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) …

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 …

How do aspirations influence investment decisions for people living in poverty? Does this
change as peoples economic conditions improve? To answer these questions, we design a …

Purpose: This study explores small-scale tourism entrepreneurship in emerging markets to
uncover what drives entrepreneurs in this sector. By analyzing factors such as …

Ignorance and Change analyses the European refugee crisis of 2015–2016 from the
perspective of ignorance studies showing how the media, decision-makers and academics …

Aspirations for the future can influence investments made today, and gender gaps in
aspirations can perpetuate gender gaps in outcomes. In this paper, we explore how the local …

Aspirations have become a common theme in empirical economics studies but there is no
unified understanding of the range of outcomes they influence, the factors that shape them …

This paper describes emerging work in development economics at the intersection of hope,
poverty and material prosperity. We blend Sen's capability approach and Snyder's hope …

Recent research at the intersection of psychology and economics sheds light on the
influence of hope on economic decisions. A body of that work concentrates on the …