There is a well-known debate about the roles of geography versus institutions in explaining the long-term development of countries. These debates have usually been based on cross-country regressions where questions about parameter heterogeneity, unobserved heterogeneity, and endogeneity cannot...

This paper addresses the apparent paradox between widespread support of cattle farming by agricultural policy interventions and negative returns to cattle as stressed in recent works. Using a representative panel dataset for Andhra Pradesh, a state in the south of India, we examine average and...

More than 1.3 billion people lack access to electricity. The UN have proclaimed the goal of providing electricity to all by 2030. In recent years, Pico-Photovoltaic kits have become a lower cost alternative to investment intensive grid electrification. Using a randomized controlled trial we...

We focus on helmet use behavior among motorbike users in Delhi. We use a detailed data set collected for the purpose of the study. To guide our empirical analysis, we rely on a simple model in which drivers decide on self-protection and self-insurance. The empirical findings suggest that risk...

We analyse various pathways through which access to electricity affects fertility, using a pseudo-panel of Indonesian districts covering the period 1993-2010. Identification of causal effects relies on a district-fixed effects approach and controlling for local economic development. The...

Worldwide 600 million jobs are needed over the next 15 years to keep employment rates at their current level. Governments, non-governmental organizations and donors spend on targeted programs and broader policies to enhance employment creation and the creation of new firms. Because most...

We investigate the returns to capital and capital accumulation using panel data of Peruvian micro enterprises (MEs). Marginal returns to capital are found to be very high at low levels of capital, but rapidly decreasing at higher levels. The dynamic analyses of capital accumulation in MEs...

Sharing is a norm in many societies. We present a theoretical model on the trade-off between sharing and investment which we test on data from tailors in Burkina Faso. The empirical results support the idea that there are two behavioural patterns: entrepreneurs following an 'insurance regime'...

Local beer breweries in Burkina Faso absorb a considerable amount of urban woodfuel demand. We assess the woodfuel savings caused by the adoption of improved brewing stoves by these, mostly female owned, small enterprises and estimate the implied welfare effects through the woodfuel market on...

In the past twenty years, India's economy has grown at increasing rates and now belongs to the fastest-growing economies in the world. This paper examines drivers of female labor force participation in urban India between 1987 and 2004, showing a much more nuanced picture of female labor force...