Parents preferring sons tend to go on to have more children until one or more boys are born, and to concentrate investment in boys for a given sibsize. Therefore, having a brother may affect child outcomes in two ways: indirectly, by decreasing sibsize, and directly, where sibsize remains...

We investigate the impact of the Golden Quadrilateral (GQ) highway project on the Indian organized manufacturing sector using enterprise data. The GQ project upgraded the quality and width of 5,846 km of roads in India. We use a difference-in-difference estimation strategy to compare non-nodal...

Is the high degree of gender inequality in developing countries--in education, personal autonomy, and more--explained by underdevelopment itself? Or do the societies that are poor today hold certain cultural views that lead to gender inequality? This article discusses several mechanisms through...

We quantify the link between the timing of state-level implementations of political reservations for women in India with the role of women in India's manufacturing sector. While overall employment of women in manufacturing does not increase after the reforms, we find significant evidence that...

Schumpeter's concept of creative destruction as the engine of capitalist development is well-known. However, that the destructive part of creative destruction is a social cost and therefore biases our estimate of the impact of the innovation on NNP and on welfare is hardly acknowledged, with the...

We report on recent findings of a fruitful research agenda that explores the importance of ethnic-specific traits in shaping African development. First, using recent surveys from Sub-Saharan African countries, we document that individuals identify with their ethnic group as often as with the...

This research explores the biocultural origins of human capital formation. It presents the first evidence that moderate fecundity and thus predisposition towards investment in child quality was conducive for long-run reproductive success within the human species. Using an extensive genealogical...

Schumpeterian growth theory has "operationalized" Schumpeter''s notion of creative destruction by developing models based on this concept. These models shed light on several aspects of the growth process which could not be properly addressed by alternative theories. In this survey, we focus on...

We study capital misallocation within and across 10 African countries using the World Bank Enterprise Surveys. First, we compare the extent of misallocation among firms within countries. We document high variation in firms' marginal product of capital (MPK), implying that countries could produce...

The very poor in developing countries often make intertemporal choices that seem at odds with their individual self-interest. There are many possible reasons why. We investigate several of these reasons with a lab-in-the-field experiment in rural Malawi involving large stakes. We make two...