Emilia Tjernström

I joined Macquarie Business School in May 2025. Previously, I’ve held academic positions at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (joint appointment between the Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs and the Agricultural and Applied Economics department), the School of Economics at the University of Sydney and Monash University’s Centre for Development Economics and Sustainability.

My research draws on insights from behavioral economics and employs econometrics, field-, and lab-in-the-field experiments to examine a variety of topics within development economics. I also think a lot about heterogeneity: how it shapes the success and optimal design of public policy, and how heterogeneous returns affect individual decision-making.

In recent interdisciplinary work, I collaborate with atmospheric scientists to improve access to and analysis of air quality data in sub-Saharan Africa. Towards this goal, I co-founded AfriqAir, a cross-continental research network that has to date deployed over 50 low-cost sensors and reference-grade monitors in 11 African countries.

selected publications

Air Quality in Sub-Saharan Africa: Measurement Issues and Empirical Challenges

Emilia Tjernström

Annual Review of Resource Economics, 2026

Forthcoming

abstract PDF

Air pollution imposes large and uneven health and productivity costs in sub-Saharan Africa, yet evidence remains limited by severe data constraints. This review synthesizes what economists know about particulate matter exposure in the region, with a focus on measurement, sources, and implications for applied research. I review ground-based, satellite, reanalysis, and hybrid data products, emphasizing how spatially structured measurement error shapes empirical identification. I then assess evidence on health, agriculture, labor and human capital, highlighting both credible designs and remaining gaps. The review concludes by outlining research strategies that integrate exposure uncertainty into applied economic analysis.
Comment on Suri (2011) "Selection and Comparative Advantage in Technology Adoption"

Emilia Tjernström, Dalia Ghanem, Oscar Barriga Cabanillas, Travis Lybbert, Aleksandr Michuda, and Jeffrey Michler

Econometrica, 2026

Forthcoming

abstract PDF

This paper illustrates and addresses weak identification concerns in the correlated random coefficient (CRC) model that Suri (2011) uses to study agricultural technology adoption. Using the publicly available version of the dataset used in Suri (2011), which we clean following the author’s instructions, we are unable to replicate the paper’s main CRC model results. To understand why, we recast the CRC model as a more general random-coefficient model in which the returns to hybrid adoption are restricted to be linear in comparative advantage. This reveals that the key structural parameter in the CRC model (φ) is prone to a weak identification problem. We then propose a procedure to conduct weak-identification robust inference on φusing test inversion. Only with this robust procedure accounting for weak identification are we able to replicate the original Suri (2011) results.
Incentivizing Engagement: Experimental Evidence on Journalist Performance Pay

Ivan Balbuzanov, Jared Gars, Mateusz Stalinski, and Emilia Tjernström

2025

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, R&R

abstract pre-reg link PDF

Digital platforms increasingly compensate content creators based on engagement metrics, yet the effects of these incentives remain poorly understood. We conducted a field experiment with a Kenyan news outlet to study how high-intensity performance incentives affect content production, quality, and journalist well-being in digital media. We randomly assigned writers to either pay-per-click (PPC) or piece-rate contracts. The PPC contract tripled per-article pageviews and increased daily pageviews by 107%, but reduced the number of published articles by 74%. While PPC writers earned more per article, their overall earnings fell, lowering the firm’s wage bill and increasing profits. However, these gains came at a cost: PPC writers shifted content production away from local news and towards attention-grabbing political stories. PPC writers also used less positive language in both headlines and article bodies. Our results show that engagement-based pay boosts reader traffic but caution that this may come at the cost of compromised coverage diversity, local news provision, and journalist well-being.

news

Jun 11, 2026	My review “Air Quality in Sub-Saharan Africa: Measurement Issues and Empirical Challenges” is forthcoming in the Annual Review of Resource Economics! Sub-Saharan Africa hosts under 2% of the world’s reference-grade air quality monitors, so most pollution estimates come from satellites and models—and the resulting measurement error is anything but classical. The review maps how these data products work, where their errors come from, and what that means for empirical research designs.
Feb 7, 2026	Double good news: Econometrica has conditionally accepted our comment on Suri (2011) R&R from AEJ: Economic Policy for “Incentivizing Engagement: Experimental Evidence on Journalist Performance Pay.”
Jul 28, 2025	Super excited to share a new working paper: “Incentivizing Engagement: Experimental Evidence on Journalist Performance Pay.” This is joint work with Ivan Balbuzanov, Jared Gars, and Mateusz Stalinski. Let’s hope the editor (and referees) like is as much as we do!
Apr 2, 2025	🍾 Excited to share that I’ll be joining Macquarie University’s Business School as Associate Professor of Economics on May 1, 2025! Looking forward to getting to know the Macquarie University community!
Nov 13, 2024	🎆 Thrilled that “Relaxing Multiple Agricultural Productivity Constraints at Scale” was just accepted for publication in the Journal of Development Economics!

all news and updates →