Supreet Kaur
Associate Professor of Economics
University of California, Berkeley
I am an Associate Professor (with tenure) in the Department of Economics at UC Berkeley. I am a development economist, with overlap in my work with behavioral and labor economics. The first strand of my research focuses on the functioning of labor markets in poor countries. My work documents frictions in labor markets, studies the causes of unemployment, and examines the impact of inequality on labor productivity. The second strand of my research explores how psychological forces—such as the limits of human cognition and social norms—can affect individual behavior and market equilibria. By applying insights from psychology into economics, my goal is to deepen our understanding of the causes and consequences of poverty.
Recent papers
-
Retrieval Failures and Consumption Smoothing: A Field Experiment on Seasonal Poverty
Forthcoming, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2026
Abstract: Individuals may fail to recall and use information they already know when making decisions. We empirically investigate whether such "retrieval failures" distort consumption smoothing behavior among Zambian farmers, who derive their income from one annual harvest and then spend it down over the course of the year. We document that individuals underestimate upcoming spending by 50%, creating scope for under-saving. In order to improve recall, we randomize an intervention that prompts individuals to think through their future expenses associatively in categories—without providing any external information or guidance. Treated individuals increase "remembered" expenses by 36-60%; as predicted by the memory literature, effects are concentrated among small, irregular, and stochastic items. Immediate spending drops and, six weeks after the intervention, treated households hold 15% higher savings. They subsequently enter the "hungry season"—the final months of the year when consumption typically declines sharply—with one additional month of savings, leading to a flatter spending profile over the year. Households use the increased savings to self-finance additional farm investment, resulting in a 9% increase in the next year's crop revenue. We replicate the intervention's impact on beliefs among low-income Americans, suggesting that retrieval failures generalize across settings and populations.
-
Social Norms as a Determinant of Aggregate Labor Supply
Accepted, Journal of Political Economy, 2026
Abstract: We examine social norms against accepting wage cuts in Indian casual labor markets. In a field experiment with 183 existing agricultural employers and 502 workers, we document that norms distort the aggregate labor supply curve: despite high unemployment, only 1.8% of workers accept jobs below the prevailing wage; this jumps to 26% when other workers cannot observe job offers. In contrast, social observability does not affect labor supply at the prevailing wage. In addition, workers are willing to pay to sanction those who accept wage cuts. Consistent with aggregate implications, measures of social cohesion correlate with downward wage rigidity and its unemployment effects across India. We replicate survey evidence for norms in labor and product markets in India and Kenya: across a range of decentralized spot markets, sellers state they would be unwilling to undercut prices, and doing so would trigger strong social and economic repercussions. Social norms may generate market power in a range of settings.
-
The Social Tax: Redistributive Pressure and Labor Supply
Econometrica, 2025
Abstract: In low-income communities in both rich and poor countries, redistributive transfers within kin and social networks are frequent. Such arrangements may distort labor supply—acting as a "social tax" that dampens the incentive to work. We document that across countries, from the United States to Côte d'Ivoire, low-income groups report strong pressure to share earned income with others; in addition, social groups that undertake more interpersonal transfers work fewer hours. Using a field experiment, we enable piece-rate factory workers in Côte d'Ivoire to shield income using blocked savings accounts over 9 months. Workers may only deposit earnings increases, relative to baseline, mitigating income effects on labor supply. Offering Private accounts raises work attendance by 6.5% and earnings by 9.4%. These treatment effects are concentrated among workers who report higher redistributive pressure at baseline. To obtain further suggestive evidence on mechanisms, in a supplementary experiment, we vary whether blocked accounts are private or known to the worker's network. When accounts are private, take-up is substantively higher (60% vs. 14%), with a resultant 8.8% higher earnings. Outgoing transfers do not decline, indicating no loss in redistribution. The welfare benefits of informal redistribution may come at a cost, depressing labor supply and productivity.
-
Cognitive Endurance as Human Capital
Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2025. 140(2), 943-1002
Abstract: Schooling may build human capital not only by teaching academic skills, but by expanding the capacity for cognition itself. We focus specifically on cognitive endurance: the ability to sustain effortful mental activity over a continuous stretch of time. As motivation, we document that globally and in the US, the poor exhibit cognitive fatigue more quickly than the rich across a variety of field settings; they also attend schools that offer fewer opportunities to practice thinking for continuous stretches. Using a field experiment with 1,600 Indian primary school students, we randomly increase the amount of time students spend in sustained cognitive activity during the school day—using either math problems (mimicking good schooling) or non-academic games (providing a pure test of our mechanism). Each approach markedly improves cognitive endurance: students show 21% less decline in performance over time when engaged in intellectual activities—listening comprehension, academic problems, or IQ tests. They also exhibit increased attentiveness in the classroom and score higher on psychological measures of sustained attention. Moreover, each treatment improves students' school performance by 0.09 standard deviations. This indicates that the experience of effortful thinking itself—even when devoid of any subject content—increases the ability to accumulate traditional human capital. Finally, we complement these results with quasi-experimental variation indicating that an additional year of schooling improves cognitive endurance, but only in higher-quality schools. Our findings suggest that schooling disparities may further disadvantage poor children by hampering the development of a core mental capacity.