The literature on economic growth and development has focused considerable attention on questions of risk management and the possibility of multiple equilibria associated with poverty traps. We use herd history data collected among pastoralists in southern Ethiopia to study stochastic wealth...

Ecotourism, bioprospecting and non-timber product marketing have been promoted recently as market-based instruments for environment al protection, but without sound understanding of the resulting net conservation effects. We present evidence on the local effects of recent argan oil...

The literature on economic growth and development has focused considerable attention on questions of risk management and the possibility of multiple equilibria associated with poverty traps. We use herd history data collected among pastoralists in southern Ethiopia to study stochastic wealth...

This article addresses processes of livelihood diversification among pastoralists in the rangelands of northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia. The objectives of the article are threefold: (1) to suggest a theoretical framework for addressing income diversification among pastoralists with reference...

This paper uses detailed, transactions-level data and a structural-heteroskedasticity-in-mean model to identify the determinants of livestock producer prices for pastoralists in the drylands of northern Kenya. The empirical results confirm the importance of animal characteristics, periodic...

Temporal climate risk weighs heavily on many of the world's poor. Recent advances in model-based climate forecasting have expanded the range, timeliness and accuracy of forecasts available to decision-makers whose welfare depends on stochastic climate outcomes. There has consequently been...

Estimating risk preferences is tricky because controlling for confounding factors is difficult. Omitting or imperfectly controlling for these factors can attribute too much observable behavior to risk aversion and bias estimated preferences. Agents often modify risky decisions in response to...

A growing literature on poverty traps emphasizes the links between multiple equilibria and risk avoidance. However, multiple equilibria may also foster risk taking behavior by some poor people. We illustrate this idea with a simple analytical model in which people with different wealth and...

The effective design and implementation of interventions that reduce vulnerability and poverty require a solid understanding of underlying poverty dynamics and associated behavioral responses. Stochastic and dynamic benefit streams can make it difficult for the poor to learn the value of such...

Estimating risk preferences is tricky because controlling for confounding factors is difficult. Omitting or imperfectly controlling for these factors can attribute too much observable behaviour to risk aversion and bias estimated preferences. Agents often modify risky decisions in response to...