Paavo Monkkonen

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Paavo Monkkonen is Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. Paavo researches and writes on the ways policies and markets shape urbanization and social segregation in cities around the world. His scholarship ranges from studies of large-scale national housing finance programs to analysis of local land use regulations and property rights institutions. Past and ongoing comparative research on socioeconomic segregation and land markets spans several countries including Argentina, Brazil, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, and the United States. Paavo continues to work as a consultant on national housing and urban policy in Mexico, where he has various long-term research projects.

At UCLA Luskin, Paavo teaches courses on housing markets and policy, applied microeconomics, research methods, and global urban segregation. He recently launched the Latin American Cities Initiative, Ciudades, an effort to develop and deepen knowledge networks among students, educators, and professionals in the arena of urban planning and policy in South, Central, and North America. One of the initiative’s core components is an international planning studio in Latin America (studio reports available here).

Professor Monkkonen’s research has been published in outlets such as the Journal of the American Planning Association, the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, the Journal of Urban Economics, Regional Science and Urban Economics, Urban Studies, World Development, and the Journal of Peasant Studies. He has received research funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Urban Land Institute, the Regional Studies Association, and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. His current projects include an analysis of the implementation of an Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing law in California, a comparison of how higher levels of government shape planning processes in California and Mexico, and comparative research on urban spatial structure.

Paavo completed a Master of Public Policy at the School of Public Affairs at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a PhD in City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley. He was previously Assistant Professor of Urban Planning at the University of Hong Kong from 2009 to 2012, and visiting scholar at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico in 2015.

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SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Does Discretion Delay Development? Manville, Michael, Paavo Monkkonen, Shane Phillips, and Nolan Gray. 2022. The Impact of Approval Pathways on Multifamily Housing’s Time to Permit. Journal of the American Planning Association, forthcoming.

Unwanted Housing: Localism and Politics of Housing Development. Manville, Michael, and Paavo Monkkonen. 2021. Journal of Planning Education and Research, forthcoming.

Opposition to Development or Opposition to Developers? Experimental Evidence on Attitudes towards New Housing. Monkkonen, Paavo, and Michael Manville. 2019. Journal of Urban Affairs, 41(8): 1123-1141.

Empty Houses across North America: Housing Finance and Mexico’s Vacancy Crisis. Monkkonen, Paavo. 2019. Urban Studies, 57(10): 2080-2097.

Where are property rights worth more? Assessing variation in the value of deeds across cities in Mexico Monkkonen, Paavo. 2016. World Development, 88, 67-78.

Do Strict Land Use Regulations make Metropolitan Areas more Segregated by Income? Michael Lens and Paavo Monkkonen. 2016. Journal of the American Planning Association, 82(1): 6-21.

Land Use Regulations and the Value of Land and Housing: An Intra-Metropolitan Analysis Kok, Nils, Paavo Monkkonen and John M. Quigley. 2014. Journal of Urban Economics, 81(3): 136–148.

Innovative Measurement of Spatial Segregation: Comparative Evidence from Hong Kong and San Francisco. Monkkonen, Paavo and Xiaohu Zhang. 2014. Regional Science and Urban Economics, 47(3): 99-11.

Land Use Regulations, Compliance, and Land Markets in Argentina Monkkonen, Paavo and Lucas Roconi. 2013. Urban Studies, 50(10): 1951-1969.

Housing Finance Reform and Increasing Socioeconomic Segregation in Mexico Monkkonen, Paavo. 2012. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 36(4): 757-772.

Economic Restructuring, Urban Growth, and Short-term Trades: The Spatial Dynamics of the Hong Kong Housing Market, 1992-2008 Monkkonen, Paavo, Kelvin SK Wong, and Jaclene Begley. 2012. Regional Science and Urban Economics, 42(3): 396-406.

The Demand for Land Regularization: Theory and Evidence from Tijuana, Mexico Monkkonen, Paavo. 2012. Urban Studies, 49(2): 270-287.

