Assorting on gender is casually observed in developing countries and is now systematically built into many group-oriented development interventions. In this paper we explore the mechanisms underlying the emergent gender assorting, using an experiment in which African villagers could form groups...

Previous analyses of the formation and composition of community-based organizations (CBOs) have used cross section data. So, causal inference has been compromised. We obviate this problem by using data from a quasi-experiment in which villages were formed by government officials selecting and...

This study tests the hypothesis that both disaggregated and aggregated data collection methods produce similar estimates of the relative importance of livelihood portfolio activities and expenditures. The results show that different methods of data collection yield substantively different...

Proper targeting of policy interventions requires reasonable estimates of the benefits of the alternative options. To inform such decisions, we develop an integrated approach stemming from the small-area estimation literature that estimates the marginal returns to a range of assets across...