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Smriti Sharma

Bio: Smriti Sharma is an academic researcher from Newcastle University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Personality & Big Five personality traits. The author has an hindex of 9, co-authored 33 publications receiving 342 citations. Previous affiliations of Smriti Sharma include World Institute for Development Economics Research & Dayalbagh Educational Institute.

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BookDOI
TL;DR: This article found that the consistency of risk attitudes across the tasks depends on gender of the subject, quantitative skills, father's education level, and dispositional factors such as locus of control and Big Five personality traits.
Abstract: Field constraints often necessitate choosing an elicitation task that is intuitive, easy to explain, and simple to implement. Given that subject behavior often differs dramatically across tasks when eliciting risk preferences, caution needs to be exercised in choosing one risk elicitation task over another in the face of field constraints. We compare behavior in the simple most investment game (Gneezy and Potters 1997) and the ordered lottery choice game (Eckel and Grossman 2002) to evaluate whether the simpler task allows us to elicit attitudes consistent with those elicited from the ordered lottery task. Using a sample of over 2000 Indian undergraduate students, we find risk attitudes to be fairly stable across the two tasks. Our results further indicate that the consistency of risk attitudes across the tasks depends on gender of the subject, quantitative skills, father’s education level, and dispositional factors such as locus of control and Big Five personality traits.

4 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine whether the relationship between economic inequality and voluntary cooperation is influenced by the quality of local institutions, as proxied by corruption, and find that corruption is associated with pessimistic beliefs about others' contributions in heterogeneous groups.

4 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors used household-level panel data from a nationally representative survey in India to estimate the effect of agricultural productivity shocks on education expenditures and children's work status in rural Indian households.
Abstract: In predominantly agrarian economies with limited irrigation, rainfall plays a critical role in shaping households’ incomes and subsequently their spending decisions. This study uses household-level panel data from a nationally representative survey in India to estimate the effect of agricultural productivity shocks – as proxied by exogenous annual rainfall deviations from long-term average – on education expenditures and children’s work status in rural Indian households. Our results show that a transitory increase in rainfall significantly reduces education expenditures and increases the likelihood of child labor across a range of work activities. Additionally, we show that productivity-enhancing inputs such as land ownership and credit access do not mitigate these countercyclical effects of rainfall variations, indicating the importance of market imperfections (in labor and land markets). We also find that the effects of productivity shocks are reinforced for historically marginalized castes, and moderated for more educated households. These highlight that the average effects mask considerable heterogeneity based on household and regional characteristics

4 citations

Posted Content
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined the effects of randomly introduced economic inequality on voluntary co-operation and whether this relationship is influenced by the quality of local institutions, as proxied by corruption, and found that corruption leads to more pessimistic beliefs about others' contributions in heterogeneous groups.
Abstract: We examine the effects of randomly introduced economic inequality on voluntary co- operation and whether this relationship is influenced by the quality of local institutions, as proxied by corruption. We use representative data from a large-scale lab-in-the-field public goods experiment with over 1,300 participants across rural Vietnam. Our results show that inequality adversely affects aggregate contributions, and this is on account of high endowment individuals contributing a significantly smaller share than those with low endowments. This negative effect of inequality on cooperation is exacerbated in high corruption environments. We find that corruption leads to more pessimistic beliefs about others' contributions in heterogeneous groups, and this is an important mechanism explaining our results. In doing so, we highlight the indirect costs of corruption that are understudied in the literature. These findings have implications for public policies aimed at resolving local collective action problems.

