NOVAFRICA PhD Candidates: Mattia Fracchia

This month we had the pleasure of getting to know Mattia Fracchia, who is completing his PhD at Nova SBE and is currently on the job market. Before joining Nova SBE, he studied at Bocconi University, INSPER, and Barcelona School of Economics. Motivated by the curiosity about the underlying factors that influence economic development, he became a part of the NOVAFRICA Knowledge Center in 2016, working in Guinea Bissau and Mozambique. He has designed and conducted a variety of studies in these countries on topics including health and agriculture. Notably, his Job Market paper (JMP) “Does Performance Evidence Motivate? A Field Experiment in Guinea-Bissau’s Health Sector,” earned the distinguished Weiss Family Paper award at NEUDC 2023 at Harvard Kennedy School.

“My motivation to actively engage in society began in high school and led me to pursue a degree in Economics and Social Sciences, driven by the ambition to improve my understanding of the fundamental forces that shape human interactions and society. Looking back, I can discern that many of my subsequent career choices were influenced by this enduring motivation, alongside the aspiration to become a responsible and contributing member of society. After completing my Bachelor’s, I interned in India at Balajee Sewa Sansthan, Uttarakhand, and the Institute for Indian Mother and Child, West Bengal. During that year, I also had the privilege of volunteering in a rural primary school in the South of Nepal. My curiosity about the factors influencing economic development eventually trickled into my research interests in development economics. Since I joined NOVAFRICA, I’ve had the privilege of shaping a line of research that has enabled me to address research questions that I deeply care about.
My journey with NOVAFRICA began with a field project in Mozambique, my first experience working in Sub-Saharan Africa.
In Guinea-Bissau, I was entrusted with increased responsibilities from the outset, allowing me to collaborate with a multitude of national and international stakeholders, including policymakers, funding agencies, and NGOs. I actively contributed to the recruitment and nurturing of a diverse team of young women and men to work on NOVAFRICA’s research projects in the country. This team laid the foundation for the creation of the NOVAFRICA Guinea-Bissau country office. I am proud to witness this group becoming a solid team of motivated economists, data analysts, project managers, field coordinators, and enumerators, which is thriving today.”

Does Performance Evidence Motivate? A Field Experiment in Guinea-Bissau’s Health Sector (JMP)
Organizations in both the public and private sectors often adopt a mission, which may focus on social impact or environmental sustainability. This mission serves the purpose of motivating employees, attracting talented individuals, and retaining skilled personnel. However, as organizations increasingly embrace the idea of claiming an ambitious mission, there is a risk of it becoming mere rhetoric without substantive evidence to support it.
For this paper, Mattia investigates how workers respond to evidence of their organization’s mission performance. Through a randomized control trial in Guinea-Bissau with the Ministry of Public Health’s Community Health Workers (CHWs) program, he designs and implements workshops in rural areas building on the program’s in-service training and randomly assigns CHWs to attend either a Treatment or a Control workshop at the health area level.
Treatment workshops focus on communicating the organization’s mission performance, blending anecdotal and rigorous evidence. The rigorous evidence conveys the official program evaluation’s main findings, focusing on three target health indicators: under-5 mortality rate, the share of women completing the four recommended antenatal checks, and the share of women giving birth attended by skilled health personnel. It then conveys the evaluators’ assessment of the program’s performance. Importantly, all CHWs receive the same evidence. The findings from the study revealed that program recipients assigned to workers in the treatment group report receiving 39 percent more service time six months post-intervention.

In conclusion, this paper by Mattia presents groundbreaking experimental evidence, demonstrating how organizations can harness existing evidence to motivate workers without altering incentives. This approach offers potentially cost-effective means to enhance performance, providing valuable insights into effective strategies for organizational motivation.

Publications
Motivating Volunteer Health Workers in an African Capital City, with Teresa Molina-Millán and Pedro C Vicente
This paper, in collaboration with the Ministry of Public Health of Guinea-Bissau and VIDA NGO, explores the role of CHWs in Guinea-Bissau’s capital, testing the impact of non-financial incentives on health indicators. Two randomized interventions are analyzed: an honorific award to boost social status and a video treatment to enhance perceived task significance. Results reveal that the social status intervention, unlike the task significance one, leads to notable improvements in household health.

Let’s Call! Using the Phone to Increase Vaccine Acceptance, with Alex Armand and Pedro C Vicente
This study in partnership with the Ministry of Economy of Mozambique and the International Growth Centre, tests three phone-based interventions to boost vaccine acceptance in Mozambique. These interventions include a positive endorsement, activation of social memory highlighting past vaccination successes, and a structured interaction fostering a critical perspective on misleading information. The results indicate that combining these elements enhances vaccine acceptance and trust in institutions.

