In developing countries, most poor households experience extremely variable in-come because of a large exposure to climatic, economic and policy shocks, combined with a lack of appropriate insurance devices. Extreme weather events, in particular, are projected to become more frequent in a...

The article is the introduction to the volume edited by the author with the same title on the occasion of the centennial anniversary of Manlio Rossi-Doria. The volume is a collection of selected writings published between 1929 and 1986 divided in four thematic sections: agronomic modernization,...

We examine the eect of rainfall shocks on crimes against women using data from 583 Indian districts for 2002-2007. We nd that a one standard deviation decline in annual rainfall from the local mean increases reported domestic violence by 4.4 percent and dowry deaths by 7.8 percent. Wet shocks...

This paper studies the impact of droughts on health outcomes and health expenditures in rural Vietnam. Given the increasing frequency of extreme weather events in Vietnam and many developing countries, it is crucial for policy makers to be aware of the economic impact of such shocks at the micro...

Does economic development depend on geographic endowments like temperate instead of tropical location, the ecological conditions shaping diseases, or an environment good for grains or certain cash crops? Or do these endowments of tropics, germs, and crops affect economic development only through...

Vulnerability to reduction of natural capital depends on defensive substitution possibilities that, in turn, are affected by the availability of other productive factors. However in several developing countries asset distribution tends to be highly skewed. Taking into account these elements,...

The way in which natural and physical capital are accumulated, distributed and harnessed underpins the functioning and sustainability of the productive system of each society as well as its social stratification. Significant changes in the interactions between natural and physical capital...

We estimate how random weather fluctuations affected infant mortality across 28 African countries in the past, combining high-resolution data from retrospective fertility surveys (DHS) and climate-model reanalysis (ERA-40). We find that infants were much more likely to die when exposed in utero...