Empirical social science relies heavily on self-reported data, but subjects may misreport behaviors, especially sensitive ones such as crime or drug abuse. If a treatment influences survey misreporting, it biases causal estimates. We develop a validation technique that uses intensive qualitative...

In developing countries, financial transfers within social and kin networks are ubiquitous and frequent. Though these transfers have social benefits, pressure to redistribute income can introduce a disincentive to work by reducing the payoff of exerting effort. This comes at a potential cost for...

Two thirds of sub-Saharan Africa’s citizens depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. Women make up a large part of the agricultural workforce: in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), over 80 percent of women work in farming compared to 60 percent of men. However, women face a...

Improving women's agency, namely their ability to define goals and act on them, is crucial for advancing gender equality and the empowerment of women. Yet, existing frameworks for measuring women’s agency – both disorganized and partial – provide a fragmented understanding of the...

Women farmers in the Western Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) bear the disproportionate burden of unpaid care work. Women spend less time than men on their plots and more time on domestic work. The authors use a combination of consultations in the field, desk research, and primary data...

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...