Children Catch Up
Children who face significant disadvantage early in life are often found to be worse off years or even decades later. Can conditional cash transfer programs mitigate the negative consequences and help these children catch up with their peers? We answer this question using data from rural Mexico, where rainfall shocks can have substantial effects on household income. We find that adverse rainfall in a child's year of birth decreases grade attainme…
No Line Left Behind
We leverage the high degree of worker mobility across production lines in a large Indian manufacturer to estimate the sorting of workers to managers, using data on daily worker productivity. We find negative assortative matching (NAM): better workers tend to be matched with worse managers. Estimates of the production technology, however, reveal that productivity would increase by up to 4% under positive sorting. Exploiting a survey of managers an…
Dust and Death
Using two decades of data from 12 low-income countries in West Africa, we show that dust carried by harmattan trade winds increases infant and child mortality. Health investments respond to dust exposure, consistent with compensating behaviours. Despite these efforts, surviving children still exhibit negative health impacts. Our data allow us to investigate differential impacts over time and across countries. We find declining impacts over time, …
Fetal Origins of Mental Health
Mental health disorders represent a substantial portion of the global disease burden, and the treatment gap is higher in developing countries. Accounting for location and year-of-birth fixed effects and using data on 19 African countries, we find temperature shocks in utero increase depressive symptoms in adulthood. Effects are present for several depressive symptoms and are greatest in younger cohorts
Sotto Voce
We conducted a randomised controlled trial in which we enabled workers to directly and anonymously communicate with human resources through mobile-phone-based technology. Treated workers were much more likely to know about the tool than controls, though usage was low: only 5% of treated workers reported ever using it. Despite this, turnover and absenteeism were 10% and 5% lower, respectively, for treated versus control workers. Together these fin…
Economics (16 works) · Economic growth (8 works) · Medicine (6 works) · Psychology (6 works) · Business (5 works) · Demographic economics (5 works) · Political science (5 works) · Poverty, Education, and Child Welfare (5 works) · Agricultural risk and resilience (4 works) · Computer Science (4 works)