Although there is fast-growing policy interest in offering financial products to help rural households manage risk, the literature is still scant as to which products are the most effective. This paper uses a randomized field experiment in Senegal and Burkina Faso to compare male and female...

Health care in developing countries is often unreliable and of poor quality, reducing incentives to use quality health services. Using data from a field experiment in India, I show that providing initial quality care improves the demand for quality health care by raising intended health...

Healthcare in developing countries is often unreliable and of poor quality, thus reducing individuals incentives to use quality health services. This paper examines an innovative approach to access to and demand for quality health care from the poor. Using data from a field experiment in India,...

While there is a fast-growing policy interest in offering financial products to help rural households manage risk, the literature is still scant as to which products are the most effective. In order to inform gender targeting of rural finance policy, this paper investigates which financial...

Through indirect inference, we investigate the extent to which religions’supposed pronatalism is detrimental to growth via the fertility/education channel. Using censuses from South-East Asia, we first estimate an empirical model of fertility and show that having a religious affiliation...

This paper empirically analyzes the main microeconomic determinants of two forms of corruption supply, administrative corruption and state capture, by Maghrebi firms. This study is based on a new database of nearly 600 Algerian, Moroccan and Tunisian firms. I show that tax evasion is a major...

Despite official discourses of donors, the most corrupt countries receive the highest amounts of foreign aid. The most corrupt countries are however also the poorest, and this is why they may receive more aid. This paper provides the first theoretical and empirical grounds for this rationale....

Corruption is thought to prevent poor countries from catching up with richer ones. We analyze one channel through which corruption hampers growth : public investment can be distorted in favor of specific types of spending for which rent-seeking is easier and better concealed. To study this...