This paper studies the role of information on the evolution of beliefs and smoking in the United States in the 20th and early 21st centuries. We develop a dynamic and dynastic model of smoking, mortality and beliefs. The information about the harmfulness of smoking comes from three different sources: (i) medical information or public health messages, including obfuscation from the tobacco industry, (ii) learning from individual health shocks, and (iii) social learning, understood as the diffusion of information and beliefs within and across social groups over time. We estimate the model using data on smoking behavior, health information and data on beliefs on the effect of smoking on health that cover several decades and different social groups. The estimated model shows that each of these mechanisms played an important role in the formation of beliefs about the harmfulness of smoking, and that social learning was particularly important for low educated individuals. 

We investigate whether and how strongly the local environment beyond the household can contribute to understanding the formation of children's economic preferences. 

We build on precise geolocation data for around 6000 children in rural Bangladesh, and use fixed effects, spatial autoregressive models and Kriging to capture the relation between the local environment and children's preferences. 

We show that models with spatial components explain a considerable part of so far unexplained variation in children’s preferences. Moreover, the "spatial stability" of economic preferences exceeds the village level.

Our results highlight the importance of the local environment in influencing the formation of children's preferences, which we quantify to be at least about as large as that of parental preferences.

This paper shows that a youth empowerment program in Bolivia reduced the reported prevalence of violence against girls during the COVID-19 lockdown. The program offered training in soft skills and technical skills, sexual education, mentoring and job-finding assistance. To measure the effects of the program, the study conducted a randomized control trial with 600 vulnerable adolescents. Results indicate that 7 months after its completion, the program increased girls’ earnings and decreased violence against girls. Violence was measured with both direct self-report questions and list experiments. These findings suggest that multi-faceted empowerment programs can reduce the level of violence  experienced by young women during high-risk periods.

This paper analyzes the effects of the sustained national minimum wage increase In Bolivia on the overall wage distribution and poverty rate. A pseudo-panel database is structured with information from household surveys conducted in 2005-2013. The results point to a positive effect of the minimum wage increases on the full wage distribution and on poverty reduction, considering both formal and informal sectors.