
Annemie MaertensUniversity of Sussex · Department of Economics
Annemie Maertens
Phd Applied Economic and Management
About
33
Publications
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Introduction
I am a development and agricultural economist. I study poverty in rural communities in India and Sub Saharan Africa.
I work on the role of social networks, social norms and identity in economic decision-making. I am particularly interested in how people learn about their environment and situation, and how this learning then impacts behaviour. I am also interested in social norms and pressures, and the effects they may have on behaviour and the society more general.
Skills and Expertise
Additional affiliations
September 2014 - August 2023
January 2004 - June 2010
September 2010 - August 2014
Publications
Publications (33)
This paper documents the role of village fairness norms in land markets. A strong and robust relationship is established between experimentally elicited village-level fairness norms and land-rental rates across 250 Malawian villages. Stronger fairness norms correlate with a tighter range in village rental rates. The study suggests that the fairness...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304387823000998
Farmer groups are the cornerstone of many agricultural projects in low income countries. The success of such projects crucially depends on the ability of group members to cooperate. We conducted a series of public goods experiments to study within-group cooperation in Malawian farmer groups. We combine results from these experiments with survey dat...
The extended family household, in which multiple generations or married siblings of a family live together, is common in developing countries. We conducted a series of public goods experiments in such households in five villages in rural North India to shed light on decision-making efficiency within this household structure. In this experiment, we...
Fertilizer use remains below recommended rates in most of Sub-Saharan Africa, contributing to low crop yields and poverty. We explore the role of fertilizer quality. We interviewed fertilizer sellers in an important agricultural region in Tanzania and sampled their fertilizer to establish that the nutrient content of fertilizers is good, meeting in...
Though extension services have long since proved their value to agricultural production and farmer prosperity, their record in sub‐Saharan Africa has been mixed. To study the impact of such programs on farmers' learning about agricultural technologies, we implemented a quasi‐randomized controlled trial and collected detailed panel data among Malawi...
This paper introduces a new primary dataset on dowry payments in rural India. A novel feature of the data is that in addition to eliciting actual dowry payments, we also asked rural Indian households how much dowry they expected to pay/receive for each of their currently unmarried children. These expectations are presumably the basis of household d...
We use a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the impacts of an adult literacy program, targeting women in rural India, on a broad range of outcomes one year later. We show that the program had signi®cant impacts on multiple aspects of the women's lives, such as improvements in the women's health and hygiene practices, as well as increased invol...
This paper examines the role that social networks play in the adoption process of Bacillus thurigien-sis (Bt) cotton, a type of genetically engineered cotton that has been available on the Indian market since 2002. Using a unique dataset and empirical methodology, I find that farmers appeared to have exclusively learned from the experimentation of...
We use nationally representative household data from India to establish the intergenerational effect of early marriage on a broad set of health and educational investments and outcomes, and to explicate the underlying mechanisms. The empirical strategy utilizes variation in age at menarche to obtain exogenous variation in the age at marriage. We fi...
Top incomes in India have been rising sharply since the 1980s. In this chapter, we show that this phenomenon may have resulted in delays to female marriage. Our analysis takes advantage of cross-sectional variation in earnings distribution across narrowly defined marriage markets. We find that female marriage rates decline in response to increases...
How do people reassess their beliefs in the light of new information? Do people follow the Bayesian rule of utility maximisation? Or are there other aspects that people take into account when updating their beliefs? In order to better understand this process, experiments were conducted amongst rural women in Uttar Pradesh. The results and questions...
Using a unique dataset collected among farmers in India’s semi-arid tropics, this paper documents the surprising prevalence of risk-taking behavior in the face of high-stakes gambles. The evidence suggests that this apparently anomalous behavior is due to a combination of credit constraints and non-convexities in production. In particular, the high...
Recent research has established the importance of perceived (as opposed to actual) returns as a determinant of educational investments. We analyze data from India to highlight gender disparities in the perceived returns to education and the salience of productive characteristics.
Psychologists have described the working of the human brain as a combination of two systems – a dual process model. One system is intuitive and automatic (System 1) and the other is reflective and rational (System 2). To determine what insights this model has for stigma – such as food fears of contamination – we elicited the willingness-to-pay for...
Psychologists have described the working of the human brain as a combination of two systems - a dual process model. One system is intuitive and automatic (System 1) and the other is reflective and rational (System 2). To determine what insights this model has for stigma - such as fears of food contamination - we elicited the willingness-to-pay for...
A sharp trend-break in participation (as measured by turnout rates as well as number of candidates contesting) in state assembly elections in India, starting in the mid-1990s is noticed as one studies electoral constituency level data spanning the period 1977-2002. Specifically, it is found that turnout rates as well as the number of contesting can...
Using a unique dataset that I collected in three villages in semi-arid India, I analyze the role of perceived returns to education and social norms regarding the ideal age of marriage in the educational plans parents have for their children. I elicit from parents their perceptions of the returns to various levels of education and their educational...
The authors combine novel data and methodology to shed light on the contribution to dowry of a composite characteristic that they refer to a child quality. Their findings can be summarized as follows: (1) Dowry values are not determined by household characteristics alone: child quality is a very significant determinant of dowry; (2) Quality is not...
Technological improvements, especially in agriculture, drive sustainable advances in labor productivity, incomes, food security and general economic growth. But improved technologies are not adopted immediately, randomly or completely throughout a population. Any firm economic understanding of the diffusion of a new technology therefore depends on...
This paper presents the first results of a study conducted on subjective expectations that parents have about the costs and returns to education. This is done by using a detailed child-level dataset from the three villages of Dokur (Mahbubnagar district, Andhra Pradesh), Kalman and Shirapur (Sholapur district, Maharashtra). The perceived returns di...
Rain-fed lowland rice is by far the most common production system in south eastern Tanzania. Rice is typically cultivated in river valleys and plains on diverse soil types although heavy soil types are preferred as they can retain moisture for a longer period. To assess the effects of soil bunds on the production of rain-fed lowland rice, the crop...
This paper presents the broad macro parameters of the growth of the Indian economy since the nation's independence and a cross-country
evaluation of where India stands, drawing out the patterns discernible in these aggregative statistics. The paper gives an
overview of the on-going debate on the components of the Indian growth and the relative impo...