In a recent randomized experiment we found mean returns to capital of between 5 and 6 percent per month in Sri Lankan microenterprises, much higher than market interest rates. But returns were found to be much higher among men than among women, and indeed were not different from zero for women....

This paper examines the importance of relative deprivation in Tanzania, a poor African country, using three waves of the Tanzanian National Panel Survey. We contribute to earlier literature in Africa by controlling for time persistent unobservable individual characteristics (panel data) and by...

We study whether and how parents interfere paternalistically in their children's intertemporal decision-making. Based on experiments with over 2,000 members of 610 families, we find that parents anticipate their children's present bias and aim to mitigate it. Using a novel method to measure...

Among residents of an informal housing area in Cairo, we examine how dictator giving varies by the social distance between subjects – friend versus stranger – and by the anonymity of the dictator. While giving to strangers is high under anonymity, we find – consistent with Leider et al....

We study a parent's demand for gratitude from his child. We view this demand as an intervening variable between the parent's earnings and the incidence of child labor. The demand for gratitude arises from the desire of a parent to receive care and support from his child late in life, while the...

Precipitated by rapid globalization, rising inequality, population growth, and longevity gains, social protection programs have been on the rise in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in the last three decades. However, the introduction of public benefits could displace informal mechanisms...

Aging populations in developing countries have spurred the introduction of public pension programs to preserve the standard of living for the elderly. The often-overlooked mechanism of intergenerational transfers, however, can dampen these intended policy effects, as adult children who make...

We use data from over 20,000 firms in 60 countries to identify constraints on the growth offirms. We interpret managers´ answers to survey questions on the extent to which variousaspects of their external environment inhibit the performance of their firm as measuring theshadow cost of...

This paper provides a synthetic and systematic review on the effectiveness of various entrepreneurship programs in developing countries. We adopt a meta-regression analysis using 37 impact evaluation studies that were in the public domain by March 2012, and draw out several lessons on the design...

We use data from over 20,000 firms in 60 countries to identify constraints on the growth of firms. We interpret managers' answers to survey questions on the extent to which various aspects of their external environment inhibit the performance of their firm as measuring the shadow cost of...