Monica Lambon-Quayefio is an Associate Professor at the University of Ghana and has spent the past year on sabbatical visiting the Development Research Group at the World Bank. Her research covers a wide range of topics including gender and labor markets, social protection, education and digital innovation in Ghana.
1. We usually like to start by asking the interviewee to tell us a bit about how they decided to become a development economist, and what drew them to the area of work that they focus most on. Can you tell us a bit about your pathway to becoming a development economist?
My first job as a new graduate came at a huge career interest opportunity cost for me. Being the eldest child of migrant parents from rural northern Ghana, and the first in my family to graduate from university, supporting my parents in taking care of my siblings was non-negotiable.
So even though I had an interest in pursuing graduate studies in Economics, I had to seriously consider a career option that would allow me to honour my family’s expectations. Therefore, despite my undergraduate professors nudging me towards a career in academia, I opted for a path in the commercial banking sector in Ghana after my one-year mandatory national service. This, however, did not last very long. After a year of being in my role as a loan processing officer at an international commercial bank, I changed course. Although my position was well-paid, I felt unchallenged in that role, and I disliked the lack of flexibility. Also, the path towards career progression was not obvious to me at the time. After saving enough to ensure my family would be cared for, I reconsidered the initial option my professors had suggested. I proceeded to get myself GRE prep materials to prepare for graduate school in the US. I then resigned from my role at the bank when I secured admission and funding for a PhD in Economics at Clark University in Worcester, USA.
Prior to graduate school, I enjoyed macroeconomics, and I was confident this was going to be my focus in the pursuit of an advanced degree. However, this changed quickly. I gravitated towards environmental and natural resource economics and development economics because of the familiarity and relatability to my community context. Most of the issues about poverty and inequality were social issues I could connect with, because these were rife in the context I grew up in. I was particularly drawn to issues relating to women’s decision-making power because growing up, I had witnessed first-hand how little decision-making power girls and women had and how that significantly affected their life trajectories. I realized that whoever wielded decision-making power on who in the family got an education, and to what level; whoever decided who worked formally or informally; whoever had the final say on when a young girl got married and to whom, had critical welfare implications.
I began to wonder and ask questions about what the economic outcomes would be if girls and women were given decision-making power. I was intrigued by how economic tools were deployed to explore the consequences of social issues on economic outcomes. I ended up writing on the relationship between women’s economic empowerment and child health outcomes as one of my PhD chapters. After graduation, it became natural to explore more development-related topics. The starting point was probing and critiquing topics based on my own experiences.
My exposure to impact evaluations and randomized trials provided robust tools to answer these questions and to generate evidence to guide the design and implementation of programs to deal with issues relating to poverty and inequality of all kinds in developing contexts.
2. One of your recent lines of research has been on gender gaps in business networks. In your AEA P&P piece you document that female entrepreneurs have smaller networks than male entrepreneurs, and that this difference in networks is associated with the gender gap in profits. You then have a field experiment that formed women into virtual networks on WhatsApp, and find that this was successful in getting women to make changes in their business, adopt new business practices, and improve profitability. This was a study that really surprised me, since my experience has been that online-only interventions often struggle to keep participants engaged, and that after an initial bit of interest, interactions often peter out. What is your sense of how and why you were able to get entrepreneurs to really engage with one another?
Before the intervention, the female entrepreneurs in the study had not met each other. We acknowledged the potential difficulty this may present for initiating and maintaining interactions. To overcome this initial difficulty, we assigned a female enumerator to each WhatsApp group to facilitate an introductory group phone call and to inform them about the one-on-one ‘virtual coffee chats’ with other group members. We believe this was helpful in ‘breaking the ice’.
Additionally, after this group call, the enumerator sent periodic standardized reminders, nudging members to place weekly calls to their assigned group members. This helped to maintain engagement. These one-on-one ‘virtual coffee chats’, particularly fostered participation and encouraged more candid exchanges. In our qualitative study, a female entrepreneur shared her experience of how she video-called her assigned partner to learn how to incorporate an ingredient in her juice recipe to target health-conscious customers.
