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Publications (35)
Journal Article
We design a lab-in-the-field experiment involving naturally occurring groups operating in three South-African townships. We introduce an incentives-based mechanism named 'participatory incentives' consisting of monetary incentives that are awarded conditional on the group reaching a threshold of...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that involving beneficiaries in charity decision-making ensures better governance processes. This study provides the first experimental test of the effects of beneficiaries’ participation in the decision of how to spend a charity's funds. We consider four different...
Journal Article
– Mandated political representation and murders
This study provides the first country-wide research evidence that an affirmative action policy may induce a backlash. I exploit the timing of the implementation of castebased electoral quotas across and within the states of India. The results show that the implementation of the electoral quotas...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– Evidence from the Han and ethnic minorities in China
This study investigates the unexpected impact that enforcing birth control policies in China has upon the educational stratification between the Han majority, the policy target group, and ethnic minorities, a partially excluded group. Exploring county-level variation in the value of fines levied for...
Journal Article
We implement a lab-in-the-field experiment among childcare workers in Chandigarh, India, to evaluate discriminatory attitudes of the Hindu workers toward Muslim children. We use a third-party allocation game that controls for selfish payoff-maximizing preferences across the treatments and focus...
Journal Article
– Evidence from Chittagon Hill tracts of Bangladesh
We evaluate a development programme with an important maternal health care component in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh. The region and its mostly indigenous people experienced violent conflict in the past and face a constant risk of recurring conflict. Given this fragile setting, our work...
Journal Article
– The case of indigenous Australians
This paper provides new insights on the labour market discrimination faced by indigenous Australians one of the most disadvantaged indigenous populations in developed countries. Combining two large, nationally representative datasets, we decompose the employment gap between indigenous and non...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
We take school admission mechanisms to the lab to test whether the widely-used manipulable Immediate Acceptance mechanism disadvantages students of lower cognitive ability and whether this leads to ability segregation across schools. Results show this to be the case: lower ability participants...
Blog
Racial wage inequality and discrimination have pervaded South African society for centuries. Apartheid legislation cemented these disparities by institutionalizing white job reservation and many other unfair practices. While racial wage gaps started to decline towards the end of apartheid in 1994...
– The case of the Assam insurgency
Girls in India face many challenges. From the moment they are conceived, they are less likely to be born as compared to boys. This presence of “missing girls” appears to be linked to access to ultrasound technology. Moreover, girls also get breastfed for a shorter duration and get fewer childcare...
The Center for American Progress estimates the costs of discrimination at US$64 billion per year, or roughly 2 million annually displaced American workers (Burns, 2012). Discrimination is clearly costly. It is also, almost universally, a unique and puzzling issue. This blog looks at two recent WIDER...
Working Paper
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– An analysis of attitudes towards redistribution across groups in Africa
Inequalities between ethnic or racial groups, defined as horizontal inequalities, are pervasive and persistent. They persist due to cumulative and reinforcing inequalities arising from unequal access to different types of capital. Affirmative action policies can provide promising opportunities for...
Working Paper
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– Comparative evidence from Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam
We investigate whether there are racial and ethnic disparities in children’s education in Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam. We find that in all the four countries, and especially in Vietnam, children from small ethnic groups have lower education attainment and cognitive ability. The gap in...
Working Paper
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In India, caste shapes access to a variety of resources and outcomes mainly through its influence on inter-generational prosperity, but also the linked phenomenon of discrimination. This paper examines whether caste-based differences in access to formal agricultural loans reflect discrimination in...
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Research on caste-based inequalities in India has generally focused on differences between large categories such as the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes, and the remainder of the population. We contribute to the literature on horizontal inequalities in India by looking within these groupings...
Working Paper
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We evaluate the effectiveness of a post-conflict development programme on maternal health-care utilization in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh. Our work varies from conventional impact evaluation studies because of the inclusion of two post-conflict psychosocial risks: the household’s actual...
Working Paper
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The market environment in which discriminatory firms operate may be a relevant determinant of their extent of discrimination. In this paper we aim at analysing the effect of local labour market conditions on a firm’s decision to discriminate. We use a direct measure of discrimination using online...
Working Paper
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– Challenges and solutions
In this paper, we analyse which channels influence individual preferences concerning the choice of the official language in Zambia. We develop a theoretical framework, which is tested using data on elicited beliefs about the effects of changes in Zambia's language policy on schooling outcomes...
Working Paper
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– Evidence from ethnic minorities in China
This paper investigates the net impact of birth control policy in China on educational attainment of the partially excluded ethnic minorities. Exploring county-level variation in the value of fines levied for unsanctioned births, we show that more stringent enforcement of the birth control policy...
Working Paper
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– Evidence from a lab-in-the-field experiment in a South African township
The paper presents the results of a lab-in-the-field experiment in three South African townships located in the suburbs of Cape Town. The experimental design consists of a set of decisions on how the members of a naturally occurring group allocate an endowment to a private or to a public account. In...
Working Paper
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Mandated political representation over the last twenty years has had a different impact on the reporting of crime by the low castes than what is observed for the reporting of crime by women. I exploit the timing of the implementation of mandated political representation of the low castes to examine...
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– Caste, affirmative action, and stigma
This paper presents the results of an attitude survey administered to university students in India that attempts to delineate the social–psychological mechanisms of ‘externalization’ and ‘internalization’ to understand the possible consequences of stigma associated with caste-based affirmative...
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– The case of indigenous Australians
We assess the relative importance of statistical residual-based measures of discrimination in determining indigenous Australians’ perceptions of discrimination in the labour market. We find that statistical measures are largely unrelated to discrimination reports among males and negatively related...
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– An experimental investigation
This paper examines whether, in India, discriminatory practices by government-employed child caregivers along religious lines, lead to differential health outcomes among the care receiving children. Child caregivers participate in a novel allocation game where we incorporate treatments to...
Working Paper
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– Evidence from Assam
Using a large-scale novel panel dataset (2005–14) on schools from the Indian state of Assam, we test for the impact of violent conflict on female students’ enrollment rates. We find that a doubling of average killings in a district-year leads to a 13 per cent drop in girls’ enrollment rate with...
Working Paper
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Racial wage inequality and discrimination have pervaded South African society for centuries. Apartheid legislation cemented these disparities by institutionalizing white job reservation and many other unfair practices. While racial wage gaps started to decline towards the end of apartheid, they...
Working Paper
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Unsophisticated applicants can be at a disadvantage under manipulable and hence strategically demanding school choice mechanisms. Disclosing information on applications in previous admission periods makes it easier to assess the chances of being admitted at a particular school, and hence may level...
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Participatory community programmes are a potentially important tool for social empowerment and economic development. How do participatory programmes that specifically target women affect community trust and cohesion? This question is important since the longterm success of such programmes might...
Working Paper
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– Gender balance of power and intra-household educational spending in India
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 power...
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– Evidence from India
The persistent gap in economic outcomes between the upper and lower caste groups in India is typically explained through differences in endowments and the presence of discrimination. While there is sizable literature that examines caste gaps in physical and intellectual human capital, this paper...
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People with disabilities in Ghana and other developing economies are discriminated against in many fundamental elements of human empowerment such as education and employment. While some employers are unwilling to hire, the educational systems do not provide enabling environment for a good education...
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– Discrimination in the rental housing market in Delhi, India
Using an audit experiment carried out on of India’s largest real estate websites, we document striking variations between landlords’ treatment of upper-caste Hindus, Other Backward Castes, Scheduled Castes, and Muslims. We find strong evidence of discrimination against Muslim applicants, both in...
Displaying 32 of 35 results