Law and Economics Colloquium: Natalie Bau

LAW & ECONOMICS COLLOQUIUM
presents

Natalie Bau
University of Toronto
Department of Economics 

Can Policy Crowd Out Culture 

Tuesday, January 30, 2018
4:10 – 5:45
Flavelle Building, Room 219
78 Queen’s Park 

Policies may change the returns to transmitting cultural norms to the next generation with the unintended consequence of changing cultural practices. I study cultural norms that determine whether boys or girls support their parents in their old age in Indonesia and Ghana. These norms play the dual role of increasing old age support while relieving incomplete contracting problems in educational investment between parents and children. Where these norms exist, parents invest more in the human capital of the child who is more likely to care for them in old age. In both Indonesia and Ghana, the entry and expansion of pension plans crowds out human capital investment in the children targeted by these norms. Moreover, consistent with a model where parents jointly choose whether to educate their children and whether to transmit the norm to the next generation, the pension plan also crowds out the practice of the norm. Thus, policy crowds out culture. 

Natalie Bau is an assistant professor at the University of Toronto, a CEPR research affiliate, and a CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar. She is interested in development and education economics with a special emphasis on the industrial organization of education markets. 

For more colloquium information, please contact Nadia Gulezko at n.gulezko@utoronto.ca.