Yonas Alem
Yonas Alem – he (University of Cape Town) – Senior Fellow and Program Lead
Yonas Alem is a Research Professor in the School of Economics at the University of Cape Town, affiliated with several leading development economics networks, including MIT's J-PAL King Climate Action Initiative, Aim for Scale, Environment for Development (EfD), and Economic Research Southern Africa (ERSA). Alem earned his PhD in Economics from the University of Gothenburg, with visiting fellowships at UC Berkeley and Brown University. An applied microeconomist working across Africa and South Asia, his research uses rigorous causal inference and randomized controlled trials to study development, behavioural, and environmental economics—including preference formation, poverty dynamics, technology adoption, and firms' investment decisions under behavioural and market frictions. Over the past two decades, Alem has published extensively in reputable international journals and built substantial research capacity in the Global South through teaching, graduate supervision, and mentorship of emerging researchers.
Email: yonas.alem@uct.ac.za
Selected Publications:
Alem, Y. & Schurz, S. Bargaining Power and Joint Decision-Making in Human Capital Investment (Revise & Resubmit, Journal of Development Economics).
Alem, Y. Clean Cooking in the Global South: A Critical Synthesis of Causal Evidence and a Future Research Agenda, South African Journal of Economics (Forthcoming)
Alem, Y. & Ruhinduka, R. (2026). Reducing Emission of CO2 from Africa’s Tropical Forests: A Randomized Controlled Trial, The World Bank Economic Review, 40(1): 29-61. https://doi.org/10.1093/wber/lhaf007
Abebe, M., & Alem, Y. (2025). Drought, Livestock Holding, and Milk Production: A Difference-in-Differences Analysis. European Review of Agricultural Economics 52(2): 240-272. https://doi.org/10.1093/erae/jbaf014
Alem, Y. Kocher, M., Shurz, S., Carlsson, F. & Lindahl, M. (2023). Distributional Preferences in Adolescent peer Networks, Experimental Economics, 26: 223-248. https://irihs.ihs.ac.at/id/eprint/5411
Alem, Y., Hassen, S., and Köhlin, G. (2023). Decision-making within the Household: The Role of Division of Labor and Differences in Preferences, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 207: 511-528. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2023.01.022
Alem, Y., & Dugoua, E. (2022). Learning from Unincentivized and Incentivized Communication: A Randomized Controlled Trial in India Economic Development and Cultural Change, 71(1) https://doi.org/10.1086/714115
Alem, Y., & Colmer, J. (2022). Blame it on the rain: Rainfall variability, consumption smoothing, and subjective well-being in rural Ethiopia, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 104(3): 905-920. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajae.12253
Alem, Y., Eggert, H., Kocher, M., & Ruhinduka, R. (2018). Why (Field) Experiments on Unethical Behavior are Important: Comparing Stated and Revealed Behavior, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 156: 71-85. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2018.08.026
Alem, Y., & Broussard, H. N. (2018). The impact of Safety Nets on Technology Adoption: A Difference-in-differences Analysis, Agricultural Economics, 49(1): 13-24. https://doi.org/10.1111/agec.12392