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Individuals and business owners engage in an increasingly complex array of financial decisions that are critical for their success and well-being. Yet a growing literature documents that in both developed and developing countries, a large fraction of the population is unprepared to make these...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10008611017
Many technologies used by the LDCs are developed in the OECD economies and are designed to make optimal use of the skills of these richer countries' workforces. Differences in the supply of skills create a mismatch between the requirements of these technologies and the skills of LDC workers, and...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005114308
of development. We document the following regularities. First, as countries develop, their productive structure moves … from more volatile to less volatile sectors. Second, the level of specialization declines with development at early stages …, and slowly increases at later stages of development. Third, the volatility of country- specific macroeconomic shocks falls …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005662216
This paper proposes a model in which economic relations and institutions in advanced and less-developed economies differ as these societies have access to different amounts of information. This lack of information makes it hard to give the right incentives to managers and entrepreneurs. We argue...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005667121
This paper is a practical guide (a toolkit) for researchers, students and practitioners wishing to introduce randomization as part of a research design in the field. It first covers the rationale for the use of randomization, as a solution to selection bias and a partial solution to publication...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005504356
We investigate the puzzle of microfinance: that loans generate large measured returns for businesses, yet loan take-up is low and the businesses often close. We analyze a randomized trial that bundled microfinance loans with a cheap health insurance policy. Requiring clients to purchase...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011084607
India's child stunting rate is among the highest in the world, exceeding that of many poorer African countries. In this paper, we analyze data for over 174,000 Indian and Sub-Saharan African children to show that Indian firstborns are taller than African firstborns; the Indian height...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011207396
What are the effects of television, and of role models portrayed in TV programs, on individual behavior? We focus on fertility choices in Brazil, a country where soap operas (novelas) portray families that are much smaller than in reality. We exploit differences in the timing of entry into...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005666540
classes in the development process. We find that the average middle class person is not an entrepreneur in waiting: while he …
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005791405
Building on the large and growing empirical literature on the political behaviour of individuals in low income countries this chapter seeks to understand corruption through the lens of political economy -- particularly in terms of the political and economic differences between rich and poor...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005791824