Paper - Background

Question 1

Hanna & Linden (2012) Discrimination in Grading

Answer 1

Examines whether caste stereotypes distort teachers’ exam marking in Indian schools.

Question 2

Lavy (2008) Do Gender Stereotypes Reduce Girls or Boys Human Capital Outcomes?

Answer 2

Tests for gender bias in Israeli teachers’ internal high-school exam grades.

Question 3

Alesina et al. (2024) Revealing Stereotypes: Evidence from Immigrants in Schools

Answer 3

Assesses whether revealing implicit bias alters teachers’ grading of immigrant pupils in Italy.

Question 4

Bertrand & Mullainathan (2004) Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal?

Answer 4

Measures racial discrimination in U.S. hiring through a resume correspondence experiment.

Question 5

Altonji, Bharadwaj & Lange (2012) Changes in the Characteristics of American Youth

Answer 5

Documents shifts in demographic and skill composition of U.S. youth between 1979 and 1997 cohorts.

Question 6

Abramitzky & Lavy (2014) How Responsive is Investment in Schooling to Changes in Returns?

Answer 6

Exploits Israeli kibbutz wage reforms to test human-capital theory on schooling responsiveness to returns.

Question 7

Altonji, Bharadwaj & Lange (2008) The Anemic Response of Skill Investment to Skill Premium Growth

Answer 7

Investigates why soaring U.S. college wage premiums produced only modest increases in educational attainment.

Question 8

Jensen (2010) The Perceived Returns to Education and the Demand for Schooling

Answer 8

Tests whether information gaps about wage returns limit schooling in Dominican Republic.

Question 9

Acemoglu, Johnson & Robinson (2002) Reversal of Fortune

Answer 9

Explores why regions rich in 1500 are poor today, focusing on colonial institutional change.

Question 10

Acemoglu, Johnson & Robinson (2001) The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development

Answer 10

Identifies causal impact of institutions on income using settler mortality as an instrument.

Question 11

Nunn & Qian (2011) The Potatos Contribution to Population and Urbanization

Answer 11

Quantifies the potato’s role in Old-World population and urban growth after Columbian exchange.

Question 12

Imberman, Kugler & Sacerdote (2012) Katrinas Children: Peer Effects from Hurricane Evacuees

Answer 12

Mass post-Katrina migration created an exogenous shock to peer composition in Southern schools, letting researchers test whether sudden inflows of low-achieving evacuees harmed incumbents’ outcomes.

Question 13

Lavy & Schlosser (2011) Mechanisms and Impacts of Gender Peer Effects at School

Answer 13

Investigates whether classroom gender mix shapes learning and why, amid policy moves toward single-sex formats and skewed sex ratios in co-ed schools.

Question 14

Lavy & Sand (2018) Social Networks and Student Outcomes

Answer 14

Explores how friendship ties-reciprocal, followers, non-reciprocal-affect academic and non-cognitive outcomes during the disruptive move from primary to middle school.

Question 15

Gould, Lavy & Paserman (2004) Immigrating to Opportunity: School Quality for Ethiopian Israelis

Answer 15

Operation Solomon randomly dispersed 15k Ethiopian children across Israeli schools, generating a natural experiment on early-school quality impacts.

Question 16

Duflo & Hanna (2005) Monitoring Works: Getting Teachers to Come to School

Answer 16

Addresses chronic teacher absenteeism in rural India by tying pay to verifiable presence rather than relying on community oversight.

Question 17

Lavy (2009) Performance Pay and Teachers Effort, Productivity and Ethics

Answer 17

Evaluates a nationwide teacher bonus tournament in Israel rewarding classes’ matriculation performance amid debate on merit pay.

Question 18

Katz & Murphy (1992) Changes in Relative Wages, 19631987: Supply and Demand Factors

Answer 18

Pioneering decomposition of U.S. wage-structure shifts over 25 years, assessing whether demand for skill or institutions drove rising inequality.

Question 19

Autor, Levy & Murnane (2003) Skill Content of Recent Technological Change

Answer 19

Introduces a task framework where computers substitute for routine cognitive or manual tasks yet complement non-routine analytic and interactive work, linking rapid IT price declines to changing skill demand.

