The use of mobile phones in poverty reduction and development has ignited much interest over the past decade. To take advantage of the rapid expansion of mobile phones in developing countries, businesses, government agencies and non-governmental organisations are increasingly turning their...

This paper asks whether population growth is conducive to the sustainability of cooperation. A simple model is developed in which farmers who live around a circular lake engage in trade with their adjacent neighbors. The payoffs from this activity are governed by a prisoner’s dilemma “rule...

In this paper I study policy responses to an increase in post-merger distress. I consider the integration of regions and nations as a merger of populations which I view as a revision of social space, and I identify the effect of the merger on aggregate distress. The paper is based on the premise...

The tremendous human resource and economic burden of HIV/AIDS, malaria and diarrhoeal diseases is well acknowledged in many developing countries. Most of these diseases have multifaceted causes such as malnutrition, the consumption of contaminated water or poor education. Thus, cross-sectoral...

Inadequate access to safe water and sanitation services coupled with poor hygiene practices continues to kill, sicken and diminish opportunities of millions of people in developing countries. Various interventions to improve drinking water quality and service levels, sanitation and hygiene (WSH)...

Strong ties with the home country and with the host country can coexist. An altruistic migrant who sends remittances to his family back home assimilates more the more altruistic he is, and also more than a non-remitting migrant.

This study adds a microeconomic perspective to the discussion on ethnic diversity and economic performance in developing countries by investigating the motivation for intra-ethnicity marriage in rural Sub-Saharan Africa. Specifically, the paper proposes that ethnic similarity between spouses...

This paper studies the growth dynamics of a developing country under migration. Assuming that human capital formation is subject to a strong enough, positive intertemporal externality, the prospect of migration will increase growth in the home country in the long run. If the external effect is...

In the model of Stark et al. (1997, 1998), the possibility of employment in a developed country raises the level of human capital acquired by workers in the developing country. We show that this result holds even when workers have the option to save.