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Productive assets promote the economic well-being of the rural poor. However, where frictions limit the exchange or ability to relinquish such assets, they may restrict access to high-return economic opportunities and undermine asset benefits causing a microeconomic parallel to the ‘resource curse’. Using variation arising from sibling sex composition and Hindu inheritance customs that favor sons, I test this hypothesis by estimating the long-term causal effect of inheriting land in rural India. Consistent with standard models, inheriting land facilitates borrowing and increases household consumption. Yet, where the ability to fully utilize land through markets is severely constrained by frictions, either cultural obligations or land market transaction costs, the effect on consumption is entirely attenuated and negative for a subset of the sample. Those who inherit land are significantly less likely to migrate to urban areas and enter non-agricultural work in rural areas; effects that are accentuated by such frictions. These findings suggest that inheriting land greatly influences occupational trajectories and can suppress consumption to an extent that may overwhelm its direct benefit.

 

“The Value of Advice: Evidence from the Adoption of Agricultural Practices”,  with Shawn Cole (Harvard Business School)

Attempts to explain the astonishing differences in agricultural productivity around the world typically focus on farm size, risk aversion, and credit constraints, with an emphasis on how they might serve to limit technology adoption. This paper takes a different tack: can managerial practices explain this variation in productivity? A randomized evaluation of the introduction of a mobile phone-based agricultural consulting service, Avaaj Otalo (AO), to farmers in Gujarat, India, reveals the following. Demand for agricultural advice is substantial and farmers offered the service turn less often to traditional sources of agricultural advice. Management practices change as well: farmers invest more in recommended agricultural inputs resulting in dramatic increases in yield for cumin (26.3%), and improvements in cotton yield (3.5%) for a sub-group that received frequent reminders to use the service. Peers of treated farmers also change their information sources and cropping decisions, albeit to a much smaller extent. Farmers appear willing to follow advice without understanding why it is correct: we do not observe gains in agricultural knowledge. We estimate that each dollar invested in AO generates a return of $10. These findings highlight the importance of managerial practices in facilitating technology adoption in agriculture. 

“Can Diversity Reduce Implicit Bias? Evidence from the Composition of Umpiring Panels in Cricket Matches” with Siddharth Eapen George (Harvard)

Labor market decisions – hiring, firing and promotions – are often strategic, considered choices in which it is difficult to discern bias that is unintentional and outside an individual’s awareness.  In contrast, competitive sport lends itself to the study of such implicit bias through requiring split-second decisions by officials. Using data on international cricket matches played over the past 130 years, we test whether the nationality of umpires (diversity)  influences on-field decisions using a difference-in-differences strategy. We find evidence that diversity reduces bias: if at least one of the two on-field umpires is not from the same nationality as the home team, discretionary decisions that go against the away team reduce by 8%. In contrast, decisions that leave little scope for discretion are unaffected by umpire nationality. Further, when the away team is from a different nationality and race, this effect is four times as large. Tests of the mechanism suggest that diversity operates by mitigating bias rather than leading to symmetric, opposing biases. These results suggest that introducing diversity to a panel of evaluators is an effective means of reducing implicit discrimination.

In Progress