This study investigates how spouses' cultural backgrounds mediate the role of intra-household bargaining in the labor supply decisions of foreign-born and US-born couples, in a collective-household framework. Using data from the 2000 US Census, I show that the hours worked by US-born couples,...

This paper complements conventional economic analysis and presents a social norms interpretation to explain cross-country differences in partnership formation rates, and the dramatic decrease in partnership formation rates in Southern Europe in particular. We argue that increases in female human...

This paper seeks to better understand the historical origins of current differences in norms and beliefs about the appropriate role of women in society. We test the hypothesis that traditional agricultural practices influenced the historical gender division of labor and the evolution and...

Previous empirical work on corruption has generally been cross-country in nature and focused on utilizing country-level corruption ratings. By using micro-level data for over 20 European countries that directly measure individual characteristics, corruption experiences, gender roles, trust and...

This paper examines the impact of state level political reservation for two minority groups – Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes – on child labor in India. We estimate the effect of political reservation on child labor by exploiting the state variation in the share of seats reserved for...

This paper examines the relationship between elected minority representatives, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, and health worker visits in rural India. We estimate the effect of minority representation on the frequency of visits to villages by health workers by exploiting the state...

We examine the impact of political reservation for disadvantaged minority groups on poverty. To address the concern that political reservation is endogenous in the relationship between poverty and reservation, we take advantage of the state-time variation in reservation in state legislative...