Lori Beaman

Assistant Professor of Economics
Faculty Fellow, Institute for Policy Research
Northwestern University
PhD, Economics, Yale University, 2007
l-beaman (at) northwestern (dot) edu
Curriculum Vitae
Additional biographical information

Economist Lori Beaman's research centers on two main themes. First, she examines how social networks affect economic decision making—particularly the dissemination of information—in the United States and developing countries. Second, Beaman studies the role of gender in policymaking.

Current Research

Social Networks and Refugees. Beaman uses both theoretical and empirical tools to examine the dynamic implications of social networks on labor market outcomes of refugees resettled in the United States. What matters, she finds, is not just the number of people in an individual’s social network, but also the extent of their experience in the U.S. labor market. This relationship is highly nonmonotonic. The results suggest that new arrivals benefit from knowing refugees who have been U.S. residents for two or more years; however, an influx of recent arrivals creates a negative effect in the network.

Female Leadership and Political Voice. In what has been called an "epic social experiment," India passed a constitutional amendment in 1993 mandating that one-third of rural village council presidencies in every electoral cycle be reserved for women. Villages are randomly selected in each electoral cycle. This project evaluates whether the exogenous placement of local female leaders in rural areas affects how key constituents, particularly women, voice their preferences in the political process by analyzing village-level transcripts of political meetings. Beaman is working with Raghab Chattopadhyay of IIM Calcutta, Esther Duflo of MIT, Rohini Pande of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and Petia Topalova of the IMF.

Irrigation and Agricultural Learning. Beaman and Andrew Dillon of the International Food Policy Research Institute are leading the evaluation of a large irrigation project in the West African nation of Mali, funded by the Millennium Challenge Corporation. The researchers are using a randomized trial and propensity score matching to estimate the program's impact on project beneficiaries. The study will also analyze how agricultural learning affects productivity and the importance of social networks to economic decision making.

Micro-Savings and Social Capital. Beaman is leading a study on the effectiveness of savings-led microfinance on households in Mali. Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the research team will use randomization to evaluate Oxfam America's financial project Saving for Change (SfC). The researchers, who include Dean Karlan and Bram Thusybaert of Yale University and Jonathan Morduch of New York University, will document the spread of SfC within villages, measure the program's effects on participants' livelihoods and health, and look at the cost-effectiveness of several SfC delivery methods. Additionally, the project will investigate how social network structure affects informal risk-sharing and the spread of the savings groups.

How Do Job Networks Work? Beaman and Jeremy Magruder of the University of California-Berkeley are investigating the role of social networks in India's labor market. The project is a laboratory experiment set in two low-income areas in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta). The researchers seek to show if and how social networks can exploit informational advantages about workers’ unobserved abilities in the labor market.

Selected Publications

Beaman, L., with R. Chattopadhyay, E. Duflo, R. Pande, and P. Topalova. 2009. Powerful Women: Does Exposure Reduce Bias? Forthcoming, Quarterly Journal of Economics.