Development, social norms, and assignment to task

Fafchamps, Marcel

doi:10.1073/pnas.1019457108

Cited by 32 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…For countries at low levels of economic development, agglomeration externalities arise in part because spatial concentration of demand makes job specialization possible (Fafchamps and Shilpi, 2005;Fafchamps, 2012). Many goods and services that, in rural areas, are provided outside of the market realm fall within the market domain in cities (Fafchamps, 2011). As a result, many individuals are able to have a non-farm job as their primary occupation, a fact that should be reflected in occupational data.…”

Section: Conceptual Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gold mining and proto-urbanization: recent evidence from Ghana

2016

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Central place theory predicts that agglomeration can arise from external shocks. We investigate whether gold mining is a catalyst for early stages of urbanization in rural Ghana. We call this phenomenon proto-urbanization. Using cross-sectional data, we find that locations with gold mines exhibit most of the telltale signs of proto-urbanization. They have higher population densities, and they are also sites where more sophisticated forms of economic activity agglomerate. These findings are consistent with agglomeration effects that induce non-farm activities to coalesce in a particular location. Over time, we find that an increase in gold production is associated with more specialization, but not with a clear sectoral transformation of employment. We also find that the changes arising from increasing gold production are not reversed when large gold mines shrink. Rather, they continue to become more consistent with processes of structural transformation. * We would like to express our sincere thanks to Dr. Phylomena Nyarko of Ghana Statistical Services for making the census data (10 percent sample) available to us, and to Mrs. Jacqueline Anum and Harold Coulombe for their generous help with the data. We would also like to thank Ryan Engstrom and Richard Hinton from George Washington University, and Brian Blankespoor from the World Bank for their assistance with various GIS data. We benefited from comments and suggestions from an anonymous referee,

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Section: Conceptual Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gold mining and proto-urbanization: recent evidence from Ghana

2016

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“…Gender norms are believed to play an important role in perpetuating gender inequalities in child survival, education, control over assets and economic participation, in a wide range of developing countries (for reviews of this literature, see World Bank ; Eriksson ) . And changes in norms and attitudes are believed to be important for changing the process whereby individuals in a society are allocated to tasks, which is itself an integral part of economic development (Fafchamps ). We hypothesize four potential pathways through which female early marriage in developing countries can affect women's beliefs and attitudes towards traditional gender norms.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Early Marriage, Social Networks and the Transmission of Norms

Asadullah

Wahhaj

2018

Economica

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We investigate whether female early marriage is a conduit for the transmission of social norms, specifically norms relating to gender roles and rights within the household. We exploit differences in the age at menarche between sisters as an exogenous source of variation in marriage age. This approach allows us to control for beliefs and attitudes that are transmitted from parents to children. Using a sample of unmarried adolescents in Bangladesh, we first show that the timing of onset of menstruation has no direct effect on adolescent attitudes on attitudes towards gender norms. Yet we find that early marriage increases agreement with statements supportive of gender bias in the allocation of resources, and worsens the quality of a woman's post-marital social network. We also find evidence suggesting that schooling is a complement and the quality of the social network a substitute of later marriage in terms of their effects on attitudes towards traditional gender norms.

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“…Second, our findings potentially cast some new light on the relationship between altruistic preferences and the development of market institutions. Fafchamps () argues that economic development requires a change in allocation processes away from allocation within the household or extended family to allocation within markets or within hierarchical organizations. This transformation requires a change in social norms from risk sharing in long‐term gift exchange to contract compliance in an anonymous market setting.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are People Equally Other‐Regarding When Selecting a Match Versus Choosing an Allocation?

Bélot

Fafchamps²

2018

Southern Economic Journal

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There are many assignment processes in which agents are given the opportunity to unilaterally select a match. Resulting allocations can be inefficient if agents do not internalize the consequences of their choice on others. To test this formally, we study how other‐regarding behaviors vary across two decision contexts: when subjects make a pure allocation decision; and when they select a partner. In both settings each subject's decision is final and it affects their payoff and that of other subjects in the same way. We find that subjects are more likely to sacrifice their own material well‐being to increase that of others when dividing a pie than when selecting a partner in a large anonymous setting—even though the consequences on the material payoffs of others are identical. These findings suggest that in assignment processes with unilateral selection, efficiency can be improved by presenting the selection process as a choice between outcomes involving multiple individuals, instead of simply selecting a match for themselves.

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Development, social norms, and assignment to task

Cited by 32 publications

References 46 publications

Gold mining and proto-urbanization: recent evidence from Ghana

Gold mining and proto-urbanization: recent evidence from Ghana

Early Marriage, Social Networks and the Transmission of Norms

Are People Equally Other‐Regarding When Selecting a Match Versus Choosing an Allocation?

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