This study conducted a large-scale, representative survey of social norms for female labor force participation in three governorates of Jordan. The social norms measures are disaggregated into thematic clusters, empirical and normative expectations, and interpersonal expectations within the...

Toilet ownership in India has grown in recent years, but open defecation can persist even when rural households own latrines. There are at least two pathways through which social norms inhibit the use of toilets in rural India: (i) beliefs/expectations that others do not use toilets or latrines...

A range of reasons is cited to explain gender differences in business performance in Africa. Within those, the sector of operations is consistently identified as a major issue. This paper uses a mixed methods approach to assess how women entrepreneurs in Uganda start (and strive) operating firms...

Social norms affect almost every aspect of people?s lives, and can be an obstacle to or support economic development. This paper outlines what social norms are and how they work, providing examples from everyday life and from development case studies. Sometimes not much can be done about...

Child labor is pervasive across sub-Saharan Africa. The common assumption is that monetary poverty is its most important cause. This paper investigates this hypothesis with empirical evidence by exploring structural, geographic, monetary, demographic, cultural, seasonal and school-supply factors...

This paper measures the economic impact of social pressure to share income with kin and neighbors in rural Kenyan villages. The authors conduct a lab experiment in which they randomly vary the observability of investment returns. The goal is to test whether subjects reduce their income in order...

Economists have traditionally treated preferences as exogenously given. Preferences are assumed to be influenced by neither beliefs nor the constraints people face. As a consequence, changes in behaviour are explained exclusively in terms of changes in the set of feasible alternatives. Here the...

The paper uses the data from Francois Quesnay's writings to derive a social table for pre-revolutionary France, estimate country's mean income and income distribution. These Quesnay-based estimates are compared with more recent estimates of 18th century French incomes and inequality

A rigorous understanding of the developmental effect of fiscal transfers to subnational governments remains an important policy research issue globally. This paper exploits a novel dataset of 20 years of municipal poverty maps and local public finances to study the effects on local welfare of a...