Arjan Verschoor
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 1161484 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Arjan Verschoor |
| PRENOMES | Arjan |
| SOBRENOME | Verschoor |
| ASSINATURA | VERSCHOOR A |
| AFILIAÇÕES | University of East Anglia |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7770-6832 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 24 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 127 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 24 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2004 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 6 |
Can reminders promote regular pro-environmental behavior? Experimental evidence from Peru
Pro-environmental behavior, such as recycling, often needs to be regular to be effective, and interventions to encourage behavioral change may therefore need to be repeated; yet, little evidence exists on the optimal time pattern and frequency of such repeated interventions. To fill this gap, we investigate the impact of mobile text reminders on households’ recycling behavior in urban Peru by randomly varying the exposure length and continuity of…
Understanding Farmer Preferences to Guide Crop Improvement
Building climate resilience in agriculture may usefully rely on crop improvement informed by social science studies of farmer preferences. Here, we present the case of grasspea in Ethiopia, a resilient and nutritious legume that can survive conditions where many other crops fail. Excessive consumption however carries the risk of an irreversible, crippling disease, this is possible in the future since the weather extremes that climate change is pr…
Risk Taking With Social Consequences
Strong egalitarian norms and preferences may affect entrepreneurship. If people feel guilty of their success they may take fewer risks, whilst if they expect their successes to be celebrated, they would take more risks. In this paper we ask whether anticipated social consequences influence risky choices. Do people take more, less or the same risk when inequality results from risky choice? We provide experimental evidence from rural Uganda. Subjec…
Effort and Social Comparison
Individual effort is key to generate income and escape from poverty. In small-scale societies in developing countries, where effort and resulting income are easily observable, social comparison can influence effort in both positive and negative ways. In addition, the effects of social comparison are less obvious where income depends on both the quality and quantity of production. To study the effects of social comparison, we use a lab experiment …
Agricultural investment behaviour and contingency
Underinvestment in agriculture – a major cause of rural poverty – may be due to difficulties in detecting ‘contingency’, defined as the influence one may exert on the outcome of a decision-making situation. Recently experienced contingency may create a mismatch between perceived and actual contingency in an investment decision-making situation, leading to sub-optimal investment behaviour. To test this, we use an experiment with poor farmers in Ug…
Village networks and entrepreneurial farming in Uganda
The transition from semi-subsistence farming to more entrepreneurial farming by the adoption of new crops or improved seeds is important for poverty reduction in developing countries. In rural societies, farmers’ propensity to experiment with new technologies is influenced by their access to information and support, provided by networks of friends and relatives. Considering that the same connection can share both information and support, we study…
What Should I Aspire To? Peer Effects in Adolescents' Friendship Networks
In sub-Saharan Africa, economic aspirations often conflict with aspirations to follow traditional social obligations. We test whether adolescents are influenced by friends when deciding which to prioritize. To do so, we elicit the preferences and perceived competition between economic and social aspirations of 553 Ugandan students, as well as their friendship ties. Using characteristics of nonoverlapping friends as instrumental variables, we iden…
Probability weighting for losses and for gains among smallholder farmers in Uganda
Probability weighting is a marked feature of decision-making under risk. For poor people in rural areas of developing countries, how probabilities are evaluated matters for livelihoods decisions, especially the probabilities associated with losses. Previous studies of risky choice among poor people in developing countries seldom consider losses and do not offer a refined tracking of the probability-weighting function (PWF). We investigate probabi…
Designing development interventions
The role of preferences for pro-environmental behaviour among urban middle class households in Peru
Spousal Control and Efficiency of Intra-household Decision-Making
The Lion's Share
We use simple public goods games to investigate spousal behavior in Kano, northern Nigeria, one of the modern heartlands of polygyny. Most partners keep back at least half of their endowment from the common pool, but we find no evidence that polygynous households are less efficient than their monogamous counterparts. When men control the allocation, equal treatment of wives is common, but senior wives often receive more from their husbands, no ma…
Truly reconciled? A dyadic analysis of post-conflict social reintegration in Northern Uganda
In the aftermath of civil war or violent internal conflict, one of the key peacebuilding challenges is the reconciliation of former enemies who are members of the same small-scale societies. A failure of social reintegration may contribute to what is known as a conflict trap. To detect lingering hostile attitudes among a community's various factions is crucial, but the approaches adopted in previous studies tend to focus on the impact of conflict…
