Do customers discriminate between workers? This work returns to this long-standing question by asking what role customers play in gender-based discrimination in labour markets in low-income countries. Using experimentally-induced variation in customers’ perceptions of online workers' genders and holding fixed worker behaviour, we find customers purchase significantly fewer products from workers assigned a female-sounding name. The results appear to be driven by relatively lower interest in engaging with female workers. This study has several implications for labour market policy.
In a move to promote more sustainable technologies in the construction sector, in 2019 the Government of Bangladesh introduced a shift from fired clay bricks to blocks in public construction.
This project has two basic objectives. First, we analyse the stylised facts that characterise price setting behaviour in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
In developing countries, access to opportunities within the private sector are often unequally distributed. Advantages accrue to those with connections to the state or to those with privileged social status.
We document the trajectory of SMEs in Burkina Faso between 2020 and 2022, which were affected not only by the global Covid-19 shock, but also by several negative local shocks: two coups took place in 2022, in the context of increasing frequent terrorist attacks.
Female-owned businesses continue to be smaller and less profitable than male-owned firms. We conduct an RCT in Ghana on a sample of 1,771 growth-oriented female entrepreneurs to investigate the effect of online networking groups on firm performance.
This project investigates whether a scalable technology that pools data generated by individual retailers can overcome informational barriers to growth.
