Conflict, Cash Transfers and Household Well-being in Fragile and Conflict-Affected Communities”

The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) seeks to hire an impact evaluation consultant/collaborator for the project “Conflict, Cash Transfers and Household well-being Fragile and Conflict-Affected Communities”. This project aims to assess the impact of recent conflicts on households’ psychosocial well-being as well as the role of cash transfers on household wellbeing in a conflict-affected and fragile setting. We aim to address the following questions: (i) what are the impact of armed conflicts on psychosocial outcomes as well as trust in local governance? (ii) Can cash transfers improve the food security and nutritional outcomes of beneficiaries in conflict-affected settings? (ii) Can cash transfers improve subjective well-being, mental health, and stress in the face of armed conflicts? (iii) Do welfare impacts of cash transfers vary by how they are targeted? (iv) Are cash transfers more impactful for improving welfare outcomes in conflict affected communities? (v) What is the impact of community-based cash transfers on trust in local governance and social cohesion in the presence of conflicts? To address these questions, IFPRI researchers designed a cluster Randomized Control Trial (RCT) and randomly assigned communities into control group and community-based cash transfers involving different targeting approaches. IFPRI collected the endline data recently. The successful candidate will actively contribute to the analysis of these data and writing of research papers and reports based on these data. The expected total duration of the assigned workload will be 80 working days, to be conducted over a 6-month period March 1, 2024-August 31, 2024, subject to renewal.

Essential Duties:

– Conduct a literature review on the above themes and topics

– Data cleaning and analysis based on already collected data.

– Present preliminary results to IFPRI staff and others

– Analyze data using advanced analytical methods.

– Draft research papers

– Revise papers and sections of papers based on feedback from IFPRI staff

Required qualifications and experience:

– PhD degree or its equivalent in Economics, Agricultural Economics, Statistics or closely related fields.

– A minimum of 3 years work experience in academia, research institution, private sector or a development-oriented organization

– Excellent knowledge of microeconomic theory

– Experience in running RCTs and impact evaluation studies

– Excellent knowledge in STATA

– Demonstrated fluency in written and spoken English

– Familiarity with the literature on conflict and social protection literature

– Experience in Ethiopia and familiarity with Ethiopia’s agri-food system

Main deliverables:

The candidate will closely work with the research team to deliver the following outputs.

· Cleaned data and do-files

o Implementation report based on verification of compliance and adherence to the pre-analysis plan

o Cleaning and merging household data with administrative data

o Documentation of data cleaning and analysis

· Draft papers and sections of papers

o Draft papers related to the above research questions

o Refine papers based on feedback and discussion with IFPRI staff

· Final working papers

Requirements for applicants to submit the following:

· Most recent CV

Indicate the proposed daily rate