In 2019 Canada's second-largest province introduced a selective ban on religious clothing in the public service as part of a broader effort to promote secularism in the public sphere. Using novel survey data we find evidence of spillovers onto labour force participation and religious expression...

Do earthquakes strengthen social cohesion or undermine it? While some theories suggest they strengthen social bonds, others suggest they lead to social disintegration. We add to the limited causal evidence on this phenomenon using the 2012 Northern Italy earthquake, and exploit a unique dataset...

Health-harmful norms persist because they fulfill a socially valued function. In many Nigerian communities, female genital cutting (FGC) is practiced because it is believed to discourage sex outside marriage, outweighing its perceived costs for many households. This paper examines the impact of...

AI-driven systems are rapidly moving from decision support to directing human behavior through rules, recommendations, and compliance requests. This shift expands everyday human-AI interaction and raises the possibility that AI may function as an authority figure. However, the behavioral...

Forest protection contributes to climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation. Yet negative income shocks can induce local forest users to increase extraction in order to cope with economic hardship. We study how social norms shape collaborative forest management when communities face...

Hiring discrimination against candidates from ethnocultural minority groups is a persistent concern in contemporary labour markets. This study examines how professional recruiters evaluate fictitious job applicants with profiles that systematically vary in signals that form ethnocultural...