We investigate the effects of sewer access on neighborhood characteristics in developing world cities. Because it is more difficult to move sewage uphill than downhill, otherwise similar neighborhoods on opposite sides of drainage basin divides may face different costs of sewer access. We...

The process of development is accompanied by marked changes in the structure of the labor market. We lay out a broad set of stylized features that distinguish developing country labor markets from those in richer countries. We organize our review around one particularly striking difference: in...

Lab-in-the-field experiments, in which lab experiments are conducted in more naturalistic settings, are increasingly being implemented in developing country contexts. In this chapter, we outline the conceptual and logistical challenges typically associated with lab-in-the-field experiments in...

Low-cost private schools have increased educational access in low-income countries, but frequent school closures lead to costly disruptions in children's schooling. We provide experimental evidence from Pakistan that both school loans and educational products and services (EPS) are (a)...

This paper examines the evolving relationship between religion and economic development in emerging and developing countries (EDCs). Building on large-scale survey data and recent scholarship, we document persistent and, in many regions, increasing levels of religiosity. First, we present global...

Improved health in low-income countries could considerably improve wellbeing and possibly promote economic growth. The last decade has seen a surge in field experiments designed to understand the barriers that households and governments face in investing in health and how these barriers can be...

The literature on aid and growth has not found a convincing instrumental variable to identify the causal effects of aid. This paper exploits an instrumental variable based on the fact that since 1987, eligibility for aid from the International Development Association (IDA) has been based partly...

We study the distribution of economic activity, as proxied by lights at night, across 250,000 grid cells of average area 560 square kilometers. We first document that nearly half of the variation can be explained by a parsimonious set of physical geography attributes. A full set of country...

Financially closed economies insure themselves against current-account shocks using international reserves. We characterize the optimal management of reserves using an open-economy model of precautionary savings and emphasize several results. First, the welfare-based opportunity cost of reserves...

Iron deficiency anemia is frequent among the poor worldwide. While it can be prevented with the appropriate supplement or food fortification, these programs often do not consistently reach the poorest. This paper reports on the impact of a potential strategy to address iron deficiency anemia in...