Research

Abstract: Why does fertility vary so much across societies, even conditional on income, ed-ucation, and health? We investigate whether precolonial kinship structure — specifically, unilineal descent – acts as a deep cultural determinant of fertility. Using datafrom39sub-Saharan African countries and a spatial regression discontinuity designat historical ethnic boundaries, we find that unilineal descent raises fertility by 0.2-0.3 children per woman, roughly one-third the effect of female education. The effect attenuates with precolonial state centralization, historical missionary exposure, andproximity to urban centers. We propose a framework in which lineage size generatespositive externalities, giving rise to pronatalist norms sustained through internalizedconcerns for lineage continuity and kin pressure – mechanisms we document using case studies from Burkina Faso and Benin.

Abstract: Non-participation in household decisions is commonly interpreted as weak empowerment. We challenge this interpretation by showing that non-participation can be a strategic choice — a form of delegation — when a spouse expects the decision outcome to be sufficiently close to her preferences regardless of her involvement. We propose a model of imperfect information and derive conditions under which delegation arises in equilibrium: it occurs when the opportunity cost of participation in the decision is large compared to the preference gap between spouses. A key implication is that the spouse who receives authority may achieve lower welfare than the one who delegates. We test these predictions in two incentivized experiments conducted among couples in Belgium/France and Benin, finding strong support across both contexts. Survey evidence further confirms the external validity of the results. Our findings suggest that standard survey measures of intra-household bargaining, by conflating strategic delegation with disempowerment, may incorrectly reflect the distribution of power within households

AEA RCT Registry: AEARCTR-0011353 

Illustration: Moké (1981)

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: 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.

This paper assesses the effect of rural-to-urban migration on sending households' financial practices andinvestigates the various mechanisms possibly driving this effect. China is an attractive case for this study as it combines massive internal migration flows with dramatic changes in financial services over the past 20 years. Using household-level data from rural China in 2013 and 2018 and applying an instrumental variable approach, we show how the use of nancial services by left-behind families is altered by migration. We especically explore the access to formal savings, the use of digital payments and the types of debts that households take on. As far as the mechanisms at stake are concerned, we examine the income effect of remittances on nancial practices, as well as changes that may be driven by a transfer of practices andknowledge and/or by a shift in the decision-making power within the household.