Do high costs of search affect the labour market outcomes of young job seekers living far away from the centre of cities? I randomly assign temporary and non-fungible transport subsidies to unemployed youth living in spatially dislocated areas of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Lowering transport costs...

We present a theoretical model of moral hazard and adverse selection in an imperfectly competitive loans market that is suitable for application to Africa. The model allows for variation in both the level of contract enforcement (depending on the quality of governance) and the degree of market...

We estimate the impacts of being connected to politicians on occupational choice. We use an administrative dataset collected in 2008-2010 on 20 million individuals and rely on naming conventions to assess family links to candidates in elections held in 2007 and 2010. We first estimate the value...

We show that rainfall, temperature, and commodity price shocks predict unrest in colonial French West Africa between 1906 and 1956. We use a simple model of taxation and anti-tax resistance to explain these results. In the colonial period, the response of unrest to economic shocks was strongest...

Oil prices experienced in early life predict differential adult outcomes across Nigerian ethnic groups. Our difference-in-difference approach compares members of southern ethnicities to other Nigerians from the same birth cohort. Greater prices in a southern individual’s birth year predict...

Personality traits are highly predictive of life outcomes and successes. However, little is known about their formation and what can hamper their development. There is ample evidence that conditions in early-life can have persistent influence on health and cognitive skills. In this paper, we ask...

Substandard teaching is believed to be the foremost reason for poor quality schooling in the developing world. This paper uses unique data from primary schools in the state of Punjab in Pakistan to delve into the issues that may determine what makes one teacher more effective than another. The...

Little is known about the extent and forces of urban path dependence in developing countries. Railroad construction in colonial Kenya provides a natural experiment to study the emergence and persistence of this spatial equilibrium. Using new data at a fine spatial level over one century shows...

We study the origins of adult mental health using early life income fluctuations. Combining a time series of real producer prices of cocoa with a nationally representative household survey in Ghana, we show that a one standard deviation rise in the cocoa price in early life decreases the...

We conduct a field experiment to investigate employers’ trust in workers. A sample of real entrepreneurs and workers from urban Ghana are respectively assigned to the roles of employers and employees. Employers have the option to hire (trust) an employee, who can in turn choose whether to...