Productivity, Career Choice, and Colonial Legacies : Essays in Development Economics

• From Agreement to Effort: Gendered Labor Market Frictions in Ugandan AgricultureFemale-managed plots in Uganda earn lower revenues than male-managed ones. We study labor access and post-hiring performance via three field experiments. A real-stakes WTA task shows no differences in workers' reservation wages by farmer gender. In a structured bargaining task, mismatched pairs are slightly less likely to reach agreement, with no robust pay gaps; a modest liquidity top-up has no effect. In a real-effort land-preparation study, mismatched pairs deliver slightly lower quality and are monitored more, though estimates are imprecise. A simple model in which farmers choose monitoring and workers respond with effort implies higher effort costs for male than female workers, no meaningful differences in monitoring costs across matches, and heterogeneous monitoring effectiveness. Counterfactuals indicate which levers could aid female farmers; price-based access frictions and moral hazard alone seem too small to explain the productivity gap.Does Digital Finance Alone Transform Small Businesses? Experimental Evidence from TanzaniaWe evaluate expanding women microentrepreneurs' access to a mobile savings account in Tanzania, with and without business training, combining surveys with mobile transaction data. Both treatments sharply increase early platform use, yet adoption fades and overall savings gains are modest and short-lived. Training boosts early adoption and yields more persistent improvements in business practices. In the short run, neither intervention raises sales or profits; however, the combined arm increases secondary business creation, subjective well-being, and control over income. Over a longer horizon, women who received training report higher sales and profits than controls. We find no evidence that access alone shields firms from major shocks or spurs large expansions, underscoring the role of skills over digital finance by itself.Information, Expectations, and Preferences: Occupational Choices of Young Adults in UgandaWe study young adults' occupational choices in urban Uganda using a survey of 1,003 men and women. Respondents are misinformed about population earnings and overoptimistic about their own prospects. An information treatment reduces expectations but does not change choices. To isolate preferences, we estimate a random utility model and find that financial returns and perceived family approval strongly shape choices. Expectations and preferences together generate gendered sorting across occupations, an important driver of earnings gaps. Counterfactuals suggest that relaxing perceived family approval constraints would raise the share of women selecting male-dominated jobs by about 11%.The Colonial Roots of Homophobic Attitudes in Sub-Saharan AfricaWe use a co-ethnic border regression discontinuity design in Sub-Saharan Africa to test whether colonial rule and colonizer identity shaped attitudes toward homosexuals. Comparing co-ethnics across former colonial borders with rich controls, we find: no significant differences between uncolonized Liberia and adjacent formerly colonized areas; more anti-homosexual attitudes on the British side of partitioned homelands relative to non-British sides, a pattern driven by greater tolerance in former Portuguese areas (i.e., Mozambique) rather than a British–French gap; and no significant differences around the British–French demarcation in Cameroon. Colonial legacies are context-specific, also shaping views on religion, ethnicity, and immigration, rather than implying uniform intolerance.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Nationalekonomi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Economics (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Development Economics

Labor Economics

Gender

Occupational Choice

Information Frictions & Expectations

Digital Finance

Entrepreneurship

Colonial Legacies

Social Attitudes

Sub-Saharan Africa

Economics

nationalekonomi

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