Why do the poor have so many economic activities? According to one theory the poor do not specialize because relying on one income source is risky. I test the theory by measuring the response of Thai rice farmers to conditional volatility in the international rice price. Households expecting a...

In this working paper, we analyze factors that may explain gender differences in the allocation of time to household production in sub-Saharan Africa. The study uses time use survey data to analyze the determinants of time spent on household production by husbands and wives in nuclear families...

We use time-series of rainfall along with individual fixed effects to estimate the response of body weight to transitory changes in house-hold income and expenditure. Our data consist of a longitudinal sample of subsistence farmers in rural Tazania, representing one of the poorest populations in...

In many parts of the world, soils poor in nutrients are farmed with little addition of fertilizer, further depleting the farmland. The very same farmers often face poor sanitary solutions. So-called ecological sanitation aims at providing sanitation and at recycling nutrients as fertilizer. This...

This paper presents results from a field experiment designed to test whether savings constraints prevent the self-employed from increasing the size of their businesses. We opened interest-free savings accounts in a local village bank in rural Kenya for a randomly selected sample of poor daily...

This paper focuses on indivisible multiple-cost-single-benefit projects that must be approved by the government. A simple mechanism is proposed that ensures an efficient and fair implementation of such projects. The proposed mechanism is appropriate for a unilateral information structure: the...

Rural non-agricultural employment (RNAE) is being increasingly emphasized as a potential pathway out of rural poverty for people who are unable to secure their income in agriculture. Although average earnings in the rural non-agricultural sector are higher than in agriculture, it is unclear...

This paper investigates the time allocation of women in Ghana as a trade-off between domestic chores and market-oriented activities when households are provided with water and electricity infrastructure. Using the Ghana Living Standards Survey, Round Four, we find that the time spent on...