The platform also served as a form of group accountability. When someone encountered challenges reaching their assigned partner for their weekly calls, they would post this on the platform. The unresponsive partner would usually respond, follow through, or propose a more suitable time for the call to take place. This allowed paired entrepreneurs to quickly re-engage anytime a challenge arose with scheduled calls, making it more difficult for unrealised interactions to fade silently.
Based on our analyses of the text messages we retrieved when the enumerators were present on the platform, we found that the entrepreneurs also used the platform as a coordinating tool. The WhatsApp platform was used to reschedule and confirm calls and other activities. We believe a combination of these helped sustain interest and engagement among the entrepreneurs.
3. In addition to gaps in business networks, there is often discussion about how women, and academics located in developing countries, may have less access to academic networks. You have been quite successful in building collaborations and networks as a professor in Ghana. What has worked for you, and what advice do you have to others trying to build such networks?
Upon our return to join faculty at the University of Ghana, Nkechi Owoo - a friend, colleague, and also a graduate from Clark University, and I quickly realised that there were very limited opportunities to take up post-doc opportunities. Additionally, formal, structured mentoring opportunities were limited. This meant we had to figure out strategic means to navigate our paths as young academics. It became clear to us that to be internationally competitive and relevant, we needed to be even more deliberate about building our profiles, skills, and networks, given the academic context we found ourselves.
We decided to implement a number of strategies and stayed consistent with their implementation. I recognised networking as part of being an academic, and I actively searched opportunities to enhance this. With my growing interest in impact evaluations, I understood that I had to build my technical competence to become intellectually valuable. With this in mind, I actively searched for fellowships that provided such technical support and mentorship.
I was fortunate to get into fellowships like Additional Insights (NYU), the Transfer Project (UNICEF and UNC), STARS (Cornell), CEGA(UC Berkeley) and CSAE (Oxford University) which all provided opportunities to build my competencies and broaden my professional networks. With this, opportunities for co-authorship emerged. Through these opportunities, I built genuine connections and friendships with young academics doing interesting research including Justice Tei Mensah, Amber Peterman, Morgan Hardy, Gisella Kagy and Christian Meyer to name a few.
Within my university, I became more proactive. I approached more senior academics who were engaged in similar research and expressed my interest to learn and gain more experience with RCTs. Robert Osei was pivotal in this regard - this was how I met Chris Udry and Dean Karlan and got involved in my first ever RCT project on digital credit for farmers, and through the compounding nature of networking, I got introduced to young scholars like Ashley Wong and Francesca Truffa, the NBER and BREAD networks, and other scholars implementing interesting policy-relevant research from the IGC country office in Ghana like Henry Telli and James Dzansi.
Aside from fellowships, I have been intentional during conferences. I always attended as many relevant conferences as I could, and more importantly, I tried to be an active conference participant. I identified people doing similar research to meet and request feedback on an idea or work. These discussions were always fruitful. I have also expanded my network by not shying away from responsibilities such as chairing sessions, acting as discussant, peer-reviewing, serving on committees, mentoring etc. I find that engaging in such activities facilitates repeated contact, visibility, and trust, which are all important elements for building future collaborations.
I have also leveraged on more structured African-focused research platforms like the African Social Research Initiative (ASRI) at the University of Michigan, Africa Economic Research Consortium (AERC), Africa Centre of Excellence in Inequality Research (ACEIR) and Network of Impact Evaluation Researchers in Africa (NIERA), which have offered co-authorship opportunities and opportunities to interact with other scholars on the continent. In all these strategies, what I find to be my truth is that having access to an initial network creates opportunities to tap into the networks of your initial network, which creates a multiplier effect.
