Essays in Behavioral Development Economics: Social Frictions in Labor and Learning

Abstract

This dissertation presents three essays in behavioral development economics that study how social and psychological frictions shape the effectiveness of development policies and programs. While large-scale investments in development have contributed to substantial reductions in global poverty, interventions can generate muted or heterogeneous impacts. The essays examine how emotions, social norms, stigma, and interpersonal relationships influence behavioral responses to policies aimed at improving well-being, productivity, and aid allocation. The first chapter studies the role of peer group structure in shaping the effectiveness of a school-based trauma intervention in Zimbabwe. Using a randomized controlled trial across lower-secondary schools, I evaluate a program that combines teacher training with a student-facing, peer-based intervention known as Freedom Clubs. I develop a simple model in which participation in group-based trauma programming entails social image costs that vary with relational closeness. Consistent with this framework, I find that treatment effects on trauma-related outcomes are heterogeneous: impacts are strongest when students are grouped with either very close peers or relative strangers, and weakest at moderate levels of closeness. Given the limited number of schools and clusters, statistical power is constrained and the resulting estimates should be interpreted cautiously. Noticeably, average effects are small and imprecisely estimated. Teacher training alone also yields few consistent benefits, with point estimates that, while imprecisely estimated, tend to move in negative directions. The second chapter examines how inequality generates behavioral responses in low-income labor markets and how informal redistributive institutions may mitigate these responses. Using original survey data from rural western Kenya, I document strongly egalitarian fairness preferences, widespread expectations of envy and sanctioning following unequal gains, and the ubiquity of social and kinship taxation. Experimentally varied hypothetical scenarios show that inequality is expected to substantially increase harmful sanctioning behaviors, but that these effects are attenuated when advantaged individuals are embedded in resource-sharing relationships, particularly when inequality arises through luck rather than favoritism. The chapter also presents a pre-analysis plan for a lab-in-the-field experiment with sugarcane factory workers to test these mechanisms under real incentives. The third chapter studies the political economy of development assistance by examining how U.S. cargo preference regulations affect the allocation of food aid. Using historical data on U.S. food aid shipments and freight rates, I show that cargo preference requirements raise transportation costs and distort aid allocations.