This thesis explores how human capital, collective behavior, and historical events shape development outcomes across three distinct chapters. The first chapter, "Closing the Gender Gap: Differential Impacts of Public and Private School Subsidies,” studies the impact of Uganda’s nationwide 2007 tuition fee subsidy policy, which covered both female and male students in public and private secondary schools. The chapter shows that the subsidy had limited effects on students in public schools, while educational outcomes improved significantly for female students in private schools, with little impact on male students. It underscores the need to better understand the heterogeneous effects of policies aimed at easing financial constraints for students. The second chapter, “Improving School Leadership in Rwanda” examines the effects of a program designed to improve headteachers’ management skills on teacher and student outcomes in Rwandan primary schools. While the program did not affect student learning outcomes, it did lead to improvements in teacher retention. The chapter highlights the long causal chain linking management practices to learning outcomes. The final chapter, “The Dreyfus Affair and the French Resistance,” studies the long-term impact of social divisions on collective action. Using the Dreyfus Affair in France, it shows that areas that experienced higher levels of social division during the scandal exhibited lower levels of resistance activity during Nazi Germany’s occupation forty years later. The results show how critical junctures can generate long-lasting cleavages that resurface during subsequent crises, weakening collective action and resilience.
