It is typically assumed that being hard-working or clever is a trait of the person, in the sense that it is always there, in a fixed manner. However, in an experiment with almost 600 boys in India, cues to one's place in the traditional caste order turn out to influence the expression of these...

In many African countries, the timing of important life events -- such as school-leaving, first marriage, and entry into the labor market -- is thought to be strongly tied to migration. This paper investigates the relationship between major life events, household characteristics, and migration...

Economists have traditionally treated preferences as exogenously given. Preferences are assumed to be influenced by neither beliefs nor the constraints people face. As a consequence, changes in behaviour are explained exclusively in terms of changes in the set of feasible alternatives. Here the...

Well-functioning groups enforce social norms that restrain opportunism, but the social structure of a society may encourage or inhibit norm enforcement. This paper studies how the exogenous assignment to different positions in an extreme social hierarchy - the caste system - affects...

HIV/AIDS is drastically changing the demographic landscape in high-prevalence countries in Africa. The prime-age adult population bears the majority of the mortality burden. These “missing” prime-age adults have implications for the socioeconomic well-being of surviving family members. This...

This paper examines the relationship between international migration and source country fertility. The impact of international migration on source country fertility may have a number of causes, including a transfer of destination countries'fertility norms and an incentive to acquire more...

In a wide variety of settings, spiteful preferences would constitute an obstacle to cooperation, trade, and thus economic development. This paper shows that spiteful preferences - the desire to reduce another's material payoff for the mere purpose of increasing one's relative payoff - are...

From less than 5 percent in 1980, the share of residents from the former Republic of Yugoslavia in the total foreign population in Switzerland rose to almost 25% in 2000, to become one of the largest foreign communities. The largest increase occurs mostly between 1985 and 1998 and represents a...