Biography: Berk Ozler received his B.Sc. in Mathematics from Boğaziçi University in 1991, and his Ph.D in Economics from Cornell University in 2001. After working on poverty and inequality measurement, poverty mapping, and the 2006 World Development Report on Equity and Development earlier, he decided to combine his interest in cash transfer programs and HIV risks facing young women in Africa by designing a large cash transfer experiment in Malawi, the longer-term evaluation of which is still ongoing. He has since conducted a number of cluster-randomized field experiments. He is currently interested in ways to reduce unintended pregnancies, especially among adolescent females and young women. He is trialing approaches to increase the take-up of modern contraceptives among this population with an adaptive experiment in Cameroon. He is a co-founder of and a regular contributor to the Development Impact blog.

Can Improved Counseling Increase Willingness to Pay for Modern Contraceptives 

Abstract: Long-acting reversible contraceptives are highly effective in preventing unintended pregnancies, but take-up remains low. This paper analyzes a randomized controlled trial of interventions addressing two barriers to long-acting reversible contraceptive adoption, credit, and informational constraints. The study offered discounts to the clients of a women’s hospital in Yaoundé, Cameroon, and cross-randomized a counseling strategy that encourages shared decision-making using a tablet-based app that ranks modern methods. Discounts increased uptake by 50 percent, with larger effects for adolescents. Shared decision-making tripled the share of clients adopting a long-acting reversible contraceptive at full price, from 11 to 35 percent, and discounts had no incremental impact in this group.

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