This dissertation explores household risk and savings behavior in Zimbabwe, and agricultural technology adoption, and the impact of public investments on the economy and community health in Ethiopia. The first paper analyzes changes in per capita consumption and savings behavior in Zimbabwe...

This paper presents an economic model of group formation with an application to data collected from an agricultural credit program in western Honduras. We formulate a simple theory of group formation using the concept of centers of gravity to explain why individuals join a group. According to...

Recent public cash assistance reform measures designed to induce recipients to leave welfare and enter the workforce represent the most important change in social welfare policy in recent decades. Single female-headed families with children (SFHFwC), who represent 53 percent ofnon-metropolitan...

The paper examines, taking into account the urban-rural divides, the changes andwelfare implications of income diversification in Zimbabwe following macroeconomicpolicy changes and droughts of the early 1990s. Data from two comparable nationalincome, consumption, and expenditure surveys in...

This study models the timber market entry decisions of nonindustrial private landowners. It involves examining reservation prices both for harvesting timber from existing forest land and for afforestation of marginal agricultural and abandoned land. An important conclusion drawn from these...

The logging industry of the Amazon is a topic that has received little attention in the literature, beyond specific single firm case studies. This has not allowed estimation of cost and production functions that can be used to predict changes in the industry in response to external market...

Land-clearing fires set by settlers in the Brazilian Amazon give rise to large scale wildfires that threaten mature forests, agricultural plantations, and settlement areas. Our purpose is to examine labor devoted to fire prevention (firebreak establishment) and burning for crop production for...

New Zealand experienced dramatic restructuring programsafter the Labor party won the national elections in 1984.Deregulation of price controls, removal of the log exportban, and privatization of public assets were the mainshocks to the forest sector. The purpose of this paper isto analyze the...

This dissertation is composed of three essays; the first two examine the decision-making of potato producing households in Bolivia and the third examines well-being changes among Zimbabwe households. The first essay entitled âThe role of risk mitigation in production efficiency: A case study of...