The Housing Transition in Mexico: Expanding Access to Housing Finance Monkkonen, Paavo. 2011. Urban Affairs Review, 47(5): 672-695.

Natalie Bau

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Natalie Bau is an assistant professor of economics and public policy at UCLA. She is an economist studying topics in development and education economics and is particularly interested in the industrial organization of educational markets. She has studied private schooling and teacher compensation in Pakistan, the relationship between negotiation skills and girls’ educational outcomes in Zambia, and the interactions between educational investment and cultural traditions in Indonesia, Zambia, and Ghana.

Dr. Bau received her PhD in public policy from Harvard University, and is currently an affiliate of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and the Centre for Economic Policy and Research.  Prior to joining UCLA, she was an assistant professor of economics at the University of Toronto.

Personal Academic Website.

Manisha Shah

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Manisha Shah is the Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr., Endowed Chair in Social Justice and Professor of Public Policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and Founding Director of the Global Lab for Research in Action. Shah is also a Faculty Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Faculty Affiliate at UC Berkeley’s Center for Effective Global Action,  The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, and The Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development, and a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor. Shah is an economist who received her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley.

Shah is a development economist whose primary research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of applied microeconomics, health, and development. She has written several papers on the economics of sex markets in order to learn how more effective policies and programs can be deployed to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections. She also works in the area of child health and education. Shah has been the PI on various impact evaluations and randomized controlled trials and is currently leading projects in Tanzania, Indonesia, and India. She has also worked extensively in Ecuador and Mexico. Her research has been supported by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the World Bank, and the National Science Foundation among others. She is an editor at Journal of Health Economics and an Associate Editor at The Review of Economics and Statistics. Follow Shah on Twitter @Manisha_econ.

 

Published and Forthcoming Articles

Unintended Consequences of Lockdowns: COVID-19 and the Shadow Pandemic (with S. Ravindran),  Nature Human Behaviour. March 2023, 7(3). 
Media Coverage: The Wall Street Journal, World Bank Development Impact Blog, The Hindu, The Indian Express (Front Page), India Today, Quartz India, Livemint.

The Dirty Business of Eliminating Open Defecation: The Effect of Village Sanitation on Child Height from Field Experiments in Four Countries,” (with P. Gertler, M. Alzua, L. Cameron, S. Martinez, and S. Patil)  Journal of Development Economics. November 2022, 159.

Women’s Well-Being During a Pandemic and its Containment (with N. Bau, G. Khanna, C. Low, S. Sharmin, and A. Voena),  Journal of Development Economics. May 2022, 156.

Crimes against Morality: Unintended Consequences of Criminalizing Sex Work (with L. Cameron and J. Seager), Quarterly Journal of Economics.  February 2021, 136(1): 427–469.
Media Coverage: Probable Causation,  The Economist,  VoxDev
Policy Brief: Cato Brief

Aggregate Effects from Public Works: Evidence from India (with J. Cook), forthcoming The Review of Economics and Statistics.
Media Coverage: VoxDev

Workfare and Human Capital Investment: Evidence from India (with B. Steinberg),  Journal of Human Resources. Spring 2021, 56(2): 380–405.
Media Coverage: NBER Digest

The Right to Education Act: Trends in Enrollment, Test Scores, and School Quality (with B. Steinberg), AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, May 2019, vol. 109, pages 232-238. NBER Version of Paper with appendix here.
Media Coverage: : VoxEU, IdeasForIndia

Scaling Up Sanitation: Evidence from an RCT in Indonesia (with L. Cameron and S. Olivia),  Journal of Development Economics, May 2019, vol 138.
Media Coverage: : VoxDev

Decriminalizing Prostitution: Implications for Sexual Violence and Public Health (with S. Cunningham), The Review of Economic Studies, July 2018, 85(3):1683–1715.
Selected Media Coverage: Vox, Slate, Washington Post, WSJ, LA Weekly, UCLA, KCRW interview, WHYY show, Seriouspod Podcast

