This paper tests the hypothesis that the schooling of the poor reduces profits for landowners, and that such negative pecuniary externalities in turn adversely affect schooling investments made by local governments. A theoretical model of occupational choice in the presence of credit and labor...

The governments of many developing economies have actively promoted the expansion of banks in rural areas, believing that such investments are necessary to reduce poverty and existing levels of wealth inequality. There is little evidence on whether such “social banking” programs succeed in...

While it is commonly believed that lack of access to government-subsidized “formal” credit underlies observed differences in farm productivity in rural India, there is little empirical evidence on this issue. In this paper I address this issue by examining whether households use the farm...

While research has demonstrated that farm households in developing economies are able to protect consumption from idiosyncratic crop shocks, little evidence shows how this is achieved. This paper examines the extent to which labor markets allow households to shift labor from farm to off-farm...