We examine the effect of early-life rainfall on the health, education, and socioeconomic outcomes of Indonesian adults. We link historical rainfall for each individual's birth year and birth location with adult outcomes from the 2000 Indonesia Family Life Survey (IFLS). Higher early-life...

Can marriage institutions limit marital inefficiency? We study the pervasive custom of watta satta in rural Pakistan, a bride exchange between families coupled with a mutual threat of retaliation. Watta satta can be seen as a mechanism for coordinating the actions of two sets of parents, each...

We posit that household decision-making over fertility is characterized by moral hazard since most contraception can only be perfectly observed by the woman. Using an experiment in Zambia that varied whether women were given access to contraceptives alone or with their husbands, we find that...

This paper estimates quantile earnings functions with data from the 2004 Tanzanian Household Worker Survey to determine if ethnicity and gender--being female--matters per se and across the distribution of earnings. We find that in the Tanzanian manufacturing sector gender intersects with...

We consider a model where firms differ in their productivity and workers are differentiated by skill and gender. A reduction in tariffs induces more productive firms to modernize their technology and enter the export market. New technologies involve computerized production processes and lower...

Sex markets play a key role in the transmission of sexually transmitted infections (STI) and HIV/AIDS in developing countries. While individuals should substitute away from risky sex as STI prevalence rises, female sex workers draw a premium for engaging in unprotected sex, mitigating their...