We study the impact of working with same-race coworkers on individuals' retention at firms. Using administrative employer-employee data from Brazil, we exploit unexpected deaths of workers from different race groups as exogenous shocks to the peer group composition. We find that a decrease in the non-white share of coworkers leads to lower levels of retention among non-white workers but does...
The paper studies the effect of natural disasters on the introduction of religious laws using a unique dataset on Sharia laws in the largest Muslim country – Indonesia. We find that districts in proximity to a natural disaster are 37 percent more likely to introduce Sharia law in the following year, and the effect persists over the following years. Testing for the mechanism, we use a longitude...
Social identity-based prejudice has a debilitating effect on various life outcomes. While the social science literature primarily focuses on the economic and social consequences, the mental health effects of such biases are vastly under-studied. We investigate this question in the context of caste discrimination in Bihar, India, using a large-scale, detailed, representative survey of public...
