In low-income communities in both rich and poor countries, redistributive transfers within kin and social networks are frequent. Such arrangements may distort labor supply - acting as a "social tax" that dampens the incentive to work. We document that across countries, from Cote d'Ivoire to the...

Child marriage is recognized as a major burden in low-income countries, with severe consequences on women's life trajectories. It is particularly pervasive in Niger, where middle school enrollment for girls is low, and dropouts are high. In the context of a multi-sectoral World Bank project,...

This paper analyzes changes in agricultural productivity gender gaps in C?te d'Ivoire between 2008 and 2016 using decomposition methods. The analysis finds that the unconditional gender gap between male- and female-headed households has decreased by 14 percent over the past decade. The...

Gender disparities in small and medium-size enterprise lending exist around the world and impede the growth of millions of women-led firms. This paper examines a potential driver of these disparities: gender-biased loan officers. Officer bias is measured through a novel loan application...

Improving women's agency, namely their ability to define goals and act on them, is crucial for advancing gender equality and the empowerment of women. Yet, existing frameworks for women's agency measurement -- both disorganized and partial -- provide a fragmented understanding of the constraints...

This paper documents novel evidence of positive assortative matching in African marriage markets along cognitive and socio-emotional skills, time and risk preferences, and education, using data from rural Mozambique, Cote d'Ivoire, and Malawi

This paper examines women's power relative to that of their husbands in 23 Sub-Saharan African countries to determine how it affects women's health, reproductive outcomes, children's health, and children's education. The analysis uses a novel measure of women's empowerment that is closely linked...

In low-income communities in both rich and poor countries, redistributive transfers within kin and social networks are frequent. Such arrangements may distort labor supply acting as a "social tax" that dampens the incentive to work. We document that across countries, from Cote d'Ivoire to the...

This paper examines how easily observable interviewer characteristics, such as gender and physical attractiveness, and more difficult to observe characteristics, such as attitudes and beliefs, affect adolescent girls' disclosure of sexual behavior during a baseline survey for an adolescent girls...