Research

Abstract: We examine the relationship between the social organization of communities - their emphasis on unilineal descent - and fertility. In unilineal societies, descent is traced primarily through either the mother's or the father's side, which strongly determines social identity, increases cohesion, and reinforces interdependence within the lineage. Numerous children are valued as reinforcing the position of a continuous lineage, conferring strength and prestige on its members. We show that, across countries, unilineal societies have higher fertility levels and experience slower fertility decline. These results are validated within sub-Saharan Africa using a spatial regression discontinuity design along ancestral ethnic boundaries. Furthermore, we show that the positive influence of unilineal descent on fertility is driven by patrilineal ethnic groups. In terms of mechanisms, we find suggestive evidence that the stronger motive to continue one's lineage, higher marital stability, the prevalence of extended households and polygyny, and the lower bargaining power of women in patrilineal societies drive fertility upward.

Abstract: This paper examines how colonial judicial institutions in the Belgian Congo aligned their functioning with economic extraction objectives, particularly in response to gender-specific labor demands. We construct a novel database of customary court records from 1930–1960 to test whether judicial decisions were shaped by differential agricultural labor requirements across crops. Different crops imposed specific labor needs based on gender and skill, and we hypothesize that sentencing patterns—such as imprisonment or rulings affecting geographic mobility—were adapted to stabilize labor supply and support colonial economic goals.

Focusing on the Equateur Province, we link judicial outcomes to a measure of crop profitability constructed from historical crop prices and agricultural suitability data. Our findings indicate that in territories with higher female labor demand, women faced harsher rulings in marital disputes and were less likely to receive imprisonment sentences, reflecting the economic opportunity cost of removing them from the working in the fields. This study contributes to the literature by providing a comprehensive overview of the functioning of customary courts and by quantitatively demonstrating the role of judicial systems in enforcing colonial labor objectives. Additionally, this paper highlights the understudied gendered nature of labor exploitation under colonial rule.

Abstract: Pineapple is a dynamic value chain in Benin that attracts investments from various stakeholders. Small-scale farmers produce the majority of the crop and most of them are men. Although women play an important role in agriculture overall and often manage their own fields, few of them cultivate pineapple on their fields. They face several specific, gender-related constraints preventing their involvement in this productive activity, including liquidity constraints, problems with the planification of activities over the course of the 18 months production cycle, bookkeeping or competing demands on their time. Exploratory field work reveals that husbands’ support is a crucial determinant of women’s success in this activity. A husband may offer financial support or help in monitoring workers for example. This raises the following questions: Is this support offering a (second-best) substitute for access to financial market or training or is it rather a complement (or a necessary condition) for a woman’s investment in this productive activity? What are the costs of seeking one husband’s help for one’s own business? Why are some husbands reluctant in offering this support? May this support be stimulated by an exogenous intervention? We investigate these questions taking advantage from an intervention set up by the Belgian Development Agency (Enabel) in order to encourage women involvement in pineapple production. It includes a business training and a generous subsidy for women to start or to expand a pineapple production. With a view to stimulate husbands’ support, in some groups, husbands have been invited to take part in the training and design, with their wife, an action plan for her pineapple production. 

Abstract: Bargaining power within the couple is often proxied in surveys by measures of who has a say in the decision -- with the idea that the more a couple discusses about choices to make, the more balanced is the bargaining power within the couple. However, arguing and discussing over a choice could also reflect non-aligned preferences among partners: with perfectly aligned preferences, who decides is not so important and delegation of the decision power becomes an efficient outcome.

We explore this pattern in a theoretical framework looking at the equilibrium decision structure in the household, analyzing how the degree of preference alignment and the differences in the opportunity costs of time determine when delegation or negociation is preferable. We consider a non-cooperative framework for intra-household decisions drawing from models of delegation of authority in firms developed by Dessein (2002) and Aghion and Tirole (1997). We test the predictions of the model in an online experiment conducted among couples.