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Peer influence and human capital accumulation: Evidence from Delhi University collegesCollege is an important milestone in life that is believed to develop several aspects of an individual's human capital, broadly defined to include...
14 UNU-WIDER articles, publications, projects, experts...
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Working Paper
Campaign externalities, programmatic spending, and voting preferences in rural MexicoThis study presents an analysis of the electoral impacts of one of the most prominent conditional cash transfers in the world: Mexico’s Progresa-Oportunidades-Prospera (POP) programme. Using population censuses, and POP’s administrative records and...
Working Paper
Cognitive, socioemotional, and behavioural returns to college qualityWe exploit the variation in the admissions process across colleges of a leading Indian university to estimate the causal effects of enrolling in a selective college on: cognitive attainment using scores on standardized university exams; behavioural...
Journal Article
Theoretical models of inequalityUsing illustrations from research on inequality, this essay makes a case for ‘behavioural synthesis’, that is the reconciliation between neo-classical and behavioural economics. Focusing on selected theories of absolute and relative inequality, we...
Working Paper
Rationality, emotions, and ethnicityThe role of ethnicity in political behaviour remains unsettled theoretically. Instrumentalist theories emphasize cognitive processes, arguing that political actors strategically employ ethnicity to attain certain goals, while expressivist theories...
Working Paper
The legacy of coercive cotton cultivation in colonial MozambiqueWe examine the long-term impact of forced labour on individual risk behaviour and economic decisions. For that, we focus on a policy of coercive cotton cultivation enforced in colonial Mozambique between 1926 and 1961. We combine archival sources...
Blog
The richer your neighbours, the more you borrow – the case of South Africa
Research on how income inequality affects borrowing behaviour reignited after the 2008 global recession. One prevailing theory is that rising income...
Working Paper
Ethnic disparity in altruism towards reforestationThis paper presents a framed field experiment on ecological altruism in Mindoro, Philippines. Behavioural differences between ethnic groups in Mindoro—the Tagalogs and the Mangyans—were investigated. We designed a two-part donation task (i.e...
Working Paper
Consolidating behavioural economics and rational choice theoryUsing illustrations from research on inequality, this paper offers evidence on the strengths of ‘behavioural synthesis’, i.e. the reconciliation between neoclassical and behavioural economics.We compare how theoretical models of absolute and relative...
Journal Article
Effects of peers and rank on cognition, preferences, and personalityWe exploit the variation in admission cutoffs across colleges at a leading Indian university to estimate the causal effects of enrolling in a selective college on cognitive attainment, economic preferences, and Big Five personality traits. Using a...
Journal Article
Gender priming in solidarity gamesWhat is the effect of gender priming on solidarity behavior? We explore a two-player solidarity game where players can insure each other against risk of losses. We test this experimentally in a developing country setting, the Philippines. We consider...
Working Paper
Gender priming in solidarity gamesWhat is the effect of gender priming on solidarity behaviour? We explore a two-player solidarity game where players can insure each other against the risk of losses. In the utility function, priming is represented as the ‘change in weight’ given to...
Working Paper
Character or contextWe run a lab-in-the-field experiment with 1,060 university students in Mozambique to examine the correlates of behavioural dishonesty, distinguishing between intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Using an incentivized dice game, which yields direct...
Working Paper
Key behavioural characteristics of small-business ownersThis study investigates the role of owners’ personal preferences and behaviour in determining the success of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises using a lab-in-the-field experiment with small-business owners in Myanmar. The study is a...
Displaying 14 of 14 results