How important are social norms, information gaps and family constraints in explaining the low rates of female labor force participation (FLFP) in conservative societies? To answer this question, we conducted a field experiment embedded in a survey of female university students at a large public...

Through the custom of guardianship, husbands typically have the final word on their wives' labor supply decisions in Saudi Arabia, a country with very low female labor force participation (FLFP). We provide incentivized evidence (both from an experimental sample in Riyadh and from a national...

Learning by exporting refers to the mechanism whereby firms improve their performance (productivity) after entering export markets. Although this mechanism is often mentioned in policy documents, a significant share of econometric studies has not found evidence for this hypothesis. This paper...

In many industries firms can learn about new technologies from other adopters; mandatory disclosure regulations represent an understudied channel for this type of social learning. We study an environmentally-focused law in the shale gas industry to examine firm claims that disclosure...

We study an ambiguity-averse agent with uncertainty about income dynamics who chooses what aspects of the income process to learn about. The agent chooses to learn most about income dynamics at the very lowest frequencies, which have the greatest effect on utility. Deviations of consumption from...

We document the transmission of social distancing practices from the United States to Mexico along migrant networks during the early 2020 Covid-19 pandemic. Using data on pre-existing migrant connections between Mexican and U.S. locations and mobile-phone tracking data revealing social...

We examine how two highly successful new biotechnology firms (NBFs) source their most critical input -- scientific knowledge. We find that scientists at the two NBFs enter into large numbers of collaborative research efforts with scientists at other organizations, especially universities. Formal...

This paper introduces a new cost dataset for a commercial aircraft firm and uses this data to analyze the dynamics of learning in commercial aircraft production. This dataset is found to be inconsistent with the simple learning hypothesis, and particularly the prediction that a firm's unit cost...

In the presence of uncertainty about what a country can be good at producing, there can be great social value to discovering costs of domestic activities because such discoveries can be easily imitated. We develop a general-equilibrium framework for a small open economy to clarify the analytical...

Extending research on organizational learning to multi-product environments is of particular importance given that the vast majority of products are manufactured in such environments. We investigate learning in a multi-product facility drawing on exceptionally rich data for a manufacturing firm...