Height is the result of a complex process of growth that begins at birth and reaches the end in early adulthood.  This paper studies the determinants of height from birth to maturity.  A height production function is specified whose structure allows height to be the result of the accumulation...

The paper analyses household money demand and consumption. Variables that measure shortage and expectations about its future course are introduced to capture the effects of the transition from centrally planned to market economy. The Johansen procedure is used to identify a system of the two...

Empirical analyses of Cagan`s money demand schedule have broadly speaking suffered from the following problems: (i) Inability to model the data to the end of the hyperinflation. (ii) Difficulties in making congruent models for systems of variables. (iii) Discrepancies between estimated and...

This paper presents unique evidence that orphanhood matters in the long-run for health and education outcomes, in a region of Northwestern Tanzania. We study a sample of 718 non-orphaned children surveyed in 1991-94, who were traced and reinterviewed as adults in 2004. A large proportion, 19...

Econometric analyses of European datasets suggest that income aspirations increase with current income.  This finding is consistent with the adaptation hypothesis - the notion that individual aspirations adjust to reflect personal circumstances and living conditions.  We add to these existing...

Nutrition and health are important dimensions of human well-being. Both aspects are complementary to income and deserve attention in its own right. However, there is an interrelationship between economic development and nutritional status which this study aims to investigate. We use a...

This paper proposes a joint model of tobacco consumption and mortality over the life-cycle. The decision to smoke is a trade off between current utility derived from smoking and a mortality risk increasing with age. Individuals with a longer potential life expectancy have more incentive to cut...

Agricultural and other physically demanding sectors are important sources of growth in developing countries but prevalent diseases such as malaria adversely impact the productivity, labor supply, and occupational choice of workers in these sectors by reducing physical capacity.  This study...

We study the origins of adult mental health using early life income fluctuations.  Combining a time series of real producer prices of cocoa with a nationally representative household survey in Ghana, we show that a one standard deviation rise in the cocoa price in early life decreases the...