Trust, trustworthiness, and risk in rural Paraguay

This dissertation looks at the relationship between trust, trustworthiness, and risk aversion in a rural Paraguayan setting. The first chapter of this dissertation looks at theft between farmers. Rural areas of developing countries often lack effective legal enforcement. However, villagers who know each other well and interact repeatedly may use implicit contracts to minimize crime. I construct a dynamic limited-commitment model in which a thief cannot credibly commit to forego stealing from his fellow villagers but may be induced to limit his stealing by the promise of future gifts from his potential victim. Using a unique survey from rural Paraguay which combines traditional data on production with information on theft, gifts, and trust, as well as with experiments measuring trust and trustworthiness, I test whether the data is consistent with predictions from the dynamic model. The results provide evidence that, in contrast with predictions from a one-period model with an anonymous thief, farmers do implicitly contract with one another to limit theft. Farmers who have more close family members in their village give fewer gifts, and farmers with plots which are more difficult to steal from give fewer gifts, experience less theft, and trust more. Gift-giving increases when trust is lower and the threat of theft is greater, turning the social capital literature on its head. The second chapter of this dissertation looks at a different linkage between trust, trustworthiness, and risk. Trusting behavior in general and play in the traditional trust experiment specifically depend both on trust beliefs and on levels of risk aversion. I ran two experiments with a diverse set of subjects in fifteen villages of rural Paraguay, the traditional trust experiment and a new experiment measuring only risk aversion. I find that risk attitudes are highly predictive of play in the trust game. In addition, omitting risk aversion as a regressor in trust regressions significantly changes the coefficients of important explanatory variables such as gender and wealth. The chair of this dissertation committee was Ethan Ligon and the other committee members were George Akerlof and Elisabeth Sadoulet.     

Book Reviews

The history of music in the workplace is a neglected area of study. This article explores the policies towards music in the paternalist Rowntree and Cadbury confectionery factories from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century. We argue that the two firms were pioneering in their early use of music before becoming key players in the industrial welfare movement following the First World War. The broadcasting of music by Rowntree and Cadbury in the mid to late twentieth century is then placed in the context of a widespread adoption of tannoyed music in factories. We argue that music was employed as a means of easing the monotony of factory work whilst simultaneously aiming to improve productivity levels. However, as we demonstrate through oral history, women workers experienced music in ways not always in tune with management objectives.     

Men, women, and competition: An experimental test of behavior

This study reports a series of experiments that examine outcomes when agents are able to choose between a payment scheme that rewards based on absolute performance (i.e., piece rate) and a scheme that rewards based on relative performance (i.e., a tournament). We test for the presence and persistence of gender differences in performance and the rate of entry into the tournament option and whether these differences are sensitive to the structure of the tournament rewards. In the winner-take-all (WTA) condition, only the best performer in the tournament for each round received a payment ($4.50). In the graduated tournament condition, the same payment ($4.50) was divided among the first, second, and third finishers in the tournament. In the WTA condition, men showed significantly lower forecast errors than women. In addition, a clear sorting effect occurs in the WTA condition. In early rounds of the WTA condition, male entrants into the tournament show significantly lower forecast errors than female tournament entrants. However, the difference disappears over time. After controlling for forecasting skill, gender did not predict entry into the tournament for the WTA condition. However, lower forecasting skill reduced the probability of entry. In the graduated tournament, the situation was reversed. Men entered the tournament at significantly higher rates, even after controlling for skill. Forecasting skill had no impact on the decision to enter the tournament. While the average male entrant to the tournament had lower forecast errors than the average female entrant, the men entered at much higher rates. As a consequence, men were much more likely than women to enter the tournament too frequently.     

Consumer Responses to Product Placement in Television Sitcoms: Genre,Sex, and Consumption

The paper presents a study of consumer responses to products placed in a sitcom, “Ads R’ Us,” created as a stimulus to ascertain the influence of a television program’s genre and male/female respondents’ sex on responses. Textual analysis is used to analyze sitcoms, a category of programs created in accordance with genre conventions, the structural framework that influences responses to media vehicles. First‐generation feminist reading theory, which challenged the patriarchal assumptions mostly unquestioned in the US until the early 1960s, is used to analyze responses produced by second‐generation respondents, who came of age a generation later, after the women’s liberation movement led to socio‐cultural changes. The study draws from multidisciplinary theory and integrates stimulus‐side/response‐side research to enhance understanding of the text‐context‐consumer relationship. Findings indicate that second‐generation responses to placed products are problematized by the coexistence of patriarchal and feminist perspectives that color male/female readings of sitcoms.     

The widow’s offering: Inheritance, family structure, and the charitable gifts of women

Researchers and commentators have compared men and women’s charitable giving patterns and have concluded that one sex was more generous than the other. Most research based on modern data has found women to be more philanthropic than men. In this article, I compare charitable donations of unmarried men and women in a sample of wills from 17th Century England. I find that men are more likely to make donations than women and make larger average donations. This difference in giving can be explained by differences in wealth and family structure and should not be ascribed to differences in charitable impulses.     

Gender and forest conservation: The impact of women's participation in community forest governance

Would enhancing women's presence in community institutions of forest governance improve resource conservation and regeneration? This paper focuses on this little addressed question. Based on the author's primary data on communities managing their local forests in parts of India and Nepal, it statistically assesses whether the gender composition of a local forest management group affects forest conservation outcomes, after controlling for other characteristics of the management group, aspects of institutional functioning, forest and population characteristics, and related factors. It is found that groups with a high proportion of women in their executive committee (EC)—the principal decision-making body—show significantly greater improvements in forest condition in both regions. Moreover, groups with all-women ECs in the Nepal sample have better forest regeneration and canopy growth than other groups, despite receiving much smaller and more degraded forests. Older EC members, especially older women, also make a particular difference, as does employing a guard. The beneficial impact of women's presence on conservation outcomes is attributable especially to women's contributions to improved forest protection and rule compliance. More opportunity for women to use their knowledge of plant species and methods of product extraction, as well as greater cooperation among women, are also likely contributory factors.     

Moderating effects of gender and organizational level between role stress and job satisfaction among hotel employees

This study investigates the moderating roles of gender and organization level in the relationship between role stress and job satisfaction for hotel employees. A survey instrument that included measures of job satisfaction, role stress (conflict and ambiguity) and demographic information was used to collect information from hotel employees in Republic of Korea. Data from 320 respondents, representing a 64% of response rate, were analyzed. Findings show that the effect of role stress on job satisfaction is significantly stronger for female employees and supervisory employees than male employees and non-supervisory employees. Research implications and suggestions for future research are provided.     

The relationship between machistic tendencies and budgeting: A cross-cultural study

Increasing globalization in business heightens the importance of understanding cultural differences and their effects on business practice. In this light, an empirical cross-cultural study comparing U.S. and Latin American respondents was made to determine the relationship between machistic tendencies and budgeting. Though difficulty was experienced in defining the machism variable, three stereotypes, Chauvinist, Classic, and Aggressive, were identified. These stereotypes are associated with one's cultural orientation (Latin American or U.S.) and predicted budgetary behavior in terms of budget procedural attitude, culpability, and risk attitude.     

African Americans and U.S. Politics: The Gradual Progress of Black Women in Political Representation

This paper argues that since the 1960s, African Americans have substantially increased their political participation in the U.S. political system. It claims that Blacks in the U.S. have built a strong political foundation and that their influence in the country’s political system has grown within the past four decades. The paper highlights, however, that more Black women tend to be active participants in the electoral process than Black men and that there is the potential for Black women to equal or surpass Black men in the number of elected officials within their race in the years and decades to come.