Rural households in Ethiopia are exposed to a variety of covariate and idiosyncratic risks. In 2005, the Ethiopian government introduced the Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) and in 2011 launched the Community Based Health Insurance Scheme (CBHI). This paper analyses the interaction between...

Globally installed wind power capacity has grown tremendously since 2000. This study focuses on the local economic impacts of wind power deployment. A theoretical model shows that wind power deployment is not necessarily driven by locally-accruing economic payoffs, but also by other factors such...

In this paper, we examine the impact of reductions in barriers to migration on the consumption of households in rural China. We find that increased migration from rural villages leads to significant increases in consumption per capita, and that this effect is stronger for poorer households...

What causes alcohol abuse and domestic violence and how can we stop them? These behaviors have multiple determinants, making the effects of changes in wife's and husband's income ambiguous. This paper estimates the effects of exogenous changes in wife's and husband's income on husband alcohol...

Heterogeneity in time discounting may reinforce the existing barriers to save and invest faced by rural populations in developing countries. We elicit a subjective discount rate for a varied sample of Ugandan villagers. In accordance with other studies, we have found the discount rate to...

China's recently implemented New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS), the largest social pension program in the world, was designed to provide financial protection for its rural population and reduce economic inequities. Yet the impact of this program is mitigated if those eligible fail to enroll. This...

In this paper, we investigate how reductions of barriers to migration affect the decision of middle school graduates to attend high school in rural China. Change in the cost of migration is identified using exogenous variation across counties in the timing of national identity card distribution,...

Using data from the 1995 Malawi Financial Markets and Food Security Survey, this study seeks to discover if women's relative control over household resources or intra-household bargaining power in rural Malawi, gauged by their access to microcredit, plays a role in children's food security,...

Much of the existing literature on the use of informal credit arrangements such as ROSCAs (Rotating and Credit Saving Associations) theorises the use of such institutions as arising from market failures in the development of formal saving and credit mechanisms. As economic development proceeds,...

This paper seeks to better understand the historical origins of current differences in norms and beliefs about the appropriate role of women in society. We test the hypothesis that traditional agricultural practices influenced the historical gender division of labor and the evolution and...