Fatalism is considered pervaisve, not leaste within many poor communities. In this paper, we explore whether 'fatalistic' beliefs have implications for the attitudes and behaviour of poor rural households towards investment in the future. We first explore the idea of fatalos, drawing inspiration...

Poor people often do not make investments, even when returns are high. One possible explanation is that they have low aspirations and form mental models which ignore some options for investment. This paper reports on findings of an innovative experiment to test this in rural Ethiopia. Firstly,...