Catherine Guirkinger
Biographic Data
| ID | 975462 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Catherine Guirkinger |
| GIVEN NAMES | Catherine |
| FAMILY NAME | Guirkinger |
| SIGNATURE | GUIRKINGER C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Namur |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4055-7746 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 67 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
School Clustering and Religious Competition: Persistence of Educational Inequality in Colonial and Post-colonial D.R. Congo
This paper examines the persistence of educational inequalities in Africa, focusing on colonial and contemporary Congo. By analyzing historical and contemporary surveys, archives, and school administrative data, we document the continuing impact of colonial-era factors and explore mechanisms of path dependency. We find that contemporary educational inequalities are driven by the clustering of postindependence schools around historical Christian m…
Legacy of Colonial Education: Unveiling Persistence Mechanisms in the D.R. Congo
The mechanisms that contribute to the enduring effects of colonial investments in education on human capital today are not well understood. This paper addresses this gap by examining the case of colonial Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo. We first document the enduring effects of colonial education and then analyze both demand-side channels and supply-side mechanisms. Using detailed contemporary and historical microdata, our results show…
Cooperation in polygynous households. Experimental evidence from northern Benin
Behind the Veil of Cultural Persistence: Marriage and Divorce in a Migrant Community
Arranged marriage with a spouse chosen in the country of origin is a persisting practice in many migrant communities. In this context, rather than being imposed by migrant parents on children, an arranged marriage is the outcome of a negotiation between them. Parents see this type of marriage as a vector of transmission of their identity to the next generation. Children resist because they are concerned about mutual compatibility with their futur…
Sharing norm, household efficiency and female demand for agency in the Philippines
Are women emancipating? Evidence from marriage, divorce and remarriage in Rural Northern Burkina Faso☆
Economic Persistence Despite Adverse Policies: Evidence from Kyrgyzstan
We study the long-run persistence of relative economic well-being under adverse government policies using a combination of historical and contemporaneous data from Kyrgyzstan. After controlling for unobservable local effects, the economic well-being of Kyrgyz households in the 2010s correlates with the early twentieth-century average wealth of their tribes. Inequality at the tribe level in the 2010s correlates with wealth inequality in the early …
Buy as you need: Nutrition and food storage imperfections
Now or later? The allocation of the pot and the insurance motive in fixed roscas
Risk as Impediment to Privatization? The Role of Collective Fields in Extended Agricultural Households
As in the case of cooperatives, collective fields in extended agricultural households act as an insurance device but entail inefficiencies arising from the incentives to free ride on coworkers’ efforts. Privatization provides good incentives but decreases the level of risk sharing. The classical analysis of this trade-off rules out another major risk-sharing mechanism, namely income transfers. This paper is a first attempt to merge the two insura…
The economic consequences of mutual help in extended families
Colonization and changing social structure: Evidence from Kazakhstan
Clans and Ploughs: Traditional Institutions and Production Decisions of Kazakhs under Russian Colonial Settlement
This article investigates how, with increasing land pressure during Russian settlement in Kazakh steppes in the late nineteenth century, clan institutions affected the transition from nomadic pastoralism to settled agriculture. Using a novel dataset constructed from Russian colonial expedition materials matched with clan genealogies, we find that, controlling for geographic factors, clan identity strongly influenced the duration of transhumance p…
Productive inefficiency in extended agricultural households: Evidence from Mali
The Effect of Land Scarcity on Farm Structure: Empirical Evidence from Mali
We analyze the individualization of farm units in Mali in the sense of a transformation of purely collective farms into mixed units in which private plots coexist with collective fields. Since a moral-hazard-in-team problem plagues production on the latter and the household head extracts his income from it, he faces a trade-off between efficiency and capture. We show, within the framework of a patriarchal farm household model, that private plots …
Deadly anchor: Gender bias under Russian colonization of Kazakhstan
Pretending to Be Poor: Borrowing to Escape Forced Solidarity in Cameroon
