A long-standing question in social science is to what extent differences in management cause differences in firm performance. To investigate this we ran a management field experiment on large Indian textile firms. We provided free consulting on modern management practices to a randomly chosen...

The wave of privatizations Latin America experienced during the 1990s was integral to stabilization programs and a general reordering of states’ roles in the regional economy. Over the past few years, however, these privatizations have come under increasing fire. Their purported adverse...

Small-scale entrepreneurs typically cite access to finance as the most important constraint to growth. Recent randomized experiments have shown the return to capital to be very high for the average microenterprise in Sri Lanka. An intervention was designed to improve access to credit among these...

This paper analyzes data from a randomized experiment on mean returns to capital in SriLankan micro-enterprises. The findings show greater returns among men than among women; indeed, returns were not different from zero for women. The authors explore different explanations for the lower returns...

Consumption and income have both grown rapidly in Taiwan over the past forty years, with younger birth cohorts experiencing faster growth. The long upward trend in consumption presents a strong challenge to the consumption smoothing predictions of the Permanent Income Hypothesis. We investigate...

We run two field experiments on team diversity in a large undergraduate economics class. Small groups with random compositions are generated and assigned team tasks. In the first experiment, tasks are creative and complex, while in the second one they are more standard. We use a multidimensional...

We run two field experiments on team diversity in a large undergraduate economics class. Small groups with random compositions are generated and assigned team tasks. In the first experiment, tasks are creative and complex, while in the second one they are more standard. We use a multidimensional...

This study explores the impact of demographic diversity on teamwork in higher education. Using an experimental design, we find that diversity enhances team performance on creative tasks but hinders it on standard tasks. Additionally, diversity influences teamwork quality in a U-shaped pattern,...

A contribution to the study of volatility and country risk is made in order to achieve a successful crosscountry comparison. We present a methodology for the evaluation of country risk that include endogenous detection of multiple structural breaks (also identifying its different kinds),...