<title>A<sc>bstract</sc> </title> <italic>In a panel survey of an informal insurance network in Tanzania we find none of the tell-tale signs that insurance transfers follow reciprocal risk sharing arrangements among self-interested individuals: insurance remittances do not occur through informal loans; transfers are not...</italic>

This paper uses linked qualitative and quantitative data to explore the growth trajectories of matched households in the Kagera region of Tanzania, finding that agriculture and trade provided the two main routes out of poverty. The interplay between initial conditions, shocks, networks and...

Mortality of parents and other adults due to the African AIDS epidemic could reduce children's primary schooling by reducing households' ability to pay fees, raising the opportunity cost of children's time, and leaving orphaned children with guardians who care less about their education than...

This article analyses the role of social networks as facilitators of information flows and banana output increase. Based on a village census, full information is available on the socio-economic characteristics and banana production of farmers' kinship group members, neighbours and informal...

This article examines the contractual practices of African manufacturing firms using survey data collected in Burundi, Cameroon, Cote d'lvoire, Kenya, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Descriptive statistics and econometric results are presented. They show that contractual flexibility is pervasive and that...

Most studies examining the dynamics of welfare have found large fluctuations in consumption over relatively short periods, suggesting substantial short-run movements in and out of poverty. The consequence is that cross-section poverty research may not be able to identify the poor. In this study,...

We use firm-level panel data for the manufacturing sector in four African countries to investigate whether exporting impacts on efficiency, and whether efficient firms self-select into the export market. Based on simultaneous estimation of a production function and an export regression, our...

What keeps some people persistently poor, even in the context of relative high growth? In this article, we explore this question using a 15-year longitudinal data set from Ethiopia. We compare the findings of an empirical growth model with those derived from a model of the determinants of...

We study changes in living conditions using longitudinal data covering 30 years in six villages in Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, initially surveyed during 1975--1984, and resurveyed in recent years, as part of the ICRISAT Village Level Studies. Monetary welfare indicators (such as incomes,...