From field observations of credit cooperatives in Cameroon, we find that 19% of the loans taken are fully collateralized by savings held in the same institutions. This behavior is costly to the borrower, as it represents a net interest payment of about 24% per year. While traditional explanations may partly explain this behavior, interviews with members of the cooperatives suggest the following new rationale: members resort to borrowing to signal…
Risk, Credit Constraints and Financial Efficiency in Peruvian Agriculture
Based on a panel data set, we use a two-stage analysis to evaluate the effects of access to formal credit on financial efficiency of farms in northern Peru. The first stage uses non-parametric data envelope analysis to estimate farm-specific measures of financial efficiency; 28 per cent of farmers are financially inefficient and credit constraints reduce profits of these farmers by an average of between 17 and 27 per cent. The second stage uses T…
Direct Elicitation of Credit Constraints: Conceptual and Practical Issues with an Application to Peruvian Agriculture
This article provides a methodological bridge leading from the well‐developed theory of credit rationing to the less developed territory of empirically identifying credit constraints. We begin by developing a simple model showing that credit constraints may take three forms: quantity rationing, transaction cost rationing, and risk rationing. Each form adversely affects household resource allocation and thus should be accounted for in empirical an…
Understanding the Coexistence of Formal and Informal Credit Markets in Piura, Peru
Pretending to Be Poor: Borrowing to Escape Forced Solidarity in Cameroon
From field observations of credit cooperatives in Cameroon, we find that 19% of the loans taken are fully collateralized by savings held in the same institutions. This behavior is costly to the borrower, as it represents a net interest payment of about 24% per year. While traditional explanations may partly explain this behavior, interviews with members of the cooperatives suggest the following new rationale: members resort to borrowing to signal…
The economic consequences of mutual help in extended families
Understanding the Coexistence of Formal and Informal Credit Markets in Piura, Peru
Productive inefficiency in extended agricultural households: Evidence from Mali
Direct Elicitation of Credit Constraints: Conceptual and Practical Issues with an Application to Peruvian Agriculture
This article provides a methodological bridge leading from the well‐developed theory of credit rationing to the less developed territory of empirically identifying credit constraints. We begin by developing a simple model showing that credit constraints may take three forms: quantity rationing, transaction cost rationing, and risk rationing. Each form adversely affects household resource allocation and thus should be accounted for in empirical an…
Now or later? The allocation of the pot and the insurance motive in fixed roscas
The Effect of Land Scarcity on Farm Structure: Empirical Evidence from Mali
We analyze the individualization of farm units in Mali in the sense of a transformation of purely collective farms into mixed units in which private plots coexist with collective fields. Since a moral-hazard-in-team problem plagues production on the latter and the household head extracts his income from it, he faces a trade-off between efficiency and capture. We show, within the framework of a patriarchal farm household model, that private plots …
Deadly anchor: Gender bias under Russian colonization of Kazakhstan
Are women emancipating? Evidence from marriage, divorce and remarriage in Rural Northern Burkina Faso☆
Buy as you need: Nutrition and food storage imperfections
Colonization and changing social structure: Evidence from Kazakhstan
Understanding the Coexistence of Formal and Informal Credit Markets in Piura, Peru
Direct Elicitation of Credit Constraints: Conceptual and Practical Issues with an Application to Peruvian Agriculture
This article provides a methodological bridge leading from the well‐developed theory of credit rationing to the less developed territory of empirically identifying credit constraints. We begin by developing a simple model showing that credit constraints may take three forms: quantity rationing, transaction cost rationing, and risk rationing. Each form adversely affects household resource allocation and thus should be accounted for in empirical an…
Risk, Credit Constraints and Financial Efficiency in Peruvian Agriculture
Based on a panel data set, we use a two-stage analysis to evaluate the effects of access to formal credit on financial efficiency of farms in northern Peru. The first stage uses non-parametric data envelope analysis to estimate farm-specific measures of financial efficiency; 28 per cent of farmers are financially inefficient and credit constraints reduce profits of these farmers by an average of between 17 and 27 per cent. The second stage uses T…
Pretending to Be Poor: Borrowing to Escape Forced Solidarity in Cameroon
