How students’ non-school inputs respond to ability grouping may explain the currently mixed findings in the literature about the impacts of tracking. Using data from South Korea, where students are randomized into middle schools under the country’s equalization policy, but sorted into...

This paper examines the link between the Female Secondary School Stipend Program in Bangladesh, its effects on schooling of girls, and the subsequent impact on the education of their younger siblings. The stipend program was introduced nationwide in 1994, and affected girls in rural areas who...

This paper provides an analysis of potential unequal burden of bribery in schools on poor households in developing countries. The rich are more likely to pay bribes in the standard model where the probability of punishment for bribe taking by a teacher is the same irrespective of income of the...

This paper examines the long-term effects of exposure to civil war and genocide on the educational attainment and labor productivity of individuals in Cambodia. Given the well-documented causal links between schooling and labor productivity, it is surprising that past studies show that civil...

This paper examines how availability of microfinance influences households' borrowing from informal sources in village economies. It uses a unique household level panel data set, which spans more than two decades (1987-2008), from rural villages in Bangladesh. We find that households' access to...

This paper looks at the connection between internal migration and unemployment in South Africa. We examine whether rural-urban migrants are more likely to be unemployed, in informal sector employment or underemployed than non-migrants. We build on standard economic theory to predict that rates...

We study the relationship between group size and the extent of risk sharing in an insurance game played over a number of periods with random idiosyncratic and aggregate shocks to income in each period. Risk sharing is attained via agents that receive a high endowment in one period making...

This paper evaluates the impact of microfinance on household consumption using a new, large and unique cross-section data set from Bangladesh. The richness of the data and program eligibility criterion allow the use of a number of non-experimental impact evaluation techniques, in particular...

This paper estimates, using a large panel data set from rural Bangladesh, the effects of health shocks on household consumption and how access to microcredit affects households' response to such shocks. Our results suggest that even though in general consumption remains stable in many cases when...

In this paper we consider different forms of intra-group transfers and the resulting type of group formation. We introduce the concept of partial joint liability and revenue sharing and show that this form of intra-group transfer may result in heterogeneous group formation. Its uniqueness is...