Current work in progress
Evaluating an Interactive Market Information System for Cashew Producers in Guinea-Bissau, with Brais Álvarez-Pereira, Aliu Bá, Nério Cá, Aida Embaló, Matilde Grácio, Jayrson Marinho, Adewusi Mendonça, Giulio Schinaia, Dayvikson Tavares
Accessing timely and accurate information is crucial for rural agricultural producers. Information provision interventions may improve welfare but exacerbate existing differences if better-equipped agents capture the most benefits. This study, in collaboration with the Ministry of Economy and Finance of Guinea-Bissau and the Partnership for Economic Policy (PEP) , investigates the relevance of human interaction in a market advice system for rural agricultural producers. Focal points appointed by the village receive live market data and personalized advice via a dedicated helpline from well-trained analysts. The goal is to evaluate how information conveyed through focal points compares to that coming from the automated market advice system.
As part of the funding by PEP, the project team is also working to establish an Impact Evaluation Center within the government that will serve as a driver creating of evidence-based policymaking. This approach emphasizes the importance of collecting data and testing processes rigorously before investing extensively.

Malaria prevention in rural communities, with Brais Álvarez-Pereira, Teresa Molina-Millán, and Pedro C Vicente
Traditional medicine is often the preferred healthcare option for a large share of rural populations, due to inadequate access to formal health services and cultural reasons. This study, in collaboration with the Ministry of Public Health of Guinea-Bissau and the United Nations Development Programme, tests the impact of introducing a formal collaboration between progressive traditional healers and the formal health system in Guinea-Bissau. Emphasizing malaria prevention and treatment, the study aims at shedding light on potential ways to enhance healthcare provision in rural villages. In this sense, a clear goal is to learn how traditional healers can complement the intervention of Community Health Workers.

Goals for the Future
Regarding his future, Mattia intends to continue working on advancing ongoing projects and focusing on the publication of his job market paper. His research agenda includes different key areas:
“Firstly, I will continue investigating innovative and cost-effective approaches to leverage evidence to enhance public service delivery and foster economic development. Notably, I am developing follow-up projects to my job market paper, examining the framing and dissemination of organizational performance evidence in complex organizations. Secondly, I will keep working on public and community health, building upon my experiences in both Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique. Thirdly, I intend to keep investigating value chains within Low and Middle-Income countries. I am particularly intrigued by the strategies local producers employ to navigate the opportunities and challenges presented by the entry into global value chains. Lastly, I am actively exploring a novel field experiment in Guinea-Bissau to assess the impact of redistributive pressure, specifically the social tax, on entrepreneurs’ investment choices and ability to repay loans.”
The main objective of Mattia’s research agenda is to provide policy makers with effective and scalable tools that foster economic development.

Advice for younger students
To conclude, we asked Mattia if he had some advice for students that want to pursue a career in research. In his opinion:
“Students at NOVAFRICA come from different backgrounds and educational paths. They may have distinct prior perceptions about what represents economic development, which are the relevant questions to study and what could be an ethical approach in studying it. NOVAFRICA in this sense offers a unique learning environment. Students moved by the same passion can learn from each other’s experiences and visions; professors affiliated with the center are keen on mentoring and uplifting motivated students; field internship positions to collaborate with research projects open frequently; and international conferences bring world-class researchers, pratictionnaires, and policymakers to Nova SBE and NOVAFRICA. I would recommend students to make the most of all these opportunities to achieve a more informed idea of how they see themselves working in development economics in the future.”

Bibiography:
Álvarez-Pereira, Brais, et al. “Evaluating an Interactive Market Information System for Cashew Producers in Guinea-Bissau.” Data collection ongoing.
Álvarez-Pereira, Brais, et al. “Malaria prevention in rural communities.” Data collection ongoing.
Armand, Alex, Mattia Fracchia, and Pedro C Vicente. “Let’s call! Using the phone to increase vaccine acceptance.” Health Economics, 2023.
Fracchia, Mattia. “Does Performance Evidence Motivate? A Field Experiment in Guinea-Bissau’s Health Sector.” Mimeo, 2023.
Fracchia, Mattia, Teresa Molina-Millán, and Pedro C. Vicente. “Motivating volunteer health workers in an African capital city.” Journal of Development Economics, vol. 163, 2023, p. 103096. Fracchia, Mattia. “Accessed on 23rd of November 2023.” https://mattiafracchia.com/.

Written by Tracy Nalumansi, MSc. In Economics at Nova SBE and NOVAFRICA and Sofia Antunes, BSc. In Economicsat Nova SBE and NOVAFRICA