Do people move to cities because of marriage market considerations? In cities singles can meet more potential partners than in rural areas. Singles are therefore prepared to pay a premium in terms of higher housing prices. Once married, the marriage market benefits disappear while the housing...

We examine environmental factors as potential determinants of international migration. We distinguish between unexpected short-run factors, captured by natural disasters, as well as long-run climate change and climate variability. Building on a simple neo-classical model we use a panel dataset...

This paper estimates the causal effect of rural-urban migration on urban production in China. We use longitudinal data on manufacturing firms between 2001 and 2006 and exploit exogenous variation in rural-urban migration due to agricultural price shocks. Following a migrant inflow, labor costs...

Do people move to cities because of marriage market considerations? In cities singles can meet more potential partners than in rural areas. Singles are therefore prepared to pay a premium in terms of higher housing prices. Once married, the marriage market benefits disappear while the housing...

Institutions are important for proper economic performance, but are replaceable by trust or other social norms. We show that when proper institutions and trust are missing, integrity of the individuals can replace them. We construct a model of a transactions-based economy with contracts...

This analysis employs cointegration methods and semiparametric regression in order to assess the integration of maize markets and the factors determining national and cross-national transmission of price signals in Sub-Saharan Africa. We use a rich dataset of 16 series of wholesale maize prices...

How costly are droughts to individuals’ nutrition in Africa? We measure severe droughts using a detailed satellite-based vegetation index observed bi-monthly for 0.08° grids between 1982 and 2015. Across 32 African countries, conditional on individual characteristics, timing relative to...

The relationship between inequality and redistribution is usually studied under the assumption that the government collects different amounts of taxes from each citizen (voter) but gives back the same amount (in cash or in kind) to everyone. In this paper we consider what happens if the...

In this paper we construct a Ricardian model of trade in vertically-differentiated products between a developing country and the (developed) rest of the world. Despite labour being the only factor of production in this model, tariffs (in addition to income taxes) have distributional consequences...

This paper surveys the empirical literature on the association between growth on inequality in less developed countries, with a particular emphasis on labor market inequality. Crosscountry studies failed to find a clear link from growth to inequality. Country-specific studies that focused on...