The African academic context differs from what prevails in the USA, Europe and other countries. Most young faculty members have to contend with heavy teaching loads at the expense of research efforts. Recognizing these sharp differences, I have always been happy to share my experiences with other young African Economists, especially female economists, given the obvious additional constraints female economists face. My number one advice for those who desire to be internationally competitive is the need to have a mindset change about continuous learning and networking. It is important to continuously acquire relevant skills and confidently signal these technical capabilities. Networking is an integral element, and young African researchers have to be more deliberate about this. Given that very few African economists make it to the top conferences in economics, my advice is to treat every opportunity to participate at such conferences as golden. Show up prepared and deliver your best consistently. Be ready to actively engage. This enhances visibility and profile. In the collaborative enterprise, I emphasize the importance of knowing how to complement the skills of your co-authors. Admittedly, knowing this may not be obvious at the beginning, but try to figure this out quickly. This enables you to be a valuable co-author. And once you do, try to be a consistently reliable co-author. This is key for future collaborations. By no means is this set of actions intended to be interpreted as causal. However, I believe various combinations of these key elements go a long way to make a productive and relevant collaborator to one’s networks.
4. What has been your approach to teaching Development Economics in Ghana?
Beyond lectures focusing on the microeconomic foundations of development, I was convinced that practical measurement and data underpinnings were equally critical. My initial teaching plan was to engage my students in a series of hands-on replication activities. I believed from this approach, students appreciate the complete cycle in the research process. More importantly, my aim was to get students to critique existing measures of concepts and consider alternatives based on their contextual knowledge and understanding of development topics. However, it very quickly became apparent this approach was going to be difficult to implement - students’ baseline skills in using statistical tools were limited. Without addressing this skills gap, the replication approach would not yield the intended impact. I had to revise my approach and treat this skills gap as part of the course. I leveraged my existing professional networks for support. In a discussion about this challenge with Chris Woodruff at Oxford University, he connected me to his former student who was in Ghana supporting the Ghana Statistical Service. She agreed to assist and generously dedicated significant time to this cause.
She ran weekly structured sessions in Stata and R with my students. With this foundation in place, I also sought to expand student’s exposure to modern evaluation tools. With support from my department chair, I introduced a short module on impact evaluations with a focus on RCTs for our PhD students. Claire Hofmeyr and her colleagues from the J-PAL Africa office, and Amber Peterman from UNC supported this effort by providing materials for my class. To reinforce learning and technical understanding about RCTs and other sector-specific development-related topics, I encouraged students to audit similar external courses, including the BREAD-IGC PhD course and the MITx MicroMasters Program.
To support doctoral students in establishing their professional networks and engage with the international research community, I encourage students to apply for fellowships and match-making opportunities such as the Fox Fellowship at Yale University, PEDL match-making at Oxford University, the Global Diversity Lab at MIT, and CEGA fellowship at UC Berkeley. I believe these opportunities connect early-career researchers with mentors and potential collaborators. In parallel, whenever possible, I work directly with students on my projects to help anchor their learning in real practice. For students drawn to gender-related topics, I encourage their participation in structured reading groups such as the EfD gender and environmental reading group to build a scholarly community and to ensure sustained engagement with the broad gender literature.
Overall, I believe these approaches and strategies have helped my students to an extent in acquiring modern technical skills and enhancing their capabilities while building confidence as young scholars on the continent.
5. You have been studying the paradox that exists in many labor markets where we observe high levels of unemployment co-existing with SMEs reported struggle to meet their hiring needs. Specifically, you have studies on online job platforms, one of which was a partnership with a government-lead platform in Ghana. Can you tell is a bit about your experiences with embedding your research into an existing government program versus doing research outside government structures?
The evaluation came about because the research team approached the YEA for a collaboration after they announced plans to operationalise the job portal. We worked together to design the experiment with two arms and a pure control. Vacancies in Treatment 1 posted only basic information; Treatment 2 provided detailed vacancy descriptions. Vacancies in the control group were not uploaded to the portal. Embedding this research within YEA’s platform had obvious benefits. Government’s ownership and partnership meant they cared about the research results. This provided a direct pathway to implementing research findings. Replicating this in-built pathway is difficult and limited when research is conducted outside government structures. We worked closely with YEA officers who were involved in the day-to-day running of the job portal, and it was refreshing to see such high levels of engagement. Our partnership was productive: they agreed to tweak elements of the program they considered ‘low hanging fruits’ and feasible within their mandate, and permissible by their existing logistical constraints.
