Work

You've Earned It: Combining Field and Lab Experiments to Estimate the Impact of Human Capital on Social Preferences

Year: 2010

Type: report

Abstract: We combine data from a field experiment and a laboratory experiment to measure the causal impact of human capital on respect for earned property rights, a component of social preferences with important implications for economic growth and development.We find that higher academic achievement reduces the willingness of young Kenyan women to appropriate others' labor income, and shifts players toward a 50-50 split norm in the dictator game.This study demonstrates that education may have long-run impacts on social preferences, norms and institutions beyond the human capital directly produced.It also shows that randomized field experiments can be successfully combined with laboratory experiment data to measure causal impacts on individual values, norms, and preferences which cannot be readily captured in survey data.

Source: National Bureau of Economic Research

DOI: 10.3386/w16449

Authors: Pamela Jakiela, Edward Miguel, Vera te Velde

Institutions: National Bureau of Economic Research, Washington University in St. Louis, University of California, Berkeley

Language: English

Topic: Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies

Subfield: Safety Research

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Reduced inequalities

Open Access status: green

OpenAlex ID: W2117742072

Cites: 72

Cited by: 14

Related to: 10