We present evidence on the effect of social connections between workers and managerson productivity in the workplace. To evaluate whether the existence of social connections isbeneficial to the firm’s overall performance, we explore how the effects of social connectionsvary with the strength...

We present evidence on whether workers have social preferences by comparing workers’ productivityunder relative incentives, where individual effort imposes a negative externality on others,to their productivity under piece rates, where it does not. We find that the productivity of theaverage...

The ability to cooperate in collective action problems — such as those relating to the useof common property resources or the provision of local public goods — is a key determinant ofeconomic performance. In this paper we discuss two aspects of collective action problemsin developing...

We present a theoretical framework and empirical strategy to measure the causal effect ofinterim feedback on individuals’ performance. Our identification strategy exploits a naturalexperiment in a leading UK university where different departments have historically differentrules on the...

Over the last decade, many countries have experienced dramatic increases in university enrolment, which, when not matched by compensating increases in other inputs, have resulted in larger class sizes. Using administrative records from a leading UK university, we present evidence on the effects...

We present evidence on social incentives in the workplace, namely on whether workers’ behavioris affected by the presence of those they are socially tied to, even in settings where thereare no externalities among workers due to either the production technology or the compensationscheme in...

Almost one third of the population in developing countries is under age 15. Hence improvingthe effectiveness of policy interventions that target adolescents might be especiallyimportant. We analyze the intention to participate in training programs of adolescent girlsin Uganda, a country with...

Nearly 60 percent of Uganda's population is aged below twenty. This generation faces health and economic challenges associated with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), early pregnancy, and unemployment. Whether these challenges are due to a lack of information and or vocational skills is however...

Women in developing countries are disempowered: high youth unemployment, early marriage and childbearing interact to limit their investments into human capital and enforce dependence on men. The authors evaluate a multi-faceted policy intervention attempting to jumpstart adolescent women's...

We document the establishment and evolution of a cooperative norm among workers using evidence from a natural field experiment on a leading UK farm. Workers are paid according to a relative incentive scheme under which increasing individual effort raises a worker's own pay but imposes a negative...