One-quarter of married, fertile-age women in Sub-Saharan Africa report not wanting a pregnancy and yet do not use contraceptives. To study this issue, we collect detailed data on women’s subjective probabilistic beliefs and estimate a structural model of contraceptive choices. Our results...

India is at the cusp of a major urban transition. In less than twenty years, India's urban population is expected to nearly double from 377 million today to over 600 million. Indian cities already contribute an estimated two-thirds of India's GDP, and this number is expected to rise to 75% by...

This paper explores the qualitative and quantitative implications of optimal taxation in a developing economy when economic growth is endogenously determined. We differentiate this class of economies from a developed economy in two aspects: informal sector is quantitatively significant and...

By studying the interaction between social capital and decentralization, we show that political decentralization can be a source of divergence across heterogeneous regions. In particular, we claim that since the local endowments of social capital display their effect on the economy mainly...

This paper presents the first rigorous impact evaluation of a shoreline stabilization program in Barbados and attempts to assess whether shoreline stabilization investments indeed have beneficial effects on medium-term economic growth in Small Island Developing States through stimulating tourism...

A renewed interest in explaining growth in the Caribbean countries is motivated by the somewhat slow but uneven performance in the past decade: per capita GDP gaps in Caribbean countries have widened in relation to the United States, whereas standard theories would predict convergence. This...