4 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: For example, the authors found that women fall behind in the labor market, continue to be underrepresented in the political arena, have weaker legal rights, and face overt discrimination, and these gender gaps and gender-biased attitudes are more prevalent in low-income countries.
Abstract: Gender equality and female empowerment are important goals in themselves. They are also potential means to achieving desirable outcomes in domains related to fertility, child health, education, and poverty alleviation (e.g., Duflo, 2003; Lundberg, Pollak, & Wales, 1997; World Bank, 2012). This has led to women's empowerment being a key policy goal in recent decades, especially since the adoption of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women in 1979. In 2015, gender equality was listed as Goal 5 in the UN Sustainable Development Goals. There is as well a consensus that outcomes for women have improved considerably during recent decades especially in terms of educational attainment, fertility, life expectancy, and labor force participation (Heath & Jayachandran, 2018). However, significant gender gaps remain, and women fall behind in the labor market, continue to be underrepresented in the political arena, have weaker legal rights, and face overt discrimination (Duflo, 2012; World Bank, 2012). Further, these gender gaps and gender‐biased attitudes are more prevalent in low‐income countries. A sizable disadvantage and discrimination that women and girls face arises within their households. In fact, this inequality faced by girls within their households from an early age contributes to worse later‐life outcomes for them. Evidence from India and China points towards a preference for sons leading to skewed sex ratios and “missing women,” lower spending on daughters, practices related to dowry, and a general lack of decision‐making power in the hands of women (Anderson, 2007; Jayachandran, 2015). Female genital mutilation practised in parts of Africa and the Middle East has affected at least 200 million young girls (UNICEF, 2016). Across most developing countries, property and inheritance rights are stacked in favor of males (Hallward‐Driemeier, Hasan, & Bogdana Rusu, 2013) and women are frequent targets of domestic violence. Acknowledging the potential gains that could accrue from increased female autonomy, we need a better understanding of how changes in local contexts and environments alter women's autonomy, welfare, and decision‐making. While we know from existing literature that improved labor market

3 citations


Cited by
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Journal Article
TL;DR: A Treatise on the Family by G. S. Becker as discussed by the authors is one of the most famous and influential economists of the second half of the 20th century, a fervent contributor to and expounder of the University of Chicago free-market philosophy, and winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in economics.
Abstract: A Treatise on the Family. G. S. Becker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1981. Gary Becker is one of the most famous and influential economists of the second half of the 20th century, a fervent contributor to and expounder of the University of Chicago free-market philosophy, and winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in economics. Although any book with the word "treatise" in its title is clearly intended to have an impact, one coming from someone as brilliant and controversial as Becker certainly had such a lofty goal. It has received many article-length reviews in several disciplines (Ben-Porath, 1982; Bergmann, 1995; Foster, 1993; Hannan, 1982), which is one measure of its scholarly importance, and yet its impact is, I think, less than it may have initially appeared, especially for scholars with substantive interests in the family. This book is, its title notwithstanding, more about economics and the economic approach to behavior than about the family. In the first sentence of the preface, Becker writes "In this book, I develop an economic or rational choice approach to the family." Lest anyone accuse him of focusing on traditional (i.e., material) economics topics, such as family income, poverty, and labor supply, he immediately emphasizes that those topics are not his focus. "My intent is more ambitious: to analyze marriage, births, divorce, division of labor in households, prestige, and other non-material behavior with the tools and framework developed for material behavior." Indeed, the book includes chapters on many of these issues. One chapter examines the principles of the efficient division of labor in households, three analyze marriage and divorce, three analyze various child-related issues (fertility and intergenerational mobility), and others focus on broader family issues, such as intrafamily resource allocation. His analysis is not, he believes, constrained by time or place. His intention is "to present a comprehensive analysis that is applicable, at least in part, to families in the past as well as the present, in primitive as well as modern societies, and in Eastern as well as Western cultures." His tone is profoundly conservative and utterly skeptical of any constructive role for government programs. There is a clear sense of how much better things were in the old days of a genderbased division of labor and low market-work rates for married women. Indeed, Becker is ready and able to show in Chapter 2 that such a state of affairs was efficient and induced not by market or societal discrimination (although he allows that it might exist) but by small underlying household productivity differences that arise primarily from what he refers to as "complementarities" between caring for young children while carrying another to term. Most family scholars would probably find that an unconvincingly simple explanation for a profound and complex phenomenon. What, then, is the salient contribution of Treatise on the Family? It is not literally the idea that economics could be applied to the nonmarket sector and to family life because Becker had already established that with considerable success and influence. At its core, microeconomics is simple, characterized by a belief in the importance of prices and markets, the role of self-interested or rational behavior, and, somewhat less centrally, the stability of preferences. It was Becker's singular and invaluable contribution to appreciate that the behaviors potentially amenable to the economic approach were not limited to phenomenon with explicit monetary prices and formal markets. Indeed, during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, he did undeniably important and pioneering work extending the domain of economics to such topics as labor market discrimination, fertility, crime, human capital, household production, and the allocation of time. Nor is Becker's contribution the detailed analyses themselves. Many of them are, frankly, odd, idiosyncratic, and off-putting. …

