It is now well accepted that trust is crucial for economic and social development. There is also evidence that religion strongly affects how individuals act when interacting with others. The same is true of status. Using a field experiment conducted in Bangladesh and West Bengal, India, two...

The purpose of this report is to analyse the impacts of the Rural Development Programme (RDP) of the Solomon Islands. RDP is an initiative to facilitate development in rural Solomon Islands. It focuses on participatory development, demand-responsive provision of Government services and creation...

This paper examines how well consumption is insured against income shocks using a panel of households from rural Punjab during the green revolution years. I estimate the effects of income changes on consumption, after controlling for aggregate shocks through changes in village level consumption....

In this paper we examine the patterns of inter-household transfers using a national level survey data from South Africa. Compared to an African household, a non-African household is less likely to receive and send private transfers. Further the amount of transfers sent and received is also lower...

This paper combines unique survey and experimental data to examine the determinants of self-selection into a vocational training program. Women residing in selected disadvantaged areas in New Delhi, India were invited to apply for a 6-month long free training program in stitching and tailoring....

This paper decomposes the gender wage gap along the entire wage distribution into an endowment effect and a discrimination effect, taking into account possible selection into full-time employment. Applying a new decomposition approach to the Bangladesh Labour Force Survey (LFS) data we find that...

Female wages in Bangladesh are significantly lower than male wages. This paper quantifies the extent to which discrimination can explain this gender wage gap across the rural and urban labour markets of Bangladesh, using unit record data from the 1999-2000 Labour Force Survey. The gender wage...

This study examines the institutions in rural India that enable households to insure against unanticipated idiosyncratic shocks to income. Using a decentralized general equilibrium model it tests for consumption and leisure insurance against unanticipated income shocks. It is found that...