Rural poverty rankings of Indian states in 1990 were very different from those of 1960. This unevenness in progress allows us to study the causes of poverty in a developing rural economy. The authors model the evolution of various poverty measures using pooled state-level data for the period...

We argue that the welfare inferences drawn from answers to subjective-qualitative survey questions are clouded by concerns over the structure of measurement errors and how latent psychological factors influence observed respondent characteristics. We propose a panel data model that allows more...

The paper tests for nonlinearities in the wealth effect on self-employment, as can arise from startup costs or liquidity constraints. Using both nonparametric and parametric methods, we show that the relationship between the probability of a return migrant to Tunisia starting up a business and...