Abstract: We study how local connections to persons in influential positions affect access to migrant jobs and government employment. In rural Nepal, it would not be surprising if social status strongly influenced the access to attractive labor market opportunities. This is not the case....

There is evidence that experience premium differs across industries. We propose a theoretical model for explaining these differences. We assume that labor mobility brings external knowledge to the firm, which increases its productivity. We find that industry experience premium is decreasing in...

Many economic decisions are made jointly within households. This raises the question about spouses’ relative influence on joint decisions and the determinants of relative influence. Using a controlled experiment (on inter-temporal choice), we let each spouse first make individual decisions and...

We study household decision making in a high-stakes experiment with a random sample of households in rural China. Spouses have to choose between risky lotteries, first separately and then jointly. We find that spouses’ individual risk preferences are more similar the richer the household and...

We study how gender, birth-order and number of siblings are related to stated time and risk preferences and real-life decisions. We use survey data covering about 2,300 individuals and find that time and risk preferences are significantly correlated among women but not among men. We also find...

In many developing and transitional countries, inter-household transfers in general and gifts in particular are sizable and very important. We use unique Romanian data that enables us, contrary to most previous studies, to isolate pure gifts from other kinds of private transfers and to study...

It is often assumed that disability lowers the marginal utility of income. In this article individuals’ marginal utility of income in two states, (1) paralyzed in both legs from birth and (2) not mobility impaired at all, are measured through experimental choices between imagined lotteries...

To what extent do people avoid taxes on intra-family transfers (bequests and gifts), and how would integration (unification) of the different transfers taxes affect tax avoidance? These issues are important for families and their welfare, as well as for governments and their possibilities of...

Systematic pediatric evidence shows that the morbidity rates for children in day care are increasing in the group size.Sick children are usually cared for at home by parents. This creates a negative externality of parents' labor force participation. The social optimum implies lower group size...

We studied whether relative income has an impact on subjective well-being among extremely poor people. Contrary to the findings in developed countries, we cannot reject the hypothesis that relative income has no impact on subjective well-being in rural areas of northern Ethiopia.<p>