This paper investigates the interplay between cultural traditions and policy effectiveness. It explores the differential impact of a large development program (Cassa per il Mezzogiorno), implemented for four decades, starting in the 1950s, to stimulate convergence between Italy's South and the...

In this paper we examine the effects that variations in the quality of the environment at birth have on children's other-regarding preferences, as measured through four binary-choice dictator games run with school-age children in rural Sierra Leone. We examine the effect of exogenous variations...

We consider an expanded notion of social norms that renders them belief-dependent and partial, formulate a series of related testable predictions, and design an experiment based on a variant of the dictator game that tests for empirical relevance. Main results: Normative beliefs influence...