Using nationally-representative household survey data and confidential geo-coded data on violence, we examine the linkages between conflict, food insecurity, and food price shocks in Afghanistan. Spatial mappings of the raw data reveal large variations in levels of food insecurity and conflict...

The various channels through which a reduction in the cost of offshoring can improve wages in a developed country are by now well understood. But does a similar reduction in the offshoring cost also benefit workers in the world's factories in developing countries? Using a parsimonious...

This paper augments the existing literature on trade and child labor by exploring the effects of terms of trade changes in the context of a three good general equilibrium model, where one of the goods is a non-traded good. We find that under quasi-linear preferences the effect of the terms of...

The home market effect (HME) is a distinguishing feature of the newʺ theory of international trade, but it is uncertain whether this effect survives if one moves beyond the simplifying setup with only two countries. We present a three-country version of the seminal model by Krugman (1980) and...

We present a general equilibrium analysis of biofuel subsidies in an open-economy context. In the small-country case, when a Pigouvian tax on conventional fuels such as crude is in place, the optimal biofuel subsidy is zero. When the tax on crude is not available as a policy option, however, a...

Australia is experiencing its largest mining boom for more than a century and a half. This paper explores, from a national perspective, important economic differences that arise when a mining boom, such as the current one, is generated by export price increases (trading gains) rather than export...

In this paper, we examine the effect of food prices on clinical measures of obesity, including body mass index (BMI) and percentage body fat (PBF) measures derived from bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) and dual energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA), among youths ages 12 through 18. The...

Air pollution is amongst the gravest public health concerns worldwide, and indoor sources are the largest contributors in many developing countries. In our study in central India, we randomly assign villages to a campaign by rural public health workers to either raise awareness about the adverse...

Airline fuel consumption is costly for the firms and for society as well due to a climate-change externality. We study how fuel price changes affect cost-minimizing choices by airlines that have implications for the extent of this externality. The airline industry's capital stock can be easily...

The recent global increases in fuel prices threaten the gains in poverty reduction that countries like Paraguay have achieved over the past few decades. Therefore, policy makers must understand the potential distributional impacts of increases in fuel prices to evaluate the implementation of...