We develop an equilibrium wage-posting model with heterogeneous firms that decide to locate in the formal or the informal sector and workers who search randomly on and off the job. We estimate the model on Brazilian labor force survey data. In equilibrium, firms of equal productivity locate in...

The authors analyze an economy that lacks a strong legal-political institutional infrastructure and is populated by multiple powerful groups. Powerful groups dynamically interact via a fiscal process that effectively allows open access to the aggregate capital stock. In equilibrium, this leads...

We explore the impact of reduced transaction costs on risk sharing by estimating the effects of a mobile money innovation on consumption. In our panel sample, adoption of the innovation increased from 43 to 70 percent. We find that, while shocks reduce consumption by 7 percent for nonusers, the...

We investigate the relationship between violence and economic risk preferences in Afghanistan combining: (i) a two-part experimental procedure identifying risk preferences, violations of Expected Utility, and specific preferences for certainty; (ii) controlled recollection of fear based on...

Researchers have scrutinized foreign aid's effects on poverty and growth, but anecdotal evidence suggests that donors often use aid for other ends. We test whether donors use bilateral aid to influence elections in developing countries. We find that recipient country administrations closely...

Acemoglu et al. (2008) document that the correlation between income per capita and democracy disappears when including time and country fixed effects. While their results are robust for the full sample, we find evidence for significant but heterogeneous effects of income on democracy: negative...

This paper shows that the body of appointed officials that a new democracy inherits from the previous regime is a key determinant of the extent of electoral fraud and clientelistic spending in new democracies. I develop a model that predicts that appointed officials have stronger incentives to...

We develop a model in which connections between individuals serve as social collateral to enforce informal insurance payments. We show that: (i) The degree of insurance is governed by the expansiveness of the network, measured with the per capita number of connections that groups have with the...