Multilingualism and public goods provision
Investment Behaviour, Risk Sharing and Social Distance
Using a lab-in-the-field experiment in Uganda we study how risk sharing influences investment behaviour. Depending on the treatment, an investor may decide to share profits with a paired person, and/or the paired person may compensate the investor for investment losses. Following sharing norms in African societies, predicted investment is higher if loss sharing is possible, and/or profit sharing is not possible. Contrary to these predictions, we …
Caste Dominance and Economic Performance in Rural India
Using household panel data for rural India covering 1993–94 and 2004–5, we test whether scheduled castes (SCs) and other minority groups perform better or worse in terms of income when resident in villages dominated by (i) upper castes or (ii) their own group. Theoretically, upper-caste dominance comprises a potential “proximity gain” and offsetting group-specific “oppression” effects. For SCs and other backward classes (OBCs), initial proximity …
Gender and Trade Aspects of Labour Markets
We provide a comprehensive up-to-date review of the large body of theory and evidence on the linkages between trade liberalisation and gender inequality in income, as well as two of the latter's key underlying determinants: wages and employment. On balance, the evidence for developing countries points to an overall beneficial impact of trade expansion on female employment, both relative to male employment and in absolute terms, although largely c…
Do Spouses Realise Cooperative Gains? Experimental Evidence from Rural Uganda
Choice under Uncertainty
We review experimental evidence collected from risky choice experiments using poor subjects in Ethiopia, India and Uganda. Using these data we estimate that just over 50% of our sample behaves in accordance with expected utility theory and that the rest subjectively weight probability according to prospect theory. Our results show that inferences about risk aversion are robust to whichever model we adopt when we estimate each model separately. Ho…
Job Recruitment Networks and Migration to Cities in India
Economists have focused on job search and supply-side explanations for network effects in labour transactions. This paper develops and tests an alternative explanation for the high prevalence of network-based labour market entry in developing countries. In our theoretical framework, employers use employee networks as screening and incentive mechanisms to improve the quality of recruitment. Our framework suggests a negative relationship between ne…
Does Intra-household Discrimination Account for the Bulk of India's ‘Missing Women’
Are adverse sex ratios in India largely due to intra-household discrimination of females? Received wisdom holds that the answer is ‘yes’. We have two reasons to doubt this. First, we show that poverty is associated with better, not worse, sex ratios in India. Second, we quantify the number of missing women in India due to its actual sex ratio at birth and find that it is considerably larger than the number due to excess postnatal female mortality…
Risk Attitudes and the ‘Vicious Circle of Poverty’
Aid, Government Expenditure, and Aggregate Welfare
Aid, Poverty Reduction and the ‘New Conditionality’
The paper examines the effect of aid on poverty, rather than on economic growth. We devise a 'pro‐poor (public) expenditure index', and present evidence that, together with inequality and corruption, this is a key determinant of the aid's poverty leverage. After presenting empirical evidence which suggests a positive leverage of aid donors on pro‐poor expenditure, we argue for the development of conditionality in a new form, which gives greater f…
Aid, Poverty Reduction and the ‘New Conditionality’
The paper examines the effect of aid on poverty, rather than on economic growth. We devise a 'pro‐poor (public) expenditure index', and present evidence that, together with inequality and corruption, this is a key determinant of the aid's poverty leverage. After presenting empirical evidence which suggests a positive leverage of aid donors on pro‐poor expenditure, we argue for the development of conditionality in a new form, which gives greater f…
Do Spouses Realise Cooperative Gains? Experimental Evidence from Rural Uganda
Choice under Uncertainty
We review experimental evidence collected from risky choice experiments using poor subjects in Ethiopia, India and Uganda. Using these data we estimate that just over 50% of our sample behaves in accordance with expected utility theory and that the rest subjectively weight probability according to prospect theory. Our results show that inferences about risk aversion are robust to whichever model we adopt when we estimate each model separately. Ho…
Aid, Government Expenditure, and Aggregate Welfare
Risk Attitudes and the ‘Vicious Circle of Poverty’
Investment Behaviour, Risk Sharing and Social Distance
Using a lab-in-the-field experiment in Uganda we study how risk sharing influences investment behaviour. Depending on the treatment, an investor may decide to share profits with a paired person, and/or the paired person may compensate the investor for investment losses. Following sharing norms in African societies, predicted investment is higher if loss sharing is possible, and/or profit sharing is not possible. Contrary to these predictions, we …
Caste Dominance and Economic Performance in Rural India
Using household panel data for rural India covering 1993–94 and 2004–5, we test whether scheduled castes (SCs) and other minority groups perform better or worse in terms of income when resident in villages dominated by (i) upper castes or (ii) their own group. Theoretically, upper-caste dominance comprises a potential “proximity gain” and offsetting group-specific “oppression” effects. For SCs and other backward classes (OBCs), initial proximity …
