This paper studies how the identity of an information source influences learning, and reports from four large-scale online experiments designed to disentangle identity preferences from beliefs about the quality of an information source. The experiments examine both naturally occurring identities (caste and religion in India) and experimentally assigned identities (in an EU/US sample). Across identity contexts, there is no evidence that preferences for the identity of an information source influences social learning. On the other hand, beliefs about information quality strongly influence learning, but participants are overconfident and often do not learn when it would benefit them. Finally, participants prefer to learn from a non-social source (a computer algorithm) rather than another human. The results highlight the importance of providing credible signals of information quality, especially when social identities are salient.

The paper presents evidence from a global survey experiment with ~65,000 participants from 60 countries on the heterogeneity in paternalistic preferences within and across countries, and maps these preferences to the support for specific types of paternalistic policies. Globally, support for soft interventions greatly exceeds the support for hard interventions. There is striking variation in the difference in levels of support for hard and soft interventions, which we attribute to differences in preferences. The paper also studies how people's preferences for paternalistic policies of various types relate to various cultural and country-level characteristics.

This paper studies how people's economic experiences shape their preferences for inequality acceptance both during their lifetimes, and through cultural transmission. We combine data from a global survey experiment where individuals from 60 countries make real redistributive decisions with macroeconomic indicators and ethnographic data. The results show that an increased exposure to poor economic growth causes people to become substantially more meritocratic.

Shocks faced in early life have been linked with persistent inequalities in long-term health and economic outcomes. This paper studies the link between seasonal rainfall shocks and early childhood development in rural Uganda. The results indicate that rainfall shocks during the Ugandan harvest season in the in-utero period and first year of life are positively associated with the cognitive and non-cognitive development of 3- to 5-year-old children. This contributes to the literature on the persistence of economic inequalities caused by adversities in early life.