This research argues that variations in the interplay between cultural assimilation and cultural diffusion have played a significant role in giving rise to differential patterns of economic development across the globe. Societies that were geographically less vulnerable to cultural diffusion...

Output per worker is lower in poor countries than in rich countries, and relatively more so in the agricultural sector. Sorting of heterogeneous workers can contribute to explain this fact if comparative and absolute advantage are aligned in agriculture, implying that average productivity in...

A large share of the population of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) lacks access to modern energy services. To bridge the electricity access gap, distributed power generation systems such as minigrids and stand-alone photovoltaic systems emerge as attractive options in the power supply solution space....

In much of the developing world, cooking accounts for most of women's time in home production. Does reliance on biomass for cooking drive this time burden? To assess time-savings from shifting towards cleaner fuels, we revisit a clean energy information experiment in rural India. Treatment...

We re-examine the effects of negative weather anomalies during the growing season on the decision to migrate in rural households in five sub-Saharan African countries. To this end we combine a multi-country household panel dataset with high-resolution gridded precipitation data. We find that...

Existing climate-economy models use aggregate damage functions to model the effects of climate change. This approach assumes climate change has equal impacts on the productivity of firms that produce consumption and investment goods or services. We show the split between damage to consumption...

Providing electricity to the unconnected 1.1 billion people in developing countries is one of the top political priorities of the international community, yet the costs of reaching this objective are very high. The present paper examines whether the objective and the associated costs are...

We study the effects of electrification on educational outcomes in Peru by taking advantage of a program that rapidly increased electricity coverage in rural areas. Using household survey panel data from 2007-2010, we document that: i) girls living in treated districts are more likely to be...

This paper analyzes the determinants behind the spatial distribution of the LGBT population in the U.S. We relate the size of the present-day LGBT population to the discovery of gold mines during the 19th century gold rushes. Comparing the surroundings of these gold mines to other current and...

Do institutions and culture affect environmental values? In this article we analyze 1,041 environmental valuations of 223 wetlands in 38 developing countries, to examine the effect of institutions and culture on environmental values. We assess three dimensions of institutional quality: economic...