Progressive taxation is central to high-income countries' tax systems, but developing countries typically rely on less progressive instruments. We study the introduction of progressive property taxation in a large Congolese city through a citywide field experiment conducted in partnership with the provincial government. Neighborhoods were randomly assigned to a progressive or proportional schedule. The progressive schedule increased revenue by 56% relative to the proportional one. Gains occurred throughout the property value distribution: at the top, higher statutory rates mechanically raised revenue despite modest compliance losses; at the bottom, lower rates induced compliance gains large enough to offset lower liabilities. Cross-randomized information treatments show that taxpayers responded primarily to their own rates, not to others' rates or to the perceived fairness of the overall schedule. Effective tax rates — taxes paid as a share of property value — declined with property value and were most regressive under the progressive schedule. However, after a progressive schedule was scaled up citywide in subsequent years, targeted enforcement among high-value properties reversed this pattern, aligning statutory and effective rates. Together, the results suggest that progressive property taxation can raise fiscal capacity in low-income settings and, when paired with targeted enforcement, further shift the tax burden onto wealthier property owners.

This project studies whether digital payment technologies can raise tax compliance and cost-effectiveness in a low-capacity, low-trust tax authority. In a randomized field experiment conducted with the provincial tax authority of Kasaï Central across roughly 60,000 properties, we cross-randomize a mobile money payment option with in-person collection visits, an installment plan, and personalized deterrence messaging. This design allows us to assess whether digital payment infrastructure can substitute for costly in-person tax collection, or whether the two are complements, and to identify the most cost-effective combination of interventions in a setting where compliance has historically depended on face-to-face solicitation.

We study how formalizing verbal land rental agreements affects contractual clarity and agricultural investment, using a randomized experiment with 514 matched landlord-tenant pairs in Uganda. Formalization reduced contractual discrepancies by 30–50 percentage points and induced a shift toward longer-maturity crops. Effects are concentrated among tenants with worse baseline mental health, consistent with a present-bias channel, and structural mediation analysis attributes 60–70% of the investment effect to the contractual clarity channel.

We examine how wildlife-based tourism affects local conflict dynamics across Sub-Saharan Africa. Combining species range data, citizen-science records of visitor activity, and georeferenced conflict events at a fine spatial resolution, we build a panel measure of nature-based tourism exposure and relate it to the incidence and intensity of violence. The project speaks to the broader literature on natural resources, environmental shocks, and armed conflict.