From field observations of credit cooperatives in Cameroon, we find that 19% of the loans taken are fully collateralized by savings held in the same institutions. This behavior is costly to the borrower, as it represents a net interest payment of about 24% per year. While traditional explanations may partly explain this behavior, interviews with members of the cooperatives suggest the following new rationale: members resort to borrowing to signal…
Deadly anchor: Gender bias under Russian colonization of Kazakhstan
The Effect of Land Scarcity on Farm Structure: Empirical Evidence from Mali
We analyze the individualization of farm units in Mali in the sense of a transformation of purely collective farms into mixed units in which private plots coexist with collective fields. Since a moral-hazard-in-team problem plagues production on the latter and the household head extracts his income from it, he faces a trade-off between efficiency and capture. We show, within the framework of a patriarchal farm household model, that private plots …
Productive inefficiency in extended agricultural households: Evidence from Mali
The economic consequences of mutual help in extended families
Colonization and changing social structure: Evidence from Kazakhstan
Clans and Ploughs: Traditional Institutions and Production Decisions of Kazakhs under Russian Colonial Settlement
This article investigates how, with increasing land pressure during Russian settlement in Kazakh steppes in the late nineteenth century, clan institutions affected the transition from nomadic pastoralism to settled agriculture. Using a novel dataset constructed from Russian colonial expedition materials matched with clan genealogies, we find that, controlling for geographic factors, clan identity strongly influenced the duration of transhumance p…
Now or later? The allocation of the pot and the insurance motive in fixed roscas
Risk as Impediment to Privatization? The Role of Collective Fields in Extended Agricultural Households
As in the case of cooperatives, collective fields in extended agricultural households act as an insurance device but entail inefficiencies arising from the incentives to free ride on coworkers’ efforts. Privatization provides good incentives but decreases the level of risk sharing. The classical analysis of this trade-off rules out another major risk-sharing mechanism, namely income transfers. This paper is a first attempt to merge the two insura…
Buy as you need: Nutrition and food storage imperfections
Are women emancipating? Evidence from marriage, divorce and remarriage in Rural Northern Burkina Faso☆
Economic Persistence Despite Adverse Policies: Evidence from Kyrgyzstan
We study the long-run persistence of relative economic well-being under adverse government policies using a combination of historical and contemporaneous data from Kyrgyzstan. After controlling for unobservable local effects, the economic well-being of Kyrgyz households in the 2010s correlates with the early twentieth-century average wealth of their tribes. Inequality at the tribe level in the 2010s correlates with wealth inequality in the early …
Sharing norm, household efficiency and female demand for agency in the Philippines
Cooperation in polygynous households. Experimental evidence from northern Benin
Behind the Veil of Cultural Persistence: Marriage and Divorce in a Migrant Community
Arranged marriage with a spouse chosen in the country of origin is a persisting practice in many migrant communities. In this context, rather than being imposed by migrant parents on children, an arranged marriage is the outcome of a negotiation between them. Parents see this type of marriage as a vector of transmission of their identity to the next generation. Children resist because they are concerned about mutual compatibility with their futur…
School Clustering and Religious Competition: Persistence of Educational Inequality in Colonial and Post-colonial D.R. Congo
This paper examines the persistence of educational inequalities in Africa, focusing on colonial and contemporary Congo. By analyzing historical and contemporary surveys, archives, and school administrative data, we document the continuing impact of colonial-era factors and explore mechanisms of path dependency. We find that contemporary educational inequalities are driven by the clustering of postindependence schools around historical Christian m…
Legacy of Colonial Education: Unveiling Persistence Mechanisms in the D.R. Congo
The mechanisms that contribute to the enduring effects of colonial investments in education on human capital today are not well understood. This paper addresses this gap by examining the case of colonial Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo. We first document the enduring effects of colonial education and then analyze both demand-side channels and supply-side mechanisms. Using detailed contemporary and historical microdata, our results show…
Economics (16 works) · Geography (8 works) · Microfinance and Financial Inclusion (8 works) · Agriculture (7 works) · Land Rights and Reforms (7 works) · Political science (7 works) · Agricultural risk and resilience (6 works) · Business (6 works) · Microeconomics (6 works) · Culture, Economy, and Development Studies (5 works)