Traditional Institutions Meet the Modern World: Caste, Gender, and Schooling Choice in a Globalizing Economy
利用孟买过去20年的新调查数据，研究种姓制度如何与全球化互动，影响不同性别和种姓群体的职业选择与教育决策，发现低种姓男性受传统网络束缚，而低种姓女性则抓住新经济机遇。
This paper addresses the question of how traditional institutions interact with the forces of globalization to shape the economic mobility and welfare of particular groups of individuals in the new economy. We explore the role of one such traditional institution—the caste system—in shaping career choices by gender in Bombay using new survey data on school enrollment and income over the past 20 years. We find that male working-class—lower-caste—networks continue to channel boys into local language schools that lead to the traditional occupation, despite the fact that returns to nontraditional white-collar occupations rose substantially in the 1990s, suggesting the possibility of a dynamic inefficiency. In contrast, lower-caste girls, who historically had low labor market participation rates and so did not benefit from the network, are taking full advantage of the opportunities that became available in the new economy by switching rapidly to English schools.