How do societies rebuild after decades of institutionalized oppression and intergroup violence? We study the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which sought to rebuild the nation through public truth-telling about apartheid-era abuses. Using quasi-exogenous variation in exposure to live TRC broadcasts, we show that the TRC strengthened cohesion among Blacks, reducing interethnic violence and increasing national identification. At the same time, it weakened interracial relations, raising segregation and lowering intermarriage. Hearing content suggests these effects reflect intra-Black reconciliation driven by emotional engagement. These divisions had downstream consequences: using administrative tax data, we show they hindered public policy implementation.

Do coercive efforts to dismantle illicit economic activity promote development, or can they inadvertently undermine it? We study this question in the context of Colombia's large-scale aerial eradication of coca crops using glyphosate. We digitize detailed geographic data on sprayed areas and exploit quasi-random variation in exposure to eradication flights to estimate both short- and long-run effects on human capital and socioeconomic outcomes. In the short term, we show that aerial eradication increases school dropout, primarily through negative income shocks to affected households. In the longer term, we find that villages previously exposed to spraying exhibit lower educational attainment, higher rates of child labor, increased early marriage, and poorer living conditions, even after the program was suspended. Our findings suggest that when illicit production serves as a subsistence strategy in income-constrained settings, enforcement efforts may generate persistent developmental losses.

This paper examines how armed conflict shapes educational attainment across socioeconomic backgrounds and its implications for intergenerational mobility. Using data from Colombia and an instrumental variable strategy that exploits variation in U.S. military assistance interacted with proximity to military bases, I document that conflict reduces educational attainment disproportionately among individuals from more educated families—a pattern that reflects a weakening in the intergenerational persistence of educational advantage. This weakening translates into changes in mobility: conflict increases the likelihood of downward mobility and reduces upward mobility, particularly among individuals from more educated families. Suggestive evidence points to a demand-side channel operating through educational aspirations. These findings indicate that conflict weakens the intergenerational transmission of educational advantage—not by lifting outcomes at the bottom, but by eroding them at the top.

Worrisome topics, such as climate change, economic crises, or pandemics including the Covid-19, are increasingly present and pervasive due to digital media and social networks. Do worries triggered by such topics affect the cognitive capacities of young adults? In an online experiment during the Covid-19 pandemic (N=1503), we test how the cognitive performance of university students responds when exposed to topics discussing (i) current adverse mental health consequences of social restrictions or (ii) future labor market hardships linked to the economic contraction. Moreover, we study how such a response is affected by a performance goal. We find that the labor market topic increases cognitive performance when it is motivated by a goal, consistent with a ‘tunneling effect’ of scarcity or a positive stress effect. However, we show that the positive reaction is mainly concentrated among students with larger financial and social resources, pointing to an inequality-widening mechanism. Conversely, we find limited support for a negative stress effect or a ‘cognitive load effect’ of scarcity, as the mental health topic has a negative but insignificant average effect on cognitive performance. Yet, there is a negative response among psychologically vulnerable individuals when the payout is not conditioned on reaching a goal.