Using a randomized survey experiment in urban Ghana, this paper demonstrates that the length of the reference period and the interview modality (in person or over the phone) affect how people respond in labor surveys, with impacts varying markedly by job type. Survey participants report...

Workers in developing countries are subject to frequent health shocks. Using 10 weeks of high-frequency labor market data that were collected in urban Ghana, this paper documents that men are 9 percentage points more likely to work in weeks in which another worker in the household is...

Does decentralizing the allocation of public resources reduce rent-seeking and improve equity? This paper studies a governance reform in Pakistan's vast Indus Basin irrigation system. Using canal discharge measurements across all of Punjab province, the analysis finds that water theft increased...

Surface irrigation is a common pool resource characterized by asymmetric appropriation opportunities across upstream and downstream water users. Large canal systems are also predominantly managed by the state. This paper studies water allocation under an irrigation bureaucracy subject to...

This paper uses a randomized community development program in rural Pakistan to assess the impact of citizen engagement on the quality of public health services. The program had a strong emphasis on organizing women, who also identified health services as a development priority at baseline....

The impact of performance pay in institutions with multiple goals depends on complementarities in the disutility cost of effort and how different tasks interact to achieve each goal. Workers of a mission-oriented nonprofit were randomly assigned to one of two bonus schemes, each incentivizing...

This paper identifies the relative importance of human and physical capital for entrepreneurship. A subset of rural microfinance clients were offered eight full time days of business training and the opportunity to participate in a loan lottery of up to Rs. 100,000 (USD 1,700), about seven times...

Female entrepreneurship is low in many developing economies partly because of constraints on women's time and mobility, which are often reinforced by social norms. This paper analyzes a marketing experiment designed to encourage women to adopt a new microcredit product. A brochure with the same...

Although sharecropping has long fascinated economists, the determinants of this contractual form are still poorly understood and the debate over the extent of moral hazard is far from settled. The authors address both issues by emphasizing the role of landlord supervision. When tenant effort is...

In a setting where husbands wield considerable coercive power, forms of marriage should adapt to protect the interests of women and their families. The authors study the pervasive marriage custom of watta satta in rural Pakistan, a bride exchange between families coupled with a mutual threat of...