Drought of Opportunities: Contemporaneous and Long Term Impacts of Rainfall Shocks on Human Capital (with B. Steinberg),  Journal of Political Economy, April 2017, 125(2).
Media Coverage: Ideas for India

Risk-Taking Behavior in the Wake of Natural Disasters  (with L. Cameron), Journal of Human Resources, Spring 2015, 50(2): 484-515.
Media Coverage: The Huffington Post

Can Mistargeting Destroy Social Capital and Stimulate Crime? Evidence from a Cash Transfer Program in Indonesia (with L. Cameron), Economic Development and Cultural Change, January 2014, 62(2): 381-415.

Do Sex Workers Respond to Disease? Evidence from the Male Market for Sex,  American Economic Review Papers & Proceedings, 2013, 103(3): 445-50.

Intra-household Resource Allocation: Do Parents Reduce or Reinforce Child Cognitive Ability Gaps? (with P. Frijters, D. Johnston, and M. Shields), Demography, December 2013, 50:6.

Compensated for Life: Sex Work and Disease Risk (with R. Arunachalam),  Journal of Human Resources, Spring 2013, 48:345-369.

Face Value: Information and Signaling in an Illegal Market (with T. Logan), Southern Economic Journal. 2013. 79(3), 529-564.

Handedness, Health and Cognitive Development: Evidence from Children in the NLSY (with D. Johnston, M. Nicholls, and M. Shields), Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A (Statistics in Society), 2012. 

The Prostitute’s Allure: The Return to Beauty in Commercial Sex Work (with R. Arunachalam), B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, 2012.

Sex Work and Infection: What’s Law Enforcement Got to Do with it? (with P. Gertler), Journal of Law and Economics, November 2011, 54.
Media Coverage: The Economist

To Work or Not to Work? Child Development and Maternal Labor Supply (with P. Frijters, D. Johnston, and M. Shields), American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2009, 1(3): 97-110.

Nature’s Experiment? Handedness and Early Childhood Development  (with D. Johnston, M. Nicholls, and M. Shields), Demography, May 2009, 46(2): 281-302.

Prostitutes and Brides? (with R. Arunachalam),  American Economic Review Papers & Proceedings, May 2008, 98(2), 516-522.

Risky Business: The Market for Unprotected Commercial Sex (with P. Gertler and S. Bertozzi),  Journal of Political Economy, June 2005, 113(3), 518-550.
Media Coverage: NYTimes, Slate

Books and Handbook Chapters

Economics of Sex Work and Policy Considerations (with S. Cunningham). forthcoming in Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics

The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Prostitution. Scott Cunningham and Manisha Shah, editors. Oxford University Press, 2016.

Sex Work and Risky Sex in Developing Countries, In: Anthony J. Culyer (editor), Encyclopedia of Health Economics, Vol 3. San Diego: Elsevier; 2014. pp. 311-315.

Sex Work, with V. Rao, In The New Oxford Companion to Economics in India (Kaushik Basu and Annemie Maertens, editors), Delhi: Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2012.

Working Papers (Please email for most recent version)

“Sex, Power, and Adolescence: Intimate Partner Violence and Sexual Behaviors” (with J. Seager, J. Montalvao, and M. Goldstein), 2023.

“Improving Mental Health of Adolescent Girls in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Causal Evidence from Life Skills Programming,” (with S. Baird, J. Seager, B. Avuwadah, J. Hamory, S. Sabarwal, and A. Vyas)  r&r  Journal of Human Resources.

“Violent Discipline and Parental Behavior: Short- and Medium-term Effects of Virtual Parenting Support to Caregivers,” (with L Dinarte-Diaz, S. Ravindran, S Powers, and H Baker-Henningham) 2023.

“Reducing bias among health care providers: Experimental evidence from Tanzania, Burkina Faso, and Pakistan,” (with Z. Wagner, C. Moucheraud, A. Wollum, W. Friedman, and W. Dow),  2023.

