Using experimental techniques, we identify parental attitudes toward different-gendered children in rural Bangladesh. We randomly selected households that had at least two school-age children (6–18 years) of different genders. Parents, either jointly or individually, were given endowments to...

This paper investigates whether parents’ inherent gender bias is associated with intrahousehold human capital investment among boys and girls. We conduct an artifactual field experiment to identify parents’ inherent gender bias and then attempt to examine how this attitude correlates with...

An individual should be indifferent between a rebate subsidy of rate sr and a matching subsidy of rate sm = sr /(1 - sr), and the total amount received by the charity should be the same regardless of subsidy type. Recent laboratory and field experiments contradict these straightforward...

This dissertation develops an economic theory of leadership based on assignment of information.Common theories assume that organizations exist to reduce transaction costs by replacingimperfect markets with incomplete long term contracts that give managers the power to commandsubordinates. This...

This paper suggests that even if it is costless to inform all team members about the quality of a project, there are reasons to concentrate information in the hands of one person (a leader) and prevent full revelation to the rest. This deprives others of the information necessary for profitable...

An organization makes collective decisions through neither markets nor contracts. Instead, rational agents voluntarily choose to follow a leader. In many cases, incentive problems are solved: the unique nondegenerate equilibrium achieves the first best, even though every agent has incentives to...

Rational players, unconstrained by contracts or formal authority, choose to follow a better-informed leader, whose action reveals part of her information. If the leader satisfies a credibility condition, then the unique nondegenerate equilibrium solves distinct shirking and coordination problems...