Research

Job Market Paper

How Digital Technology Diffusion Reshapes Markets. Solo-authored JMP. 

• Winner AOM STR Division Best Paper Award (2026)

• Nominated for the AOM Carolyn B. Dexter Award by the STR division (2026)

Working Papers

Updated: Reallocation under Rationing: Evidence from Electricity Outages in South Africa. (2026) (With FC Eaglin, Z Kuloszewski, and J Wong). Submitted.

Summary: Rationing policies are often designed with equity considerations in mind, yet whether equalizing exposure delivers equal economic impacts remains underexplored. We study electricity outages in South Africa, where rationing equalizes exposure across locations. Combining high frequency outage data with geocoded transactions from over 11,000 firms from 2021 to 2023, we show that equal exposure does not imply equal impact. Average sales remain unchanged, but outages induce reallocation: below-median firms lose roughly 11 percent of average revenue, while above-median firms gain 10 percent. We provide novel evidence that consumer substitution drives these effects and that advance notice amplifies disparities.

New paper: Team Composition and Firm Performance: Experimental Evidence from Tech-Enabled Entrepreneurs in Rwanda. (2026) (With FC Eaglin, M Barron, and M Visser). Submitted.

Summary: How does team gender composition affect small technology-enabled firms in the Global South? We randomize 270 village-level solar enterprises in rural Rwanda to all-male, all-female, or mixed-gender four-person teams. Over 18 months, mixed-gender teams underperform all-male teams by 40% and all-female teams underperform by 24%. Minute-level GSM timestamps show mixed teams generate fewer recharges during evening peak-demand hours; all-female teams exhibit no peak-hour coordination deficit. Despite lower revenues, children in all-female teams' households study 74 additional minutes weekly. Heterogeneity's performance cost hinges on coordinating around asymmetric constraints—especially in small firms in the Global South.

Publications, R&Rs, under review

Revenue-Based Financing. (2025) (With D Russel, C Shi). Reject and Resubmit, Resubmitted, Review of Financial Studies.

Summary: This study examines how FinTech platforms impact entrepreneurship in emerging markets using transaction-level data from South Africa. We identify three effects of revenue-based financing: revenue hiding, adverse selection, and underlying positive impacts on firm performance. Our findings show that platforms' integrated technology ecosystem (payment processing, inventory management, lending) creates unique enforcement mechanisms—tying loan repayment to continued service use mitigates monitoring frictions that plague traditional lenders. This demonstrates how technology platforms enhance entrepreneurial performance and financial inclusion despite information asymmetries in developing economies.

• • Media: J-PAL; British International Investment (BII) and PEDL.

The Uneven Impact of Generative AI on Entrepreneurial Performance. (2024) (With N Otis, S Delecourt, D Holtz, R Koning). Minor Revision, Management Science.

Summary: This study investigates how generative AI affects entrepreneurial performance through a field experiment with Kenyan entrepreneurs, randomizing access to a GPT-4-powered business assistant via WhatsApp. Our findings reveal divergent outcomes: high-performing entrepreneurs experienced significant revenue gains while low performers saw declines, substantially widening the performance gap. Critically, this divergence stems not from differences in AI advice quality, but from entrepreneurs' varying capabilities in selecting and implementing AI recommendations—demonstrating that generative AI can amplify existing capability differences rather than democratizing strategic expertise in emerging markets.

• • Winner, Wharton People Analytics White Paper Competition (2024)

  • Winner AOM STR Division Best Paper Award in Industry, Competition, and Strategic Entrepreneurship (2024)

  • Second Place, SMS Annual Conference Best Paper Prize Competition (2024)

  • Nominated for the AOM Carolyn B. Dexter Award by the STR division (2024)

  • Media: The Economist; NPR Planet Money; VoxDev; Harvard Business School; Digital Data Design (D^3) Institute at Harvard; MIT Sloan MR; UC Berkeley Haas

Design of Off-Grid Lighting Business Models to Serve the Poor: Field Experiments and Structural Analysis (2024). (With BS Uppari, S Netessine, I Popescu). Management Science. Vol. 70, No. 5. Published Version. SSRN Working Paper.

Summary: This study examines how rechargeable solar lamp technology businesses can optimize their strategies to serve low-income populations without electricity access. Through large-scale field experiments in Rwanda and structural modeling, we identify critical barriers—inconvenience and liquidity constraints—that limit technology adoption and entrepreneurship in emerging markets. Results demonstrate that addressing these constraints through operational strategies (establishing more recharge centers, home collection services, and flexible payment options) generates significantly higher consumer access and revenue impact than traditional price-reduction strategies.

• Winner MSOM Society Award for Responsible Research (2024)

• Winner INFORMS Technology, Innovation Management, and Entrepreneurship (TIMES) Best Working Paper Award (2022)

• Winner INFORMS Public Sector Operations Research (PSOR) Best Paper Award

• Finalist MSOM Service Management SIG Best Paper Award Competition (2024)

• Finalist POMS Applied Research Challenge Award

• Finalist INFORMS Decision Analysis Practice Award

• Media: Amazon Science; ORMS Today; INSEAD Knowledge; Wharton Mack Institute.

Competition and Gender in the Lab vs Field: Experiments from off-grid Renewable Energy Entrepreneurs in Rural Rwanda (2021). Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics. Volume 91, April 2021. (With R Klege, M Visser, M Barron). 

Practitioner Publications

How AI Helps the Best and Hurts the Rest. (2026). MIT Sloan Management Review. With N Otis, S Delecourt, D Holtz, R Koning.

A Smarter Way to Design Business Strategies to Serve the Poor. (2023). INSEAD Knowledge. With BS Uppari, S Netessine, I Popescu. 

Providing off-grid light to poor communities. (2022). ORMS Today. With BS Uppari, S Netessine, I Popescu. 

Entrepreneurs Bringing Light To Rural Rwanda. (2022). Wharton Mack Institute for Innovation Management. With BS Uppari, S Netessine, I Popescu. 

Gender and Entrepreneurship in the Renewable Energy Sector of Rwanda. (2020). Institute of Development Studies Bulletin. Vol. 51 No.1. With M Barron, M Visser, R Klege, A Elam, A Shankar.