Publications


"Easy Doesn't Do it: Imprinting, Early Strategy Selection, and Small Firm Performance." Mar 2025. Forthcoming at Strategic Management Journal.

I investigate the impact of early strategy selection on firm performance in the minibus taxi industry in South Africa. I find that firms that experience lower than anticipated fuel prices in the first three months of operation drive less and work fewer days. These patterns persist long after the founding months and lead to worse firm performance. My findings suggest that early imprinting influences strategy selection and firm performance amongst small firms in emerging markets. 



"The Need for Speed: The Impact of Capital Constraints on Strategic Misconduct." November 2024. Forthcoming at Management Science.

I examine the impact of capital constraints on strategic misconduct and firm performance in minibus taxi industry in South Africa. I find that lower capital constraints lead to less strategic misconduct and increased firm performance. My findings suggest that these measures might be important for understanding how firms respond to capital constraints and their impact on public welfare.



“Corporate Engagement in the Political Process and Democratic Ideals” Political Economy and Justice ed. Danielle Allen, Yochai Benkler, and Rebecca Henderson. University of Chicago Press. 2022.

Reviewing literature on corporate governance and deliberative democracy, this paper argues that existing theories for corporate engagement in public processes insufficiently account for corporate capture and offers potential remedies.

Working papers


"Working it out: Randomized Restructuring and Entrepreneurial Effort in a Collateralized Debt Market" (with Apoorv Gupta, Filippo Mezzanotti, and Jonathan Zinman). July 2025

We examine how liquidity constraints and moral hazard shape borrower responses to modifications, and their implications for contracting, using an RCT on vehicle-collateralized debt, unusually rich administrative data on entrepreneurial effort, and an enriched workhorse model. We find debt reduction does not improve repayment performance or effort for liquidity constrained borrowers, payment reduction generate improvements for borrowers with sufficient equity in their vehicle, and payment reduction induces payment increases before effort increases.

"Market Segmentation in Informal Public Transportation: Evidence from Johannesburg's Minibus Taxi Networks" (with Oluchi Mbonu). October 2024. 

We study the market for public transportation in Johannesburg, South Africa, where private associations of minibus owners segment the city into distinct territories. We study the frictions that associations face on these "between-territory" routes. Using GPS traces for over 40 million minibus trips and 9 million commuter trips, we show that the supply elasticity is close to 1 on routes contained within an association’s territory but is significantly lower on between-territory routes (0.4) significantly increasing wait times for passengers. We also show that associations prioritize between-territory routes, indicating that they are more profitable. 


"Loan Maturity and Borrower Effort: Evidence from Small Businesses in Financial Distress" (with Apoorv Gupta). May 2024. 

We analyze the effects of a debt restructuring program that relaxed liquidity constraints for financially distressed small firms in South Africa's minibus taxi industry. We find that one year later firm owners have higher repayments, increase asset utilization, and have improved overall financial health. Our findings present payment reduction as a potential low cost tool that benefits both borrowers and creditors, at least in the short run. 


"Who Wins When the Power Goes Out: Digital Technology, Exogenous Shocks, and Firm Performance" (with Rowan Clarke, Zachary Kuloszewski, and Jun Wong). Manuscript in Progress.

We leverage a proprietary dataset from a digital payment platform in South Africa to examine the impact of power outages on digital sales. Using a spatial two way fixed effect model, we find that high performing firms increase sales while lower performing decrease sales in response to an additional outage. Mechanism tests suggest these results are driven by differential firm resources and consumer substitution. 


"Growth of SMEs in Emerging Markets" (with Stefan Dimitriadis). Manuscript in Progress.   

We investigate the conventional wisdom that SMEs in emerging markets tend not to growth. Using the World Bank Enterprise Surve (WBES), we find that African firms grow faster than European firms in the short run (3-5 year horizon) yet grow much slower over the lifetime of the firm. This short term growth, while on average higher, exhibits more significant dispersion and volatility. Drawing on insights from the minibus taxi industry to microfound our results, we suggest that volatile economic environments and unexpected shocks undermine long term SME growth.