Do export promotion agencies impact the probability of non-exporting firms to export? In the last decade many countries have introduced export promotion agencies to support their firms to deal with asymmetric information problems and make feasible additional gains from trade. Some recent studies...

This paper analyzes the dynamic nature of rainfall insurance purchasing decisions, specifically looking at whether and why receiving an insurance payout induces a greater chance of purchasing insurance again the next year. This analysis uses customer data from the Indian micro-finance...

In much of the developing world, the demand for high frequency quality household data for poverty monitoring and program design far outstrips the capacity of the statistics bureau to provide such data. In these environments, all available data sources must be leveraged. Most surveys, however, do...

This paper investigates the African financial development and financial inclusion gaps relative to other peer developing countries. The paper uses a set of variables related to financial development and inclusion. It first estimates the gaps between African countries and other developing...

This paper uses a common household survey instrument and a common set of imputation assumptions to estimate the pro-poorness of government health expenditure across 69 countries at all levels of income. On average, government health expenditure emerges as significantly pro-rich, but there is...

Obtaining consistent estimates on poverty over time as well as monitoring poverty trends on a timely basis is a priority concern for policy makers. However, these objectives are not readily achieved in practice when household consumption data are neither frequently collected, nor constructed...

Trade liberalizations have been shown to improve domestic firms'performance through the new varieties of imported intermediate inputs. This paper uses a unique, representative sample of Bangladeshi garment firms to highlight that local intermediate inputs may also enhance domestic...

Mobile phone coverage has expanded considerably throughout the developing world, particularly within sub-Saharan Africa. Existing evidence suggests that increased access to information technology has improved agricultural market efficiency for consumer markets and certain commodities, but there...

Although non-farm enterprises are ubiquitous in rural Sub-Saharan Africa, little is yet known about them. The motivation for households to operate enterprises, how productive they are, and why they exit the market are neglected questions. Drawing on the Living Standards Measurement Study --...

Accurate measurement of stock levels, turnover, and profitability in microenterprises in developing countries is difficult because the majority of these firms do not keep detailed records. This paper tests the use of radio frequency identification tags as a means of objectively measuring stock...