Volatility in commodity markets poses an acute risk to farmers in developing countries who rely on cash crop agriculture. We combine a time series of international coffee prices with a long-running panel on coffee-growing households in Viet Nam to investigate coping mechanisms employed by...

This study investigates the ethnic disadvantage in rural Vietnam, focusing on the magnitude of the majority-minority gap and the constraints on ethnic minority households that contribute to the gap. Using a biannual panel dataset spanning the period 2006 - 14, this paper documents large...

To continue its economic growth and create new and better livelihoods, Africa must transform the productive side of its economy. Ongoing globalization - in trade, finance, and technology - opens up new possibilities for structural transformation, but also new risks as Africa's integration with...

We examine the effects of randomly introduced economic inequality on voluntary cooperation, and whether this relationship is influenced by the quality of local institutions, as proxied by corruption. We use representative data from a large-scale lab-in-the-field public goods experiment with over...

While many studies of welfare dynamics have been conducted using panel data sets with two or three waves, much richer insights can be obtained where more waves are available. This paper analyses this issue for the case of the Viet Nam Access to Resources Household Survey, a carefully collected...

According to Lucas (1981) understanding business cycles is the first step in designing appropriate stabilization policies. In this paper, we demonstrate a series of ways in which developing countries differ from their developed counterparts when focus is on the nature and characteristics of...

This paper takes a fresh look at three issues in the aid effectiveness debate. First, we assess the theoretical case for foreign aid. Using an endogenous growth version of the standard overlapping generations model, we show that aid can be an effective policy tool in spurring growth in poor...

There is a widespread perception among academic researchers and aid practitioners alike that empirical cross-country analysis fails to find any significant link between aid flows and growth, and that aid is successful only when associated with good policies in the recipient countries. These...

This paper examines the relationship between foreign aid and growth in real GDP per capita as it emerges from simple augmentations of popular cross-country growth specifications. It is shown that aid in all likelihood increases the growth rate, and this result is not conditional on "good"...