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The gender pay gap is a persistent and pervasive problem. This study systematically reviews the literature on two determinants of the wage gap that have attracted attention more recently: the contribution of personality traits and social norms. Based on 39 studies identified, we discuss how personality traits and social norms are operationalized and how much of the gender wage gap they explain. We find that both are important in understanding the gap and that they are closely related, most notably, as preferences are reflections of personality traits and social norms. However, there is no clear consensus on the constructs, what they precisely capture and how to measure them. Thus, there is a great deal of heterogeneity in the results, with the contribution of personality traits and social norms to the pay gap ranging from a few to more than 20%. The literature is not conclusive on whether these factors rather explain the gap or are a source of discrimination. Key limitations of this literature emanate from concerns about the potential endogeneity of personality traits and social norms, and that studies have largely ignored that we can adapt our personality, preferences, and attitudes in adult life.

This paper investigates the effects of social assistance on subjective well-being looking at the case of Kyrgyzstan. For this purpose, we exploit recent changes in the design of social assistance and apply a difference in difference (DiD) method combined with an inverse probability weighting (IPW) technique. In contrast to the existing literature, we find that in the short-term, the receipt of social assistance benefits is associated with lower levels of subjective well-being. Our findings also reveal that participation in social assistance leads to some reduction in satisfaction regarding recipients' own economic conditions. Moreover, we find that the negative effects on subjective well-being disappear for the oldest generations, which experienced the dissolution of the Soviet Union. By contrast, the effect is negative for the youth, who grew up in a new society where needing help is ultimately the responsibility of the individual citizen. For individuals with high trust in political institutions, the negative effect of state intervention does not hold, while it persists in case of low trust in political institutions.

Governments around the world have taken drastic measures to contain the spread of COVID-19. Policy responses to the pandemic could affect local food prices in important ways. In this paper, we hypothesize that food prices in regionally integrated markets are more sensitive to mobility constraints than those in segmented markets. We use World Food Programme price data from 774 retail markets in 44 low and middle-income countries to test whether and how food prices have been affected by the stringency of COVID-19 containment measures. We assess market segmentation based on pre-COVID-19 price data and measure government responses using the Oxford Coronavirus Government Response Tracker. Our results show that more stringent policy responses increase food prices for integrated markets but not for segmented markets. The impact of the stringency of policy responses on food prices seems to be mediated by reductions in mobility and moderated by the dependence of markets on trade before COVID-19.

First published:16 September 2019 This paper investigates the factors driving manufacturing growth accelerations in a sample of 134 developing countries over the period 1970 to 2014. We first identify growth acceleration episodes of manufacturing value added (MVA) by their year of initiation and according to a country's income classification. We then estimate a probit model to explain what factors predict these MVA growth accelerations. Our results show that human capital and institutions represent contextual factors that favor the growth of manufacturing, together with macroeconomic policies related to investment, and openness to foreign trade and capital. We also find that most of these factors not only foster episodic accelerations of industry, but they contribute as well to a sustained process of industrialization that characterized the process of economic growth of a few successful countries over the period 1970 to 2014. Government of Japan through the Development Cooperation Trust Fund

Media outlets globally have been reporting about civil protests against Chinese investments in Africa. We provide new evidence on this controversial topic and investigate the influence of Chinese official projects on political participation in 54 African countries between 20 0 0 and 2014. Using 50 x 50 km cells as the unit of analysis, we match data on the occurrence of protests and other forms of political participation to georeferenced data on projects financed by the Chinese government. We find that cells which receive a larger number of projects are more likely to experience protests. Further, our analysis suggests that citizens' heightened perception of China's rising influence on the domestic economy and lowered trust in the local government are two channels through which projects might motivate local protests. (c) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

We study an age-old question in political economy: does government spending on welfare ensure peace? This question was at the heart of the European Welfare State model of the early 20th century, and remains relevant today in face of rising inequalities and political conflict. Yet there is limited empirical evidence about this question. We make use of a panel of 12 Latin American countries over the period 1970–2010 to show that welfare spending has led to substantial reductions in conflict across the region. This effect is more pronounced when associated with reductions in inequality and increasing social and institutional trust.

This article empirically investigates the effect of structural transformation on wage inequality in Asia, using industry-level data for three skill groups of workers. While structural transformation, associated with technological progress, productivity catching-up, and capital deepening, has contributed to Asias sustained growth, its effect on income inequality remains uncertain. Our results show that the process of economic transformation has exacerbated inequality in the region by increasing the relative share of high-skilled workers in total compensation. This is mainly due to a shift toward more productiveand more intensive in the use of skilled laboractivities both within and between industries. However, we also find that policy responses, especially investments in education, mitigate the increase in inequality.

