A textbook provision program in Sierra Leone demonstrates how volatility in the flow of government-provided learning inputs to schools can induce storage of these inputs by school administrators to smooth future consumption. This process in turn leads to low current utilization of inputs for...

It has been shown that psychological predispositions to benefit others can motivate human cooperation and the evolution of such social preferences can be explained with kin or multi-level selection models. It has also been shown that cooperation can evolve as a costly signal of an unobservable...

NGOs and other non-profit organizations attract workers who strongly identify themselves with their missions. We study whether these "good guys" are more trustworthy and how such pronounced group identities affect trust and trustworthiness within the groups and toward out-groups. We find that...

We show theoretical and experimental results that demonstrate the potential of transparency to influence committee decision making and deliberation. We present a model in which committee members have career concerns and unanimity is needed to change the status quo. We study three scenarios -...

Non-governmental organizations and other non-profit organizations attract workers who strongly identify themselves with their missions. We study whether these “good guys” are more trustworthy, and how such pronounced group identities affect trust and trustworthiness within the groups and...

We investigate the potential of transparency to influence committee decisionmaking. We present a model in which career concerned committee members receive private information of different type-dependent accuracy, deliberate and vote. We study three levels of transparency under which career...

Do employees work harder if their job has the right mission? In a laboratory labor market experiment, we test whether subjects provide higher effort if they can choose the mission of their job. We observe that subjects do not provide higher effort than in a control treatment. Surprised by this...

With SACMEQ and PASEC there are now two large data bases available on student achievement, socio-economic background and school and teacher characteristics in both anglophone and francophone Sub-Saharan Africa. A joint analysis of PASEC and SACMEQ in a common education production function...

Being perceived as trustworthy comes with substantial economic benefits in many situations. Making other people think you are a trustworthy person may, therefore, be an important motive for charity and other forms of prosocial behavior, provided these activities work as signals of...