This paper explores the role of export costs in the process of poverty reduction in rural Africa. We claim that the marketing costs that emerge when the commercialization of export crops requires intermediaries can lead to lower participation into export cropping and, thus, to higher poverty. We...

This paper presents a model of business cycles driven by shocks to consumer expectations regarding aggregate productivity. Agents are hit by heterogeneous productivity shocks, they observe their own productivity and a noisy public signal regarding aggregate productivity. The shock to this public...

Evaluations of workfare programs in poor rural economies have typically ignored two features that policy makers stress: involuntary unemployment and the expected welfare losses from work requirements. The paper generalizes past evaluation theory and methods to incorporate both features, and...

This paper studies the welfare effects of encouraging rural-urban migration in the developing world. To do so, we build a dynamic incomplete-markets model of migration in which heterogenous agents face seasonal income fluctuations, stochastic income shocks, and disutility of migration that...

This paper investigates the welfare costs of business cycles in a heterogeneous agent, overlapping generations economy which is distinguished by idiosyncratic labor market risk. Aggregate variation arises both in terms of aggregate productivity shocks and countercyclical variation in the...

A countercyclical markup of price over marginal cost is the key transmission mechanism for demand shocks in textbook New Keynesian (NK) models. This paper re-examines the foundation of those models. We study the cyclicality of markups in the private economy as well as in detailed manufacturing...

We estimate the general-equilibrium labor market effects of a large-scale randomized intervention in which we designed and marketed a rainfall index insurance product across three states in India. Marketing agricultural insurance to both cultivators and to agricultural wage laborers allows us to...

The creation of non-contributory pension schemes is becoming increasingly common as countries struggle to reduce poverty. Drawing on data from Mexico's Adultos Mayores Program (Older Adults Program) - a cash transfer scheme aimed at rural adults over 70 years of age - we evaluate the effects of...

Using data from an 18-month randomized trial, we estimate large and sustained impacts on water purification and child health of a program providing monthly coupons for free water treatment solution (diluted chlorine) to households with young children. The program is more effective and much more...

Fresh water supplies increasingly are under stress in many parts of the world due to rising populations, higher per capita incomes and corresponding consumption, greater environmental concerns, and the effects of climate change. Water rights and markets are part of the institutional menus for...