Source Themes

Trade-Displaced or Trade-Stuck? Self-Employed Workers and Adaptation to Trade Shocks in Low-Income Countries

The self-employed do not adapt to trade shocks like the salaried, making the most documented responses - unemployment, informality - not automatic in regions with prevalent self-employment. I provide evidence of this, put forward self-employment-specific adaptation strategies, formalize them through a time allocation framework and test the model's predictions that workers with lower quality of outside options adapt less. I uncover sizeable heterogeneity in women's time allocation responses relative to men, suggesting gendered effects of gender-neutral trade policy.

Bias in parental investments and human capital gaps in India

Does gender inequality in parental investment come from them mis-measuring skills from the same objective measures across genders, or from biased conversion of these skills into investment? I adapt a dynamic model of skill formation and parental investment and show gender bias in parental appreciation of the same factor, with consequences on effective capital formation at later develomment stages.