Professor Emla Fitzsimons

We examine the channels through which a randomized early childhood intervention in Colombia led to significant gains in cognitive and socio-emotional skills among a sample of disavantaged children aged 12 to 24 months at baseline.

We have established a new partnership between academics, local government and early years practitioners to develop, implement and evaluate a home-visiting programme for parents with very young children in England. In this feasibility study, we research local priorities and existing services to evaluate the need for a new early childhood intervention in England.

We examine the channels through which a randomized early childhood intervention in Colombia led to signicant gains in cognitive and socio-emotional skills among a sample of disadvantaged children aged 12 to 24 months at baseline.

This paper studies the relationship between group size and informal risk sharing. It shows that under limited commitment with coalitional deviations, this relationship is theoretically ambiguous.

This paper uses data from a cluster randomised trial of a participatory learning and action cycle (PLA) through women’s groups, to assess the role of extended family networks as a determinant of gains in health knowledge and health practice.

Poor early childhood development (ECD) in low- and middle-income countries is a major concern. There are calls to universalise access to ECD interventions through integrating them into existing government services but little evidence on the medium- or long-term effects of such scalable models.

We examine the channels through which a randomized early childhood intervention in Colombia led to signicant gains in cognitive and socio-emotional skills among a sample of disadvantaged children aged 12 to 24 months at baseline. We estimate the determinants of material and time investments in these children and evaluate the im- pact of the treatment on such investments. We then estimate the production functions for cognitive and socio-emotional skills. The eects of the program can be explained by increases in parental investments, which have strong eects on outcomes and are complementary to both maternal skills and child's baseline skills.

Journal article looking at the relationship between mother's mental health and childhood behaviour using the Millennium Cohort Study

Why is multiple micronutrient powder ineffective at reducing anaemia among 12–24 month olds in Colombia? Evidence from a randomised controlled trial

Community-based interventions, particularly group-based ones, are considered to be a cost-effective way of delivering interventions in low-income settings. However, design features of these programs could also influence dimensions of household and community behaviour beyond those targeted by the intervention. This paper studies spillover effects of a participatory community health intervention in rural Malawi, implemented through a cluster randomised control trial, on an outcome not directly targeted by the intervention: household consumption smoothing after crop losses.

We conducted a retrospective study of breast feeding in the years 2005 and 2010, comparing breast feeding incidence rates by day of week of birth.

This paper studies the effects of a randomized intervention in rural Malawi that provided mothers of young infants with information on child nutrition. The intervention improved child nutrition, household food consumption and consequently health. We find evidence that labor supply also increased.

The objective of this paper is to understand and test empirically the relationship between group size and informal risk sharing. Models of informal risk sharing with limited commitment and grim-trigger punishments upon deviation imply that larger groups provide better informal insurance.

The authors examine the channels through which a randomized early childhood intervention in Colombia led to significant gains in cognitive and socio-emotional skills among a sample of disadvantaged children.

The authors present evidence from a randomised field experiment in rural Mongolia to assess the poverty impacts of a joint-liability microcredit program targeted at women.

Understanding how higher education (HE) finance policy can affect HE decisions is important for understanding how governments can promote human capital accumulation.

The objective of this paper is to assess the effectiveness of an integrated early child development intervention, combining stimulation and micronutrient supplementation and delivered on a large scale in Colombia, for children’s development, growth, and hemoglobin levels.