This article reviews the literature on aspirations in economics, with a particular focus on
socially determined aspirations. The core theory builds on two fundamental principles:(a) …

We propose a framework for understanding the role of hope and aspirations in economic
development. We review literature related to hope from philosophy, theology, and …

Using a unique data set on students from the first regional schools in colonial Benin, we
investigate the effect of education on living standards, occupation, and political participation …

We study the educational choices of children of immigrants in a tracked school system. We
first show that immigrants in Italy enroll disproportionately into vocational high schools, as …

American policy makers, educators, and others are concerned that predicted workforce
shortages in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields will have a …

I study the role of aspirations in economic development drawing on the existing theoretical
and empirical literature and provide some new empirical findings using individual level data …

This article analyses the role of interactions with local leaders in amplifying poor
households' investment response to a social programme. The causal effect of social …

Abstract 1 This paper investigates whether aspirations matter for education, which offers a
common route out of poverty. We find that mother aspirations are strongly related to the …

Aspirations, or a lack thereof, have recently gained the attention of economists as a
behavioral constraint to future-oriented behavior and investment. In this paper we …

This paper highlights a particular mechanism underlying the exclusion process of
indigenous people in Peru by analyzing the role of aspirations in educational investment …