In this paper, we investigate the economic returns to industrial espionage by linking information from East Germany’s foreign intelligence service to sector-specific gaps in total factor productivity (TFP) between West and East Germany. Based on a dataset that comprises the entire flow of...

In this paper, we investigate the economic returns to industrial espionage by linking information from East Germany's foreign intelligence service to sector-specific gaps in total factor productivity (TFP) between West and East Germany. Based on a dataset that comprises the entire flow of...

Although empowerment is seen as intrinsically important and instrumentally valuable to escape poverty, there is very little research on the empirical drivers of empowerment. Using custom-made household-level information and using advanced econometric techniques that also correct for endogeneity,...

I explore the long-term effects of internal displacement caused by the Kurdish-Turkish conflict on women's attitudes towards domestic violence. Using the Turkish Demographic and Health Survey, I show that forced migrants are more likely to view domestic violence as acceptable. As suggestive...

Dowry is often adduced as an explanation of son preference in India, but there is little evidence that dowry motivates son-preferring behaviours. On the premise that gold is an integral part of dowry, we use variation in gold prices to investigate this. First, we exploit a sharp unexpected rise...

How does exposure to soap operas with LGBTIQ+ characters affect attitudes toward the LGBTIQ+ community? To answer this question, we construct a novel database of 175 telenovelas (soap operas) with LGBTIQ+ characters airing in 14 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean between 2002 and 2019....

The world's poorest people lack capital and skills and toil for others in occupations that others shun. Using a large-scale and long-term randomized control trial in Bangladesh this paper demonstrates that sizable transfers of assets and skills enable the poorest women to shift out of...

Researchers frequently use variants of the Becker-DeGroot-Marschak (BDM) mechanism to elicit willingness to pay (WTP). These variants involve numerous incentive-irrelevant design choices, some of which carry advantages for implementation but may deteriorate participant comprehension or trust in...