The obligation to pay bride wealth at marriage is usually associated with the continuation of the lineage or considered a compensation for the loss of labor for the family that provides the bride. In this paper a different interpretation is advanced. The obligation to pay of bride wealth is seen...

In this paper we focus on the timing of marriages of women, whose marriages are associated with bride wealth payments, which are transfers from (the family of) the groom to the bride's family. Unmarried daughters could therefore be considered assets who, at times of need, can be cashed in. We...

The test on the presence of full insurance that is commonly employed does not take into account that households also rely on buffer stocks to shield their consumption from income shocks. In this paper a test is developed that deals with this omission. It is shown that in the presence of partial...