4,817 citations

01 Jan 2016

1,631 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This review considers the history, new evidence, controversies, and corresponding lessons for modern dietary and policy priorities for cardiovascular diseases, obesity, and diabetes mellitus, and identifies major identified themes.
Abstract: Suboptimal nutrition is a leading cause of poor health. Nutrition and policy science have advanced rapidly, creating confusion yet also providing powerful opportunities to reduce the adverse health and economic impacts of poor diets. This review considers the history, new evidence, controversies, and corresponding lessons for modern dietary and policy priorities for cardiovascular diseases, obesity, and diabetes mellitus. Major identified themes include the importance of evaluating the full diversity of diet-related risk pathways, not only blood lipids or obesity; focusing on foods and overall diet patterns, rather than single isolated nutrients; recognizing the complex influences of different foods on long-term weight regulation, rather than simply counting calories; and characterizing and implementing evidence-based strategies, including policy approaches, for lifestyle change. Evidence-informed dietary priorities include increased fruits, nonstarchy vegetables, nuts, legumes, fish, vegetable oils, yogurt, and minimally processed whole grains; and fewer red meats, processed (eg, sodium-preserved) meats, and foods rich in refined grains, starch, added sugars, salt, and trans fat. More investigation is needed on the cardiometabolic effects of phenolics, dairy fat, probiotics, fermentation, coffee, tea, cocoa, eggs, specific vegetable and tropical oils, vitamin D, individual fatty acids, and diet-microbiome interactions. Little evidence to date supports the cardiometabolic relevance of other popular priorities: eg, local, organic, grass-fed, farmed/wild, or non-genetically modified. Evidence-based personalized nutrition appears to depend more on nongenetic characteristics (eg, physical activity, abdominal adiposity, gender, socioeconomic status, culture) than genetic factors. Food choices must be strongly supported by clinical behavior change efforts, health systems reforms, novel technologies, and robust policy strategies targeting economic incentives, schools and workplaces, neighborhood environments, and the food system. Scientific advances provide crucial new insights on optimal targets and best practices to reduce the burdens of diet-related cardiometabolic diseases.

1,418 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
01 Sep 1944-Nature
TL;DR: The result is not a mere juxtaposition of uncoordinated viewpoints, but a unity of aim and consistency in presentation which make the multiple authorship almost undetectable as mentioned in this paper, and there can be little doubt that the intimate collaboration of a team of specialists, each with a distinctive training, is a profitable way of examining a problem which has no clear-cut frontiers and which does not fall neatly into one of the conventional compartments of social study.
Abstract: EIGHT members of the Yale Institute of Human Relations have co-operated to produce this book The result is not a mere juxtaposition of uncoordinated viewpoints but a unity of aim and consistency in presentation which make the multiple authorship almost undetectable Whatever judgment one may make about the value of the hypothesis elaborated in the book, there can be little doubt that the intimate collaboration of a team of specialists, each with a distinctive training, is a profitable way of examining a problem which has no clear-cut frontiers and which does not fall neatly into one of the conventional compartments of social study Frustration and Aggression By John Dollard Neal E Miller Leonard W Doob O H Mowrer Robert R Sears, in collaboration with Clellan S Ford, Carl Iver Hovland and Richard T Sollenberger (International Library of Sociology and Social Reconstruction) Pp ix + 150 (London: Kegan Paul and Co, Ltd, 1944) 10s 6d net

994 citations

Posted Content
TL;DR: The authors showed that the growth rate is an inverted U-shaped function of net changes in inequality: Changes in inequality (in any direction) are associated with reduced growth in the next period.
Abstract: This paper describes the correlations between inequality and the growth rates in cross-country data. Using non-parametric methods, we show that the growth rate is an inverted U-shaped function of net changes in inequality: Changes in inequality (in any direction) are associated with reduced growth in the next period. The estimated relationship is robust to variations in control variables and estimation methods. This inverted U-curve is consistent with a simple political economy model, although, as we point out, efforts to interpret this model causally run into difficult identification problems. We show that this non-linearity is sufficient to explain why previous estimates of the relationship between the level of inequality and growth are so different from one another.

942 citations