We use data from the Gallup World Poll and from the Demographic and Health Surveys to investigate how subjective wellbeing (SWB) is affected by mortality in sub-Saharan Africa, including mortality from HIV/AIDS. The Gallup data provide direct evidence on Africans' own emotional and evaluative...

The paper considers avariety of evidence that casts light on the validity of the life-cycle model of consumer behavior. In the first part of the paper, simple non-parametric tests are used to examine representative agent models of consumption and labor supply. It seems extremely unlikely that...

The classical theory of commodity price determination integrates myopic supply and demand on the one hand with competitive storage (speculation) under rational expectations on the other. Taking into account the fact that inventories mist; be non-negative, this paper derives from the theory...

I argue that progress in understanding economic development (as in other branches of economics) must come from the investigation of mechanisms; the associated empirical analysis can usefully employ a wide range of experimental and non-experimental methods. I discuss three different areas of...

We investigate the childhood determinants of adult height in populations, focusing on the respective roles of income and of disease. We develop a model of selection and scarring, in which the early life burden of nutrition and disease is not only responsible for mortality in childhood but also...

What is inequality in health? Are economists' standard tools for measuring income inequality relevant or useful for measuring it? Does income protect health and does income inequality endanger it? I discuss two different concepts of health inequality and relate each of them to the literature on...

This paper is broadly concerned with the living standards of older people in two contrasting developing countries, Cote d'Ivoire and Thailand. We use a series of household surveys from these two countries to present evidence on factors affecting the living standards of the elderly: living...

We examine the social pension in South Africa, where large cash sumsþabout twice the median per capita income of African householdsþare paid to people qualified by age but irrespective of previous contributions. We present the history of the scheme and use a 1993 nationally representative...

There is currently much debate about the effectiveness of foreign aid and about what kind of projects can engender economic development. There is skepticism about the ability of econometric analysis to resolve these issues, or of development agencies to learn from their own experience. In...

I present a model of mortality and income that integrates the 'gradient,' the negative relationship between income and mortality, with the Wilkinson hypothesis, that income inequality poses a risk to health. Individual health is negatively affected by relative deprivation within a reference...