Distances involved in accessing basic services can constitute a major barrier to development. This paper analyzes the relationship between the distance separating households from microfinance institutions' offices in Niger, and the low levels of development and performance of the microfinance...

Utilities the world over grapple with how to set prices to recover fixed costs. This paper considers optimal utility provision and pricing when consumers form habits without being aware of it. Data from a multi-year pricing experiment among nearly 1500 rural piped water customers in Vietnam...

This paper analyzes the spatial distribution of refugees over 1987–2017 and establishes several stylized facts about refugees today compared with past decades. Refugees still predominantly reside in developing countries neighboring their country of origin. However, compared to past decades,...

Transnational terrorist organizations such as the Islamic State group (also known as ISIS/ISIL or Daesh) have shown an ability to attract radicalized individuals from many countries to join their ranks. Using a novel data set that reports countries of residence and educational levels of a large...

The objective of this paper is to provide an estimate of the elasticity of elephant poaching with respect to prices. Ivory being a storable commodity subjects its price to Hotelling’s no-arbitrage condition, hence allowing identification of the supply curve. The price of gold, one of many...

Accurately measuring oil production in low-governance contexts is an important task. Many terrorist organizations and insurgencies -- including the Islamic State group, also known as ISIL/ISIS or Daesh -- tap oil as a revenue source. Understanding spatial and temporal variation in production in...

This paper compares redistribution through trade restrictions versus domestic lump-sum transfers. When preferences are non-homothetic, even domestic lump-sum transfers affect relative prices. Thus, contrary to the conventional wisdom, domestic lump-sum transfers are not necessarily superior to...

The estimated duration of forced displacement situations is a key parameter in defining an adequate response to the crisis. Where the crisis is short, humanitarian aid may suffice; when it lasts, development interventions are required. Using data from the United Nations High Commissioner for...

In many developing countries, environmental quality remains low and policies to improve it have been inconsistently effective. This paper conducts a case study of environmental policy, focusing on an unprecedented ruling by the Supreme Court of India, which targeted industrial pollution in the...

This paper analyzes the rise and demise of piracy off the coast of Somalia to highlight the interplay between public and private crime protection measures. Using unique data on attacks, hijacks, and ransoms, the authors estimate a structural model of Somali piracy to calculate the elasticity of...