The large literature on costly signaling and the somewhat scant literature on preference signaling had varying success in showing the effectiveness of signals. We use a field experiment to show that even when everyone can send a signal, signals are free and the only costs are opportunity costs,...

This thesis explores the link between human capital accumulation and the functioning of marriage markets. The first chapter studies the effect of marriage market conditions on pre-marital investment. After showing how a change in the sex ratio can alter incentives for investments, I test this...

This paper analyzes how preferences for a non-economic characteristic, such as caste, canaffect equilibrium patterns of matching in the marriage market, and empirically evaluates thisin the context of arranged marriages among middle-class Indians. We develop a model thatdemonstrates how the...

This paper estimates the elasticity of substitution between capital and skill using variation across U.S. counties in immigration-induced skill-mix changes between 1860 and 1930. We find that capital began as a q-complement for skilled and unskilled workers, and then dramatically increased its...

We document that, over the 20th century, age at first marriage followed a U-shaped pattern, while the gender education gap tracked an inverted-U path in the United States. To explain this, we propose a multi-period frictionless matching model where educational and marriage decisions are...

Rural households comprise a large share of the population in developing countries. This dissertation examines how the welfare of these households, whose economic activity mainly relies on agriculture, is affected by weather shocks and healthshocks in the context of West Africa and Vietnam. In...

The economic consequences of international migration have spurred vigorous debates among policy makers. There also are discussions within the economics literature, with labor economists disagreeing on whether immigration is beneficial for host economies and development economists having...

Marriage used to be practically universal, but now persists as an institution for only some groups, while others choose non-marital fertility. This paper posits that if one role of marriage is to insure one partner's investment in children, then home-ownership can be seen as providing the...

We study the short-run effects of a gamified online entrepreneurship training offered to high school students in Rwanda during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a randomized controlled trial, we estimate sizeable effects of the 6-week training on entrepreneurial activity. One month after the...