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Katrina Kosec
Ph.D., Stanford University
Stanford University
Graduate School of Business
Ph.D. Office
518 Memorial Way
Stanford, CA 94305
202-421-3393
kosec_katrina@gsb.stanford.edu
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Research Papers
"The Child Health Implications of Privatizing the Urban Water Supply in Africa"
Can private sector participation (PSP) in the urban piped water sector improve child health? Allowing the private sector to provide basic infrastructure such as piped water is politically controversial, with some arguing that the private sector is more efficient and will improve access and quality, and others arguing that access and quality will suffer. This paper uses child-level data from 39 African countries during 1986-2010 to shed light on this question. A fixed effects analysis suggests that the introduction of PSP decreases diarrhea among urban-dwelling under-five children by 2.2 - 2.6 percentage points, or 14 - 16% of its mean incidence. An instrumental variables analysis that exploits variation over time in the share of the world water market controlled by former colonizing countries suggests that the effects are twice as large. The difference between the OLS and the IV results can be explained by the fact that PSP is more likely when the water sector is distressed and causing health problems. PSP in water also leads to higher rates of reliance on piped water as the primary water source, which is a likely channel explaining child health improvements. Importantly, PSP appears to benefit the health of children from the poorest households the most. A placebo analysis reveals that PSP in water does not have a significant effect on respiratory illness (as evidenced by coughing), suggesting that health improvements are driven by changes in the water sector rather than by a correlation of PSP with other health investments.
"Relying on the Private Sector: The Political Economy of Public Investments in the Poor"
What drives governments with similar revenues to provide very different amounts of goods for which there are private sector substitutes? Key examples are education and health care. Using credibly exogenous shocks to Brazilian municipalities' revenue during 1995-2008 generated by non-linearities in federal laws regarding intergovernmental transfers, I show two things. First, municipalities with higher median income or more inequality are less likely to allocate a revenue shock to education or to expand public school enrollment. Second, they are more likely to invest in public infrastructure, like parks and roads. I present suggestive evidence on the relative importance of two possible explanations, hypothesized in two separate literatures. In rich and unequal municipalities, fewer people support public spending on goods like education that have private substitutes (the collective choice channel, up to 70% of the effect), and those supporting it have less influence over policymakers (the political power channel, at least 30%).
Publications
"Has Private Participation in Water and Sewerage Improved Coverage? Empirical Evidence from Latin America," Journal of International Development, Vol. 21, No. 3, 2009 (with George R.G. Clarke and Scott Wallsten).
"Public or Private Drinking Water? The Effects of Ownership and Benchmark Competition on U.S. Water System Regulatory Compliance and Household Water Expenditures," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Vol. 26, No. 1, 2008 (with Scott Wallsten).
"Early Child Education: Making Programs Work for Brazil’s Most Important Generation," World Bank Study, 2011 (with David K. Evans)
"What Affects the Quality of Economic Analysis for Life-Saving Investments," Risk Analysis, Vol. 26, No. 3, 2007 (with Robert W. Hahn, Peter J. Neumann, and Scott Wallsten).
"The Iraq War: The Economic Costs," The Milken Institute Review, Vol. 8, No. 3, 2006 (with Scott Wallsten).
"The Ones Who Preserve Our Identities: Women, Children, and Plan Colombia," Cultural Survival Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 4, 2003.
Research Papers in Progress
"Federal Competition and Economic Growth" (with John Hatfield, revise and resubmit, Journal of Public Economics)
"The Effect of Internet Access on Labor Supply Decisions" (with Sara Champion and Chris Stanton)
"Are Community-Run Conditional Cash Transfers Effective in Countries without a Strong Central Government Administration?" (with David K. Evans)
"An Empirical Analysis of Hierarchical Accountability in Government" (with John Hatfield, Razvan Vlaicu, and Alex Whalley)
"Political Incentives and Investment in Local Environmental Quality" (with John Hatfield)
"Caste Differences in Income and Wealth in India" (with Seema Jayachandran)
"Why Privatize? The Political Economy of Utility Privatization"
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