Physical height is an important economic variable re ecting health and human capital. Puzzlingly, however, differences in average height across developing countries are not well explained by differences in wealth. In particular, children in India are shorter, on average, than children in Africa...

Open defecation is exceptionally widespread in India, a country which also suffers some of the world's worst rates of child stunting. We study a randomized controlled trial of a village-level sanitation program, implemented in one district by the government of Maharashtra. We find that the...

A long literature in demography debates the importance of place for health. This paper assesses whether the importance of dense settlement for child mortality and child height is moderated by exposure to local sanitation behavior. Is open defecation, without a toilet or latrine, worse for infant...

A growing literature documents links between early-life health and human capital, and between human capital and adult wages. Although most of this literature has focused on developed countries, economists have hypothesized that effects of early-life health on adult economic outcomes could be...

How much should the present generations sacrifice to reduce emissions today, in order to reduce the future harms of climate change? Within climate economics, debate on this question has been focused on so-called "ethical parameters” of social time preference and inequality aversion. We show...

Some experimental participants are averse to compound lotteries: they prefer simple lotteries that depend on only one random event, even when the simple lotteries offer lower expected value. This paper proposes that many behavioral “investments” represent more compound risk for poorer...

Even compared with neighbouring countries, latrine use is especially uncommon in India. How might caste - historically associated with sanitation inequality - interact with government sanitation policy? Using data from Rajasthan state, we investigate the effect of caste-based reservations for...

Physical height is an important economic variable reflecting health and human capital. Puzzlingly, however, differences in average height across developing countries are not well explained by differences in wealth. In particular, children in India are shorter, on average, than children in Africa...