We investigate the importance of relative income within the Indian Caste system, using a choice experiment.

The Emergence of Land Markets in Africa, edited by Stein T. Holden, Keijiro Otsuka, and Frank M. Place, is the first systematic attempt to address emerging land markets and their implications for poverty, equity, and efficiency across a number of African countries.

This paper proposes that ethnicity coupled with ethnic nepotism may reduce interpersonal generalised trust.

We use the 2001 wave of the World Values Survey data for eight African countries to test this claim, and show that while ethnicity and ethnic nepotism are each important in affecting generalised trust levels, their interaction has a self-reinforcing and negative effect on trust levels. The results underscore the importance of institutions in controlling ethnic nepotism and thus partly in mitigating the adverse effects of ethnicity on trust.

This paper analyses the impact of income inequality on public good provision in an experimental setting. A sample of secondary school students were recruited to participate in a simple linear public goods game where income heterogeneity was introduced by providing participants with unequal token endowments.

Many argue that it is socially inefficient to use distributional weights in cost-benefit analysis, and that doing so implies large inefficiency losses, when distributional matters can be dealt with through income taxation, instead.

Individuals’ preferences for risk and inequality are measured through choices between imagined societies and lotteries.

Social inequality aversion is measured through a veil-of-ignorance experiment with Indian students. The median relative risk aversion is found to be quite high, about 3, and independent caste.

Co-authors:

G. Gupta and O. Johansson-Stenman