Kammer, D. & A. Greiner-Filsinger (2026): “Genocide, women’s empowerment, and intergenerational transmission of violent attitudes,” World Development, 200, 107266. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2025.107266
In this paper, we explore how mass violence shapes attitudes on violence against children, and we examine how these attitudes are transmitted across generations in the context of the Rwandan genocide. We exploit spatial variation in genocide intensity from the Gacaca records and temporal variation in women’s timing of socialization from three rounds of the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) in a difference-in-differences framework and find that younger women from regions more affected by genocide hold less violent attitudes compared to their peers from less-affected regions. Using an instrumental variable approach to estimate the transmission effect, we also show that descendants of these younger women from regions more affected by genocide are similarly less likely to develop violent attitudes. We provide evidence that genocide-induced women’s empowerment is the underlying mechanism. As such, our findings underscore previous evidence on the conflict–prosociality link by showing that mass violence can catalyze progressive norm change across generations, but also call for a more detailed investigation of the underlying adaptation mechanisms of the second generation.
Keywords: Women’s Empowerment, Mass Violence, Attitudes, Intergenerational Transmission
JEL codes: J13, D74, D79
Income shocks and education: How coffee price booms affect schooling in Rwanda (currently under review at the Journal of Development Economics)
This paper provides novel evidence on the short and long term effects of coffee price booms on schooling outcomes in Rwanda. Exploiting the exogeneity of international coffee prices and spatial variation in coffee cultivation intensity across Rwanda, I show that children are more likely to attend school when coffee prices are high and complete more years of schooling by the age of 18. I provide evidence that income effects are the main mechanism and dominate increased opportunity costs of schooling. However, educational gains are concentrated among households near privately operated washing stations, rather than households near cooperatives, suggesting that privately managed washing stations transmit income gains differently to local households than cooperatives. For privately operated stations, smaller station sizes, rather than differences in coffee quality, explains the observed effects. Overall, my findings highlight important heterogeneity in how commodity booms translate into educational gains in exporting countries.
Keywords: Commodity booms, income shocks, schooling, coffee, cooperatives
JEL codes: O13, O12, I20
The Human Capital Costs of Violent Teachers (R&R at the Economics of Education Review)
This paper provides evidence on the effect of violent teachers on human capital formation. I combine panel data from multiple cohorts of primary students in rural Malawi with detailed information on their teachers’ violent behavior during class, including physical, emotional and sexual violence. To tackle the potential endogeneity of teacher violence, I apply a difference-in-differences strategy with staggered treatment and estimate a value-added model that includes teacher fixed effects and lagged student's test scores. My results suggest that violent teachers reduce successful grade progression by 30 percentage points and math scores by 15 percentage points over an academic year. Early secondary students show the highest effects. I do not find any significant effects on English and Chichewa test scores.
Keywords: Teacher Violence, Education, Test Scores, Grade Progression, Malawi
JEL codes: I25, O12, I20
Violent Norms, Risk and Time Preferences After Conflict. Evidence from the Democratic Republic of Congo (with A. Crombach, A. Hoeffler and A.Chibashimba
Deforestation Regulation and Labor Allocation in the Ethiopian Coffee Sector (with S. Tamru)
Intergenerational Transmission of Violent Attitudes (with A. Greiner)