We combine data on Chinese development projects with data from Demographic and Health Surveys to study the impact of Chinese aid on household welfare in sub-Saharan Africa. We use a novel methodology to test the effect of Chinese aid on three important development outcomes: education, health, and nutrition. For each outcome, we use difference-in-difference estimations to compare household areas near Chinese project sites to control areas located farther away, before and after receiving Chinese aid. This empirical strategy rules out many confounding factors that can bias measuring the impact of Chinese aid on our outcome variables. First, we find that Chinese projects significantly improve education and child mortality in treatment areas, but do not significantly affect nutrition. Second, social sector projects have a larger effect on outcomes than economic projects. Third, we do not find significant effects for projects that ended more than five years before the post-treatment survey wave. Our results are robust to a host of robustness checks.

This article analyzes the role of individual redistributive preferences on protest participation. The article focuses on Latin America, a region that has experienced substantial protests and demonstrations in the last decade, making use of individual-level data on redistributive preferences and protest participation collected across eighteen countries in 2010, 2012, and 2014. The results show evidence for an association between strong individual preferences for redistribution and participation in protests motivated by the low quality of services and institutions, failures to reduce corruption, and perceived lower standards of living. The results are robust to alternative estimators, samples, and model specifications and not affected by endogeneity concerns.

This paper analyses the drivers of successful industrialization in developing countries. We consider two different periods, 1970-1990 and 1991-2014, likely to be affected by different patterns of industrialization due to major political, technological and organizational changes. We subsequently develop a methodology to identify a small group of countries for each period, which have exhibited a pattern of industrialization that is not only remarkable in absolute terms, but also sustained. Our analysis reveals that successful industrialization is driven by a combination of factors, including a country's initial economic conditions, factor endowments and other characteristics, such as demography and geography. We also show that other variables that policymakers can control play a crucial role. This includes, among others, the promotion of investments (both public and privately funded) and education; the management of trade and capital openness; financial sector development and the promotion of both macroeconomic and institutional stability. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

This paper aims to advance understanding about the relationship between taxation and inequality in developing countries, focusing on the recent experience of Latin America. Tax changes promoted equality since the early 2000s. In particular, the increasing contribution of direct taxes with respect to indirect taxes promoted the progressivity of the tax system and contributed to the reduction of inequality. Yet the effectiveness of taxation in promoting equality in Latin America is still limited by several factors such as the low average tax revenue, the inability to tax top incomes and the low contribution of taxes on property., Journal of International Development, 30 (2)

Latin American countries experienced important changes in the 2000s. The implementation of fiscal reforms, public debt reduction and the high level of accumulated reserves gave them more policy space than in the past. As a result, Latin American countries were able to implement countercyclical policies to face the negative economic and social consequences associated with the recent macroeconomic shock. Some countries performed better than others. In particular, Social Democratic and Centrist governments enjoyed more fiscal space; they had realized larger budget surpluses over the good years and were able to cope with the crisis without impairing their fiscal conditions. Yet, Latin America has experienced a public finance deterioration in the most recent years. While governments are showing an increasing ability on taxation they are still facing some problems on the expenditure side. As a result, fiscal policy returned acyclical after the period of the crisis. The sustainability of public accounts may be strengthened increasing tax pressure on the richest, reducing tax evasion and improving current spending efficiency. However, the increasing political problems are putting many questions about future trends of public finance in the region.

Published online: 15 Apr 2015 This paper analyses the long run determinants of wage inequality in the manufacturing sector for a group of East Asian countries that have experienced rapid structural transformations in recent decades. In line with the skill biased technological change hypothesis, our results show that within manufacturing structural change which fosters the participation of higher skilled workers is a strong determinant of the wage premium. However, the paper also highlights an unusual feature of the East Asian model, showing how well-designed education policies, prudent macroeconomic management and selective policies towards foreign capital can help to buffer the pressure of structural change on wage inequality, even in an open economy context.

We examined 40 psychotherapies, some delivered in combination with pharma-cotherapy, which were all conducted by cognitive behavioral or psychodynamically oriented therapists in a general hospital center for the treatment of light to moder-ate depressive disorders. Our goal was to examine the relationship between early outcome (defined as change in Beck Depression Inventory scores between sessions 2 and 15) and early therapy alliance (as measured at sessions 1 to 5 by the Working Alliance Inventory). We also wanted to concurrently examine the effect of initial depressive symptomatology (BDI at session 2) on early outcome. For the entire sample, both early alliance and initial depressive symptomatology were found to significantly correlate with outcome, the latter more strongly so. However, after di-viding the patient sample into subgroups based on different initial levels of depres-sion, early outcome for patients with depression of intermediate severity was found to be better predicted by early alliance than by initial depression. These results sug-gest that there may be a patient subgroup for whom a good early alliance optimally mitigates the self-perpetuating action of initial depression.