Village networks and entrepreneurial farming in Uganda
The transition from semi-subsistence farming to more entrepreneurial farming by the adoption of new crops or improved seeds is important for poverty reduction in developing countries. In rural societies, farmers’ propensity to experiment with new technologies is influenced by their access to information and support, provided by networks of friends and relatives. Considering that the same connection can share both information and support, we study…
Does Intra-household Discrimination Account for the Bulk of India's ‘Missing Women’
Are adverse sex ratios in India largely due to intra-household discrimination of females? Received wisdom holds that the answer is ‘yes’. We have two reasons to doubt this. First, we show that poverty is associated with better, not worse, sex ratios in India. Second, we quantify the number of missing women in India due to its actual sex ratio at birth and find that it is considerably larger than the number due to excess postnatal female mortality…
Spousal Control and Efficiency of Intra-household Decision-Making
The Lion's Share
We use simple public goods games to investigate spousal behavior in Kano, northern Nigeria, one of the modern heartlands of polygyny. Most partners keep back at least half of their endowment from the common pool, but we find no evidence that polygynous households are less efficient than their monogamous counterparts. When men control the allocation, equal treatment of wives is common, but senior wives often receive more from their husbands, no ma…
Truly reconciled? A dyadic analysis of post-conflict social reintegration in Northern Uganda
In the aftermath of civil war or violent internal conflict, one of the key peacebuilding challenges is the reconciliation of former enemies who are members of the same small-scale societies. A failure of social reintegration may contribute to what is known as a conflict trap. To detect lingering hostile attitudes among a community's various factions is crucial, but the approaches adopted in previous studies tend to focus on the impact of conflict…
Multilingualism and public goods provision
Aid, Poverty Reduction and the ‘New Conditionality’
The paper examines the effect of aid on poverty, rather than on economic growth. We devise a 'pro‐poor (public) expenditure index', and present evidence that, together with inequality and corruption, this is a key determinant of the aid's poverty leverage. After presenting empirical evidence which suggests a positive leverage of aid donors on pro‐poor expenditure, we argue for the development of conditionality in a new form, which gives greater f…
Risk Attitudes and the ‘Vicious Circle of Poverty’
Aid, Government Expenditure, and Aggregate Welfare
Does Intra-household Discrimination Account for the Bulk of India's ‘Missing Women’
Are adverse sex ratios in India largely due to intra-household discrimination of females? Received wisdom holds that the answer is ‘yes’. We have two reasons to doubt this. First, we show that poverty is associated with better, not worse, sex ratios in India. Second, we quantify the number of missing women in India due to its actual sex ratio at birth and find that it is considerably larger than the number due to excess postnatal female mortality…
Job Recruitment Networks and Migration to Cities in India
Economists have focused on job search and supply-side explanations for network effects in labour transactions. This paper develops and tests an alternative explanation for the high prevalence of network-based labour market entry in developing countries. In our theoretical framework, employers use employee networks as screening and incentive mechanisms to improve the quality of recruitment. Our framework suggests a negative relationship between ne…
Do Spouses Realise Cooperative Gains? Experimental Evidence from Rural Uganda
Choice under Uncertainty
We review experimental evidence collected from risky choice experiments using poor subjects in Ethiopia, India and Uganda. Using these data we estimate that just over 50% of our sample behaves in accordance with expected utility theory and that the rest subjectively weight probability according to prospect theory. Our results show that inferences about risk aversion are robust to whichever model we adopt when we estimate each model separately. Ho…
Gender and Trade Aspects of Labour Markets
We provide a comprehensive up-to-date review of the large body of theory and evidence on the linkages between trade liberalisation and gender inequality in income, as well as two of the latter's key underlying determinants: wages and employment. On balance, the evidence for developing countries points to an overall beneficial impact of trade expansion on female employment, both relative to male employment and in absolute terms, although largely c…
Caste Dominance and Economic Performance in Rural India
Using household panel data for rural India covering 1993–94 and 2004–5, we test whether scheduled castes (SCs) and other minority groups perform better or worse in terms of income when resident in villages dominated by (i) upper castes or (ii) their own group. Theoretically, upper-caste dominance comprises a potential “proximity gain” and offsetting group-specific “oppression” effects. For SCs and other backward classes (OBCs), initial proximity …
Investment Behaviour, Risk Sharing and Social Distance
Using a lab-in-the-field experiment in Uganda we study how risk sharing influences investment behaviour. Depending on the treatment, an investor may decide to share profits with a paired person, and/or the paired person may compensate the investor for investment losses. Following sharing norms in African societies, predicted investment is higher if loss sharing is possible, and/or profit sharing is not possible. Contrary to these predictions, we …
