We document the establishment and evolution of a cooperative norm among workers using evidence from a natural field experiment on a leading UK farm. Workers are paid according to a relative incentive scheme under which increasing individual effort raises a worker's own pay but imposes a negative...

The effect of financial liberalization on private saving is theoretically ambiguous, not only because the link between interest rate levels and saving is itself ambiguous, but also because financial liberalization is a multi-dimensional and phased process, sometimes involving reversals. Some...

Historical evidence suggests that Mafias originally formed to provide enforcement of legitimate property rights when state enforcement was weak. We provide a general equilibrium model of Mafias as enforcement coalitions which protect property from predators. Both the level of predation and the...

We develop a new survey instrument to codify CEOs' diaries in large samples and use it to measure the labor supply of 1,114 family and professional CEOs of manufacturing firms across six countries (Brazil, France, Germany, India, the United Kingdom and the United States). By this measure, family...

CEOs affect the performance of the firms they manage, and family CEOs seem to weaken it. Yet little is known about what top executives actually do, and whether it differs by firm ownership. We study CEOs in the Indian manufacturing sector, where family ownership is widespread and the...

Organizations often use awards to incentivize performance. We design a field experiment to unbundle the mechanisms through which awards may affect behavior: by facilitating social comparison and by conferring recognition and visibility. In a nationwide health worker training program in Zambia,...

The world's poorest people lack capital and skills and toil for others in occupations that others shun. Using a large-scale and long-term randomized control trial in Bangladesh this paper demonstrates that sizable transfers of assets and skills enable the poorest women to shift out of...

Women in developing countries are disempowered relative to their contemporaries in developed countries.  High youth unemployment and early marriage and childbearing interact to limit human capital investment and enforce dependence on men.  In this paper we evaluate an attempt to jump-start...

We develop a new survey instrument to codify CEOs’ diaries in large samples and use it to measure the labor supply of 1,114 family and professional CEOs of manufacturing firms across six countries (Brazil, France, Germany, India, the United Kingdom and the United States). By this measure,...