Decision-making is often used as a proxy for agency-the ability to set goals and act on them-although there are several theoretical critiques of this approach. Using unique data from the rural Philippines, this paper empirically tests the extent to which different aspects of decision-making are...

Across a wide variety of regions and contexts, surveys have found high rates of disagreement within couples on matters of household decision making. Using a unique data set from a spousal survey of 421 agricultural households in the Philippines, this paper finds that 50.2 percent of couples...

Migrant workers are a key part of Indonesia’s economy. The equivalent of almost 7 percent of Indonesia’s labor force, an estimated 9 million people, work overseas and in 2016, over IDR 159 trillion (US dollar 11.2 billion) was sent back to Indonesia in the form of remittances. However,...

Differences in earnings between male and female workers persist in developed and developing countries despite a narrowing of gender gaps in educational attainment over the past half-century. This paper examines the gender wage gap in Vietnam and shows that a nontrivial part of the gap is...

At 50.9 percent, female labor force participation in Indonesia is far below the regional average of 60.8 percent. Is it being hindered by a lack of affordable childcare services in the country? This paper exploits the joint variations in preschool age eligibility and access to preschool across...

While a large body of literature has documented positive impacts of institutional childcare on maternal labor supply, thinner evidence is available on whether childcare can also nudge women into better jobs in developing countries. We evaluate the impact of public preschool expansion in...

Standard business training programs aim to boost the incomes of the millions of self-employed business owners in developing countries by teaching basic financial and marketing practices, yet the impacts of such programs are mixed. We tested whether a psychology-based personal initiative training...

A randomized experiment in Togo found that personal initiative training for small businesses resulted in large and significant impacts for both men and women after two years. We revisit these entrepreneurs after seven years, and find long-lasting average impacts of personal initiative training...

Examining one of the world's largest public business support programs, this paper studies how subsidized credit and partial credit guarantees shape access to finance for micro and small businesses in Indonesia. The analysis uses administrative data on more than 8.4 million borrowers and unique...