This paper provides an economic rationale for the practice of consanguineous marriages observed in parts of the developing world. In a model of incomplete marriage markets, dowries are viewed as ex ante transfers made from the bride's family to the groom's family when the promise of ex post...

Why do firms and banks hold foreign currency denominated liabilities? The authors argue that foreign currency debt, by altering the effect of a devaluation on output, has a disciplining effect when the Central Bank's objectives differ from the social optimum. However, under imperfect...

Are wanted and unwanted children treated equally by their parents? To address this question, the authors rely on the observation that, according to Vietnamese astrology, dates of birth are believed to be determinants of success, luck, character, and good match between individuals. They then...

The authors examine the impact of land reform in Vietnam which gives households the power to exchange, transfer, lease, inherit, and mortgage their land-use rights. The authors expect this change to increase the incentives as well as the ability to undertake long-term investments on the part of...

We analyze theoretically and empirically the impact of comparative advantage in international trade on fertility. We build a model in which industries differ in the extent to which they use female relative to male labor, and countries are characterized by Ricardian comparative advantage in...

The authors analyze the interaction between a country's world market integration and its attitude towards gender roles. They discuss both theoretically and empirically how female empowerment is a source of comparative advantage that shapes a country's response to trade opening. Reciprocally, the...

We examine the impact of the 1993 Land Law of Vietnam, which gave households the power to exchange, transfer, lease, inherit, and mortgage their land-use rights. We use household surveys before and after the law was passed, together with the considerable variation across provinces in the speed...

We identify birth wantedness as a source of better child outcomes. In Vietnam, the year of birth is widely believed to determine success. As a result, cohorts born in auspicious years are 12 percent larger. Comparing siblings with one another, those of auspicious cohorts are found to have 2...

The authors survey the recent literature on the mental health effects of conflict. They highlight the methodological challenges faced in this literature, which include the lack of validated mental health scales in a survey context, the difficulties in measuring individual exposure to conflict,...