Abstract
Cultural norms may influence parental behavior that shapes children’s human capital. We study the effect of traditional norms on parental investment in human capital using recent survey data from Tanzania. Our novel data allow us
to capture detailed parental investment behavior, such as time and attention devoted to children’s learning. We focus on two dominant forms of traditional kinship norms in developing countries -matrilineal and patrilineal kinship norms.
Employing a spatial fuzzy regression discontinuity design, we find that matrilineal parents invest less in their children’s human capital. They spend less time and attention on their children’s learning and are less likely to sign up their children for preschool, private school, and primary school. Lower parental investment by matrilineal parents is reflected in the poorer cognitive skills of their children, captured by standardized test scores on numeracy and literacy. We further explore various mechanisms and the effect of a nationwide policy reform that was intended to undo traditional norms.
Agenda scientifique
Oct
9
lun
2023
Oct 9 @ 11 h 00 – 12 h 15
Abstract:
Committees typically decide through voting. One of the challenges of the voting mechanism is to aggregate information when committee members have different quality of information. In such an environment, more complex rules allow voters to better aggregate information by endogenously allocating more decision power to members with better information. We consider two polar examples of voting rules in terms of complexity: majority voting and continuous voting (CV). We compare the mechanisms using laboratory experiments, and we also study participants’ preferences over these. We find that CV does better than majority voting on average, but the difference is lower than theoretically predicted. One of the significant departures from theory is that voters with intermediate information quality attach too much weight on their votes. Communication makes these differences over mechanisms disappear. Finally, despite the higher average welfare under CV, both rules get a similar support.
Partagez cette actualité !
Oct
16
lun
2023
Oct 16 @ 11 h 00 – 12 h 15
Partagez cette actualité !
Abonnez-vous au calendrier filtré