Miscellaneous

This paper examines whether violent conflict deters qualified workers, affecting reconstruction efforts. We develop a compensating wage differentials model, demonstrating that jobs with higher risks of violence are associated with negative selection. We test this prediction using a field experiment in which we offer comparable jobs in low- and high-conflict areas in Colombia to a pool of qualified job seekers. The results show that application rates decrease by 12~percentage points due to the risk of violence.  A 20~percent increase in the wage offer helps increase the application rates for high-risk jobs but does not eliminate the gap. We found no evidence of negative selection for qualified applicants or women.  Exposure to violence in early childhood significantly increases the likelihood of applying for a risky job, suggesting a habituation effect of conflict. These results have critical implications for post-conflict labor markets and the design of peacebuilding policies.

School experiments have become an important research method enabling scholars to study the development of preferences and the causal effects of targeted interventions. However, the contextual complexities of school environments present implementation challenges that can compromise validity and threaten adherence to planned research protocols. Based on a survey of leading experts in the field, we identify seven aspects distinguishing school experiments from other field experiments and organize them around two defining features: child participants and the institutional structure of schools. We synthesize “lessons learned” to support successful implementation of planned school experiments. This guide bridges the gap between conceptual design and practical execution, promoting high implementation fidelity, internal validity, data quality, and adherence to best practices.

This study examines the relationship between 2D:4D finger digit ratios and economic preferences and behaviors in a large-scale dataset of over 1000 individuals from the Sub-Saharan country Ghana. Despite previous research suggesting links between digit ratios and various traits and behaviors, including those related to economics, our study does not find significant associations. We build upon recent research, employing incentivized measures of economic preferences and behavior and a substantial sample size. Our findings contribute to the ongoing debate surrounding the validity and predictive power of digit ratios in measuring prenatal hormone exposure and their association with human behavior.

We introduce a survey module for simple elicitation of behavioral factors (economic preferences, personal traits, cognitive biases). We extend the survey module of Falk (2023)  by developin further survey instruments for  behavioral factors of relevance for studies in developing economies. We first elicit behavioral factors with well-established incentivized lab experiments. After four weeks for each participant, we elicit the same factors with a survey module. Our contributions are fourfold. First, we validate simple elicitation methods for developing contexts in realistic scenarios where enumerators collect the data. Second, we enrich and validate existing modules by evaluating survey questions for behavioral factors relevant in developing contexts. Third, we examine the robustness of these modules in elicitation conditions (face-to-face, phone interviews, online surveys) that are common practice in development contexts. Fourth, we assess whether non-incentivized measures explain the same amount of heterogeneity as the incentivized measures under the different eliciation methods.