Question 20

Goos, Manning & Salomons (2014) Explaining Job Polarization

Answer 20

Documents pervasive employment polarization in 16 Western European countries since 1993 and quantifies whether routine-biased technological change (RBTC) and offshoring drive the hollowing of mid-skill jobs.

Question 21

Autor & Dorn (2013) Growth of LowSkill Service Jobs and US Polarization

Answer 21

Provides integrated theory showing consumer preferences plus IT-driven routine automation push non-college labour toward face-to-face service work, generating U-shaped employment and wage changes.

Question 22

Deming (2017) Growing Importance of Social Skills in the Labor Market

Answer 22

Argues social-interactive abilities mitigate coordination costs in team production, making them increasingly valuable as routine tasks computerize.

Question 23

Cavounidis et al. (2024) Nature of Technological Change 19602016

Answer 23

Presents unified technological explanation for both worker mobility across occupations and changing skill mix within jobs over six decades.

Question 24

Cavounidis et al. (2024) Obsolescence Rents: Truckers & Impending Computerization

Answer 24

Models labour markets where looming technology shocks create ‘anticipatory-dread’ phase, yielding wage premia and older workforce in threatened occupations.

Question 25

Acemoglu & Restrepo (2022) Tasks, Automation and US Wage Inequality

Answer 25

Quantifies how automation-induced task displacement reshaped US wage structure, stressing routine workers in rapidly automating industries.

Question 26

Frey & Osborne (2017) Future of Employment: Susceptibility to Computerisation

Answer 26

Assesses which US occupations could be automated given advances in machine learning and robotics, challenging assumptions that only routine tasks are at risk.

Question 27

Rustagi, Engel & Kosfeld (2010) Conditional Cooperation & Forest Commons

Answer 27

Explores why some community-managed forests avoid the tragedy of the commons by combining social preferences with costly peer monitoring.

Question 28

Tabellini (2008) The Scope of Cooperation: Values & Incentives

Answer 28

Develops a political-economy theory where parents transmit prosocial norms that interact with legal enforcement to shape the range of cooperative behaviour.

Question 29

Almas et al. (2022) Attitudes to Inequality: Preferences & Beliefs

Answer 29

Reviews global evidence on how fairness ideals and causal beliefs about success shape public acceptance of income gaps.

Question 30

Ostrom et al. (1999) - Collective Action and Institutions

Answer 30

Reassesses Hardin's tragedy, arguing users often self-organise institutions that sustain common-pool resources.

Question 31

Acemoglu & Robinson (2023) Culture, Institutions & Social Equilibria

Answer 31

Proposes a framework viewing culture as a flexible repertoire that co-evolves with political institutions in punctuated, not gradual, shifts.

Question 32

Blouin & Mukand (2019) Erasing Ethnicity? Propaganda & Identity in Rwanda

Answer 32

Tests whether post-genocide government radio propaganda reduced ethnic salience and built intergroup trust.

Question 33

Rohner & Zhuravskaya (eds.) (2023) Nation Building: Big Lessons from Successes & Failures

Answer 33

Edited volume distils cross-disciplinary research on how states forge cohesive national identities amid diversity.

Question 34

Burgess et al. (2015) The Value of Democracy: Road Building in Kenya

Answer 34

Measures ethnic favoritism in infrastructure and whether multiparty elections curb patronage in Kenya.

Question 35

Kaur et al. (2022) Do Financial Concerns Make Workers Less Productive?

Answer 35

Hypothesises that financial strain distracts low-income workers and lowers workplace performance; tests whether easing short-term liquidity directly raises productivity without changing incentives.

Question 36

Mani et al. (2013) Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function

Answer 36

Proposes that immediate financial concerns consume mental bandwidth, reducing reasoning and self-control capacity among the poor.

Question 37

Henrich (2016) - The Secret of Our Success

Answer 37

Argues cumulative culture and social learning, rather than raw intellect, explain human ecological dominance.

Question 38

Greif (1994) - Cultural Beliefs and the Organization of Society

Answer 38

Compares Maghribi and Genoese traders to link collectivist vs individualist beliefs with contract enforcement and long-run institutional paths.

Question 39

Lavy & Sand (2018) - On the Origins of the Gender Human Capital Gap

Answer 39

Tests whether early teacher gender bias impacts later achievement gaps and STEM enrollment.