We show that inequality triggers social unrest in rural India. We develop a theoretical framework where social unrest is rationally used by civilians to oppose (unfair) surplus sharing by the elite. We predict that the probability of observing social unrest in a village increases with the sum of...

Do better material conditions improve well-being and mental health? Or does any positive relationship merely reflect that psychological well-being promotes economic success? We supply new responses to these questions by comparing winners and losers from a large Ethiopian housing lottery in a...

We provide causal evidence of how an increase in wealth affects support for redistribution and beliefs about the causes of poverty. Exploiting the variation in wealth created by an Ethiopian housing lottery, we show that general attitudes toward redistribution and inequality acceptance are...