We explore the role of reciprocity in wage determination by combining experimental and survey data. The experiment is similar to Berg, Dickhaut and McCabe's (1995) and is conducted with Ghanaian manufacturing workers. The survey relates to the same sample workers and the firms within which they...

Embezzlement of resources is hampering public service delivery throughout the developing world.Research on this issue is hindered by problems of measurement. To overcome these problems we use an economic experiment to investigate the determinants of coorupt behaviour. We focus on three aspects...

This paper analyzes how the employment/productivity profile of growth and its sectoral pattern are correlated with poverty reduction. The authors use a sample of 104 short-run growth spells in developing countries, between 1980 and 2001. They also identify some conditions of the labor market and...

Geographical imbalances in the health workforce have been a consistent feature of nearly all health systems, especially in developing countries. The authors investigate the willingness to work in a rural area among final year nursing and medical students in Ethiopia. Analyzing data obtained from...

Human capital theory predicts that differences in wages arise because of differences in human capital. The latter can be accumulated in two ways: through experience and education. Using matched firm-worker data for the Ghanaian Manufacturing sector we first test whether changes in wages over the...

This paper investigates the nature of unemployment among young men in urban Ethiopia and finds that it is concentrated among relatively well-educated first-time job seekers who aspire to a public sector job and spend on average close to four years in unemployment. This is consistent with a...

Although it is a common theoretical assumption that the chances to find a job fall with time in unemployment, this is not systematically confirmed by empirical evidence, and there is no evidence for developing countries. We develop a framework that allows us to test the four major explanations...

Most developing countries face important challenges regarding both the quality and quantity of health care they provide and there is a growing consensus that health workers play an important role in this. Although contemporary analysis of development emphasizes the central role of institutions,...

Background: Most developing countries face shortages of health workers in rural areas. This has profound consequences for health service delivery, and ultimately for health outcomes. To design policies that rectify these geographic imbalances it is vital to understand what factors determine...

Economists have traditionally assumed that individual behavior is motivated exclusively by extrinsic incentives. Social psychologists, in contrast, stress that intrinsic motivations are also important. In recent work, economic theorists have started to build psychological factors, like intrinsic...