However, the partnership revealed practical limits to flexibility. First, our initial plan was to randomise postings after a full list of job vacancies was obtained, but our YEA partners required vacancies to be posted soon after they are announced. Consequently, the research team adapted randomisation on a rolling basis. Second, we expected treatment 2 postings to include salary information, but institutional concerns about posting such information publicly ultimately led to a decision against it. Third, the portal focused on formal job postings and did not include vacancies from informal firms. Although the agency acknowledged this gap, expanding to include informal vacancies was not possible given prioritisation of formal jobs and an objective to minimise potentially risky job postings from the informal sector.
Even with a clearer pathway to research uptake, our experience showed that not all evidence can be implemented, even when government partners agree with research findings. For instance, our fieldwork found that the YEA portal excluded job seekers with limited access to smartphones and internet. Our recommendation was to consider a redesign to make the portal more inclusive. Adoption was not possible because there was limited flexibility to redesign the portal. This situation spawned new research ideas for the team. Although this was not part of the initial plan, the unmet need prompted the research team to explore this angle further. We designed and developed an inclusive job platform to study the effects on matching and labour outcomes.
Another advantage of embedding this research in government systems was the ability to leverage the partnership for wider policy engagement. The project opened doors to discussions with senior officials in related ministries. We presented the research findings to directors of research and policy at the Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations and were subsequently connected to the team developing Ghana’s Labour Market Information Management System (GLMIS). This created an opportunity to influence system design upstream, drawing on lessons from both the YEA evaluation and our work on inclusive platform models.
Overall, I would say embedded research offers a clearer pathway from evidence to policy uptake, and opportunities to explore new policy relevant research questions but flexibility may be constrained by mandates, risk management, and operational realities. These are important considerations and depending on the goal and scope of a particular project, one approach may be more appealing than the other.
6. Tell us a bit about what you’ve been working on while visiting the World Bank. What are you most excited about at the moment?
My time at the World Bank has been productive in the past year. I have been working on various exciting projects, but I will highlight these three. First is the project with Morgan Hardy, Gisella Kagy and Jiayue Zhang. In this project, we uncover firms’ choice of structure types, i.e., residential or non-residential, as an important dimension of firm development beyond informality. We conduct a novel inclusive enterprise sampling methodology in the town of Aburi, Ghana to combine household sampling with enterprise sampling. This allows us to construct a representative firm distribution across formality and structure types. We document two sets of key findings: 1)informal residential-based businesses contribute significantly to output and livelihoods and persist over time and 2) Firms’ structure choice appears to be gendered: male-owned informal residential businesses have higher productivity, while female owners have more care responsibilities. We are currently finalizing this paper and should make it available as a working paper soon. Our project has led to a new collaboration between the research team, together with the LSMS team at the World Bank and the Gates Foundation, to pilot similar inclusive firm sampling methodologies in other countries in SSA countries.
The second project is an ongoing study with Erik Andersen, Jason Kerwin and Simon Graffy in the central region of Ghana. We implement an RCT to study the effects of a smartphone-enhanced structured pedagogy program called Tools for Foundational Learning Improvement (TFLI) on first-grade students in low-fee private schools. In this program, teachers are trained on the ‘science of reading’, and equipped with high-quality, semi-scripted lesson plans linked with student workbooks to run daily literacy lessons and given coaching. The program incorporates a digital layer which facilitates assessment by teachers and coaches. After 9 months, of the intervention, we find that TFLI increases test scores by 0.5SDs, or more than two years’ worth of learning gains.
We are currently working on using Claude Code to run a structural model to forecast how the treatment effects will evolve in grade 2. The current version of the paper is here, and we plan to circulate a revised version of the paper very soon - keep an eye on the World Bank working paper series! Our goal is to test how effective our structural model is by comparing the forecasts to the actual results for grade two, which are coming in June.
