This paper uses survey and experimental data from prison inmates and comparable
non-inmates to examine the drivers of rising criminality in China. We find that China’s
high sex ratios are associated with greater risk-taking, greater impatience and greater
neuroticism amongst males. These underlying behavioural impacts explain some part
of the increase in criminality. The primary avenue through which the sex ratio increases
crime, however, is the direct pressure on men to appear financially attractive in order

Many economic decisions are made jointly within households. Running an experiment on intertemporal choice, we investigate the relative influence of spouses on joint household decisions. We let each spouse first decide individually and then jointly with the other spouse.

Using the land tenure system in Ethiopia, where all land is state-owned and only farm households have usufruct rights, as a case study, we assessed the links between land owners’ tenure insecurity, associated behavioral factors, and contract length. In this paper, we analyze these links with survey data of rural households in the Amhara National Regional State of Ethiopia.

Land degradation poses a serious problem for the livelihoods of rural producers. Furthermore, there is rarely enough private investment taking place to commensurate the scale of the problem. This article examines the role of tenure insecurity, resource poverty, risk and time preferences, and community-led land conservation on differentiated patterns of household investment in land conservation in northern Ethiopia.

This study measured the discount rates of 262 farm households in the Ethiopian highlands, using a time preference experiment with real payoffs. In general, the median discount rate was very high and varied systematically with wealth and risk aversion. Our findings, however, warn that rates-of-time preferences (RTPs) and risk aversion reinforce each other and are easily confused. Because the RTPs were so high, what seem like profitable investments from the outside might not seem so from the farmers’ perspectives.

This artefactual experiment in Ethiopia tested the hyperbolic discounting hypothesis by comparing time discounting over cash and consumption goods, using real payoffs. It found no difference in elicited time preferences between cash and consumption goods (tradable or final), which could be the result of missing markets in rural Ethiopia, and there was some evidence of time-inconsistent preferences.

This examination of the impacts of market and institutional imperfections on technology adoption found that Ethiopian farmers’ decisions to adopt fertilizer significantly and negatively depended on whether they also adopted soil conservation, but not vice versa. Market imperfections were significant factors in explaining variations in decisions to adopt farm technology, such that relieving market imperfections could increase adoption of farm technologies.