“Intergenerational Impacts from the World’s Largest Early Childhood Program,” with S. Ravindran, 2022.

Financial Incentives and Other Nudges Do Not Increase COVID-19 Vaccinations among the Vaccine Hesitant (with T. Chang, M. Jacobson, R. Pramanik & S. Shah). 2021. NBER Working Paper 29403.
Media Coverage: WSJ, MarketPlace, KCRW, Bloomberg, SF Chronicle.

Human Capital Investment in the Presence of Child Labor (with N. Bau, M. Rotemberg, and B. Steinberg), 2020. NBER Working Paper 27241.

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Stephen Commins

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Stephen Commins works in areas of regional and international development, with an emphasis on service delivery and governance in fragile states. Commins was Director of the Development Institute at the UCLA African Studies Center in the 1980s, and then worked as Director of Policy and Planning at World Vision International in the 1990s.

Dr. Commins was Senior Human Development Specialist at the World Bank from 1999-2005. His work at the World Bank included “Managing Dimensions of Economic Crisis: Good Practices for Policies and Institutions,” the establishment of the Bank’s children and youth cluster, and a survey of service delivery programs implemented by civil society organizations. Commins was one of the co-authors of the World Bank’s World Development Report 2004, Making Services Work for Poor People.  Following the report’s publication in 2003, he managed several initiatives on service delivery in post-conflict countries and the relationships between political reform and improved services.

Over the last decade, he has continued to work on service delivery programs, including the major study, “Service Delivery in Fragile States: Good Practice for Donors,” for the Fragile States Group of the Development Assistance Committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 2006.  Some of his fragility and disaster work has included “testing the DFID state building” framework in Lao PDR and Cambodia, managing studies on disasters and safety nets for the World Bank in Bangladesh, a co-authored paper on participation, accountability and decentralization in Africa, and producing studies on health systems strengthening in fragile states for World Vision Canada and on sub-national fragility in India and Pakistan for the HLSP Institute.   He also led a team of policy researchers for the UK government, who produced a policy note and guidance resource for designing Multi-Donor Trust Funds or “Pooled Funds” in fragile states.

He worked for five years in support of a long-term study of livelihoods and post-conflict reconstruction in Pakistan, as part of a seven-country project with the Sustainable Development Policy Institute in Islamabad and the Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium at ODI in the UK..  For academic years 2013-15, he worked as the consultation and dissemination coordinator for the World Bank’s World Development Report 2015 (Behavior, Mind and Society). His other projects at that time included a four-country study with the Overseas Development Institute on community-driven development and livelihoods in four South Asian countries, support for World Development Report 2017 (Governance and the Law), and a project on designing long-term urban programs for urban areas affected by the Syrian refugee diaspora (Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey).

From 2016-19, his work has included designing two workshops, one on urban water and displaced populations and another on municipalities and livelihoods for city officials from Middle Eastern countries impacted by the Syrian diaspora. He was also on the writing team for World Development Report 2018 (Education: The Learning Crisis), including a background paper on Education in contexts of Fragility, Conflict and Violence, an assessment of education systems and needs in South Sudan, a study on providing digital skills for young women in low-income countries, and the second phase of the Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium.

His most recent work has included serving as the thematic co-lead on Safety and Security for the African Cities Research Consortium, co-authoring papers on the ‘graduation’ approach (Social Protection plus economic livelihoods) for BRAC, the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank, and co-authoring papers on including refugees in Social Protection systems.

At UCLA, Dr. Commins teaches courses in regional and international development. He is the associate director for Global Public Affairs at the Luskin School.

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FILE DOWNLOADS

Livelihoods, basic services and social protection in north-western Pakistan (1).pdf
livelihoods and basic services in NWP.pdf
ter Veen Commins World Vision HSS in FS 2011.pdf
Cities, Violence and Order: the Challenges and Complex Taxonomy of Security Provision in Cities of Tomorrow