Using global data we examine the dynamics of migration from developing to developed countries.  Origin and destination countries are characterized by substantial diffrences in incomes, political rights and cultures.  Incentives as well as costs shape the decision to migrate.  One powerful...

Veiling among Muslim women is modelled as a form of cultural resistance which inhibits the transmission of secular values.  Individuals care about opinions of their community members and use veiling to influence these options.  Our theory predicts that veiling is highest when individuals from...

Culture constrains individual choice by making certain behaviour taboo.  We propose an evolutionary model in which members of different groups attempt to coordinate over time.  We show that cultural constraints can lead to a permanent break down in coordination between groups, even when...

This paper investigates the behaviour of bodies or organizations, operating in a stochastic environment, where there is a delegated decision maker.  A crucial decision is when to delegate to another decision maker.  The problem may be intrapersonal, as occurs when there are endogenously...

We develop a bidimensional matching model under transferable utility, where individuals are characterized by a continuous trait (e.g., socioeconomic status) and a binary attribute (e.g., smoking status).  The model is "truly multidimensional", in the sense that the impact of the traits cannot...

Children are increasingly treated as active members in the household.  However, their preferences over consumption and leisure are rarely modelled.  This paper considers heterogeneity in siblings' preferences over leisure and consumption and builds a theoretical and empirical model for...

We report the short-term results from a randomized evaluation of a mobile phone literacy and numeracy program (Project ABC) in Niger, in which adult literacy students learned how to use mobile phones as part of a literacy and numeracy class.  Students in ABC villages showed substantial gains in...

Geographical imbalances in the health workforce have been a consistent feature of nearly all health systems, and especially in developing countries. In this paper we investigate the willingness to work in a rural area among final year nursing and medical students in Ethiopia. Analyzing data...

The added worker effect states that unemployment of a household member leads to an increase in labour supply of another household member. This paper investigates whether there is such an effect in a developing country. We use a rich data set for urban Ethiopia. We first give a brief description...

In this paper we examine the concept of vulnerability (Townsend 1994) within the context of income mobility of the poor. We test for the dynamics of vulnerable households in the UK using Waves 1 - 12 of the British Household Panel Survey and find that, of three different types of risks that we...