I have also been involved in a UNFPA-UNICEF-commissioned mixed-methods multi-country evaluation on the promotion of the rights of adolescent girls to avert marriage and pregnancy in West Africa. In the Ghana component I lead, the intervention targets increasing adolescent agency, social capital and skills, and explores ways to change norms at the community level, particularly by engaging men and boys. The focus on social norms change has been missing from the rigorous impact evaluation literature - even though similar interventions targeting adolescent agency have been widely evaluated. In addition, the project built in measurement and methods contributions, where we implemented holistic measures of forced marriage and attitude/norms measures around child marriage, using household surveys. The baseline for this project has recently been completed, and the implementation of the intervention is underway.
What am I excited about at the moment –
The following have engaged my thoughts recently, and I am excited to explore these further. During my sabbatical, I have had time to think more and engage with people about the inclusive job matching platform that colleagues from IGC and I have been experimenting with. We have had interesting ideas and followed the literature closely. This has enabled us to run our first A/B pilot on the platform. Our preliminary findings suggest that the Text4Jobs platform increases access to more targeted vacancy information and interviews for jobseekers. Our goal is to generate more evidence about the effectiveness of this platform by running pilots before replicating this nationwide and potentially in other African countries. As a next step in this project, we are designing different light-touch interventions for testing on the enhanced version of the job platform.
Another research agenda I am excited to pursue is one that examines the returns to tertiary education in low-income settings. A generation of students is entering universities in unprecedented numbers across SSA, possibly due to past programs and policies that have led to increased enrollment in both primary and secondary levels. The landscape and narrative around tertiary education have slowly shifted from being one of elite option to include populations from less privileged backgrounds. Yet remarkably little is known about whether they persist, what derails them, what percentage graduates on time, or what a tertiary degree ultimately delivers, for whom and through which pathways. Across the region, these metrics are not systematically tracked, although this knowledge gap matters beyond the universities. Africa’s working-age population is projected to double in the next three decades, even as it shrinks in most other regions. This suggests global supply of educated professionals, and the future of economic development will depend heavily on whether African universities can retain and graduate students they admit. Yet, the empirical evidence on returns to higher education in the region is conflicting. Together with Bryce Steinberg, we aim to use administrative records from the University of Ghana, a longitudinal student cohort survey, and qualitative research to understand how financially constrained students navigate their education. We also plan to implement a labor market survey of alumni to identify the barriers to degree completion and measure the economic returns to finishing a university education in this context.
The last but not least is exploratory work with Xavier Giné on Ghana’s second-hand clothing industry. Ghana is the world’s largest net importer of second-hand clothing, and the sector supports thousands of livelihoods nationwide. Two linked challenges shape enterprise outcomes in this industry: bale quality uncertainty and waste. Uncertainty about quality imposes direct costs on traders along the value chain. Traders buy sealed bales without knowing their contents. Low quality bales can wipe out profit margins, increase income volatility, and tie up scarce working capital. These risks discourage reinvestment and enterprise growth. It also pushes traders to adopt suboptimal strategies such as buying smaller bales and limiting diversification. Despite the sector’s importance and these challenges traders face, systematic evidence is limited. We lack reliable data on bale composition, and the ‘uncertainty tax’ that traders face because of information asymmetries. Using bale audits along with quantitative and qualitative surveys, we aim to generate trader-level evidence on waste proportions, the cost of quality uncertainty and how these risks affect firm outcomes and enterprise growth.
Here are our previous Six Questions with interview series:
· Six questions with Chris Udry
· Six questions with Rohini Pande
· Six questions with Mark Rosenzweig
· Six questions with Martin Ravallion
· Six questions with Andrew Foster
· Six questions with Tavneet Suri
· Six questions with Morgan Hardy
· Six questions with Oriana Bandiera
· Six questions with Ted Miguel
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