Beyond Fatalism - An empirical exploration of self-efficacy and aspirations failure in Ethiopia

Fatalism is considered pervaisve, not leaste within many poor communities. In this paper, we explore whether 'fatalistic' beliefs have implications for the attitudes and behaviour of poor rural households towards investment in the future. We first explore the idea of fatalos, drawing inspiration from theories in psychology focusing on the role of locus of control and self-efficacy, and from the theoretical framework of aspiration failure as developed in recent economic literature. using survey data from rural Ethiopia, we find evidence of fatalistic beliefs among a substantial group of rural households, as well as indicators consistent withy a small aspiration gap and low self-efficay. We also find that such beliefs consistently correlate with lower demand for credit, in terms of loan size, repayment horzon and productive purposes.