We use a recent first-hand linked employer-employee survey covering the formal sector of Bangladesh to explain gender wage gaps by the inclusion of measures of cognitive attainment and personality traits. Our results show that cognitive skills have greater explanatory power than personality...

Using matched worker-firm data from three waves of the Viet Nam Small and Medium Enterprises data, we examine whether workers are compensated with higher wages for working in vulnerable jobs and unfavourable working conditions. Wage equations indicate that there are no clear compensating...

We assess the effect of female bargaining power on the share of educational expenditures in the household budget in India. We augment the collective household model by endogenizing female bargaining power and use a three-stage least squares approach to simultaneously estimate female bargaining...

We use a first-hand linked employer-employee dataset representing the formal sector of Bangladesh to explain gender wage gaps by the inclusion of measures of cognitive skills and personality traits. Our results show that while cognitive skills are important in determining mean wages, personality...

In predominantly agrarian economies with limited irrigation, rainfall plays a critical role in shaping households' incomes and subsequently their spending decisions. This study uses household-level panel data from a nationally representative survey in India to estimate the effect of agricultural...

It has been demonstrated that violent crime has profound effects on a number of socioeconomic outcomes. But, does day-to-day crime also shape human capital accumulation? We answer this question in the Indian context by combining multiple years of district-level data on the incidence of various...

We conduct a lab experiment to assess whether gender of dictators and recipients, and distributional preferences affect allocations in a modified dictator game where both parties perform a cognitive task and the resulting pie to be split is the sum of both parties' earnings. Our key results are...

Using the 2004-05 India Human Development Survey data, we estimate and decompose the earnings of household businesses owned by historically marginalized social groups known as Scheduled Castes and Tribes (SCSTs), and non-SCSTs across the earnings distribution. We find clear differences in...

Using novel data from micro, small, and medium firms in Viet Nam, we estimate the relationship between behavioural and personality traits of owners/managers - risk attitudes, locus of control, and innovativeness - and firm-level decisions. We extend the analysis beyond standard metrics of firm...

We exploit the variation in the admissions process across colleges of a leading Indian university to estimate the causal effects of enrolling in a selective college on: cognitive attainment using scores on standardized university exams; behavioural preferences such as risk, competitiveness, and...