Seminar
Lore Vandewalle: Social Identities and Public Policies. Unintended Effects of Gender Quotas in India
There is a growing consensus that social and cultural norms are important determinants of economic behavior. An important limitation of the existing literature is the focus on one identity at a time.
Indeed, we exploit the randomized nature of political reservations for women in India, to show that a policy designed along one identity (gender) alters the distribution of the benefits of this policy along another dimension (caste). This is due to the important variation in gender norms across caste groups.