Garance Genicot

Garance Genicot (born in 1974) is a Belgian-American economist and associate professor of economics at Georgetown University.[1] She is a member of the Core Group at Theoretical Research in Development Economics (ThReD),[2] a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Development Economics Program,[3] a research associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CPER) in both the Political Economy Program and in the Development Economics Program,[4] a Fellow at the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD)[5] and a research fellow at the IZA Institute.[6] From 2013 to 2018, she served as an External Member of the World Bank Research Management Committee. A more detailed overview of her work can be found on RePEc., Research Papers in Economics.

Genicot's research focuses on risk-sharing, intra-household bargaining, informal credit markets, social networks and inequality. Her highly cited work on group formation and networks focuses on how the interplay of personal incentives and group or network incentives impact economic outcomes, and has applications in a variety of fields within economics, such as economic development, conflict, and labor economics.[1] She studied the relationship between improved property rights for women in India and the incidence of suicide among both men and women.[7]

Her work with her Ph.D. advisor, Kaushik Basu and Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz studies the responsiveness of labor supply to wages, an idea that is central to the classical theory of economics. They argue that at low wage levels, households are financially insecure and would therefore be willing to supply more labor to hedge themselves against economic shocks. This is called the “added labor effect” and has important implications to the ongoing minimum wage debate.[8][9]

Her work on aspirations and inequality with Debraj Ray shows that aspirations can inspire but also frustrate. Their work shows the discouraging impact of aspirations that are too far from a person's situation. This study has wide implications in developing policy, especially in terms of education investments.[10][11] In Aspirations and Economic Behavior, the same authors provide a review of the literature on aspirations and apply their model to important development issues such as fertility choice and conflict.

Another important focus of Genicot's research revolves around gender issues. In work with Siwan Anderson, she shows that increased property rights for women did increase the suicides rates and the incidence of wife-beating in India. Improvements in property rights for women can overall benefit women. At the same time, these improvements, by giving more voice and more decision power to women, can also be a source of conflict within families. This article was featured in an article in Ideas for India. In recent work with Maria Henandez-de-Benito, she shows how patriarchal norms persist and affect women's right to land in Tanzania.

Her work on Tolerance and Compromise in Social Network models how people may want to compromise on their identity to make friends and "belong"(See Twitter tread). In this important work, she shows how relatively intolerant individuals are key bridges in social networks. As a result, having systematically less tolerance at the extremes lead to the absence of reciprocal compromise and polarization. While intolerance among moderates helps cohesion.

Sense has a recent profile of some of Genicot's work in a podcast.