Multilingualism and public goods provision
Truly reconciled? A dyadic analysis of post-conflict social reintegration in Northern Uganda
In the aftermath of civil war or violent internal conflict, one of the key peacebuilding challenges is the reconciliation of former enemies who are members of the same small-scale societies. A failure of social reintegration may contribute to what is known as a conflict trap. To detect lingering hostile attitudes among a community's various factions is crucial, but the approaches adopted in previous studies tend to focus on the impact of conflict…
Spousal Control and Efficiency of Intra-household Decision-Making
The Lion's Share
We use simple public goods games to investigate spousal behavior in Kano, northern Nigeria, one of the modern heartlands of polygyny. Most partners keep back at least half of their endowment from the common pool, but we find no evidence that polygynous households are less efficient than their monogamous counterparts. When men control the allocation, equal treatment of wives is common, but senior wives often receive more from their husbands, no ma…
The role of preferences for pro-environmental behaviour among urban middle class households in Peru
Probability weighting for losses and for gains among smallholder farmers in Uganda
Probability weighting is a marked feature of decision-making under risk. For poor people in rural areas of developing countries, how probabilities are evaluated matters for livelihoods decisions, especially the probabilities associated with losses. Previous studies of risky choice among poor people in developing countries seldom consider losses and do not offer a refined tracking of the probability-weighting function (PWF). We investigate probabi…
Designing development interventions
Agricultural investment behaviour and contingency
Underinvestment in agriculture – a major cause of rural poverty – may be due to difficulties in detecting ‘contingency’, defined as the influence one may exert on the outcome of a decision-making situation. Recently experienced contingency may create a mismatch between perceived and actual contingency in an investment decision-making situation, leading to sub-optimal investment behaviour. To test this, we use an experiment with poor farmers in Ug…
Village networks and entrepreneurial farming in Uganda
The transition from semi-subsistence farming to more entrepreneurial farming by the adoption of new crops or improved seeds is important for poverty reduction in developing countries. In rural societies, farmers’ propensity to experiment with new technologies is influenced by their access to information and support, provided by networks of friends and relatives. Considering that the same connection can share both information and support, we study…
What Should I Aspire To? Peer Effects in Adolescents' Friendship Networks
In sub-Saharan Africa, economic aspirations often conflict with aspirations to follow traditional social obligations. We test whether adolescents are influenced by friends when deciding which to prioritize. To do so, we elicit the preferences and perceived competition between economic and social aspirations of 553 Ugandan students, as well as their friendship ties. Using characteristics of nonoverlapping friends as instrumental variables, we iden…
Effort and Social Comparison
Individual effort is key to generate income and escape from poverty. In small-scale societies in developing countries, where effort and resulting income are easily observable, social comparison can influence effort in both positive and negative ways. In addition, the effects of social comparison are less obvious where income depends on both the quality and quantity of production. To study the effects of social comparison, we use a lab experiment …
Understanding Farmer Preferences to Guide Crop Improvement
Building climate resilience in agriculture may usefully rely on crop improvement informed by social science studies of farmer preferences. Here, we present the case of grasspea in Ethiopia, a resilient and nutritious legume that can survive conditions where many other crops fail. Excessive consumption however carries the risk of an irreversible, crippling disease, this is possible in the future since the weather extremes that climate change is pr…
Risk Taking With Social Consequences
Strong egalitarian norms and preferences may affect entrepreneurship. If people feel guilty of their success they may take fewer risks, whilst if they expect their successes to be celebrated, they would take more risks. In this paper we ask whether anticipated social consequences influence risky choices. Do people take more, less or the same risk when inequality results from risky choice? We provide experimental evidence from rural Uganda. Subjec…
Can reminders promote regular pro-environmental behavior? Experimental evidence from Peru
Pro-environmental behavior, such as recycling, often needs to be regular to be effective, and interventions to encourage behavioral change may therefore need to be repeated; yet, little evidence exists on the optimal time pattern and frequency of such repeated interventions. To fill this gap, we investigate the impact of mobile text reminders on households’ recycling behavior in urban Peru by randomly varying the exposure length and continuity of…
Economics (19 obras) · Sociology (10 obras) · Economic growth (8 obras) · Political science (8 obras) · Geography (7 obras) · Psychology (7 obras) · Developing country (6 obras) · Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies (6 obras) · Agricultural risk and resilience (